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There was the question again, and neither Mace nor I had a direct answer. As the other customers noticed us and nervously divided their attention between us and the news, I said, “I’m Scale Patrolman Brandon Quick. My partner is Patrolman Mace Gamble. Ms. Campion, we don’t have any reason to believe the Plex are coming here in force. As you can see, they’ve been mostly attacking larger cities. We are here on business, though. Other business.”
Pointing at the screen, Rowan asked, “If it’s not about that, then what is it about? What’s going on? How many more places is this going to happen to before someone stops this? Half my customers just ran out of here, scared for their lives. What are you people doing?”
Rowan’s influence was the only thing holding the people who were still here, watching what was happening in St. Louis and might strike anywhere else at any time. The Gateway Arch was still standing, but the rest of that city in Missouri that called itself the Gateway to the West had just been reduced to the broken, jagged shapes and silhouettes of what used to be buildings, bathed in the searing glow of the energy that had been unleashed onto them, engulfed in fires, and dwarfed by the vast, rising clouds of smoke from the attack that had devastated the city as totally as a nuclear strike. When the Plex attacked, they blasted everything to the ground, leaving very little in their wake that could be recognized as a city; and they did it without missiles, without mushroom clouds, without fallout and radiation. It was pure, clean, absolute destruction.
I said in a careful, even tone, “Ms. Campion, my partner and I have come to escort you away from here. We want to get you to someplace where you’ll be safe. And we have to go immediately.”
For the first time since the newsfeed started, all attention was on something other than the destruction of St. Louis. The customers watched Rowan as she reacted, “What are you talking about? This is my place, my business! What do you want with me? You’re not police or FBI; you don’t have a warrant to come in here and take anyone anywhere!”
Mace gave me the look that told me it was time to play Good Dragon again. “We realize all that,” I said. “But we have the authority of the Alliance, which comes from the highest levels of U.S. National Security. Ms. Campion, we know that you have…talents. And we know you’ve been a study subject with Genomics Laboratories. We’ve been instructed to bring you with us to where the Alliance can talk to you about the things you can do.”
Rowan looked confused, and I felt for her. And as much as Mace played the Bad Dragon in situations like this, I could tell he felt for her too. Neither of us wanted to scare her any more than she or the other humans in the place were already scared. But we had a job to do, and our job was about her.
I looked into Rowan’s deep green eyes, which were now filled with confusion and growing anxiety. Mace and I hadn’t meant to scare her, but how else could she feel at a time like this, when another human city had just been taken and no one knew what was coming next? All I knew was that the kind of fear that was choking the air everywhere should never touch a face like hers. Beauty like Rowan’s shouldn’t know anything but calm and contentment—and pleasure. She must be capable of giving and receiving so much pleasure. Mace was responding to her the same way as I was; I could sense it. He might not want to respond, but neither of us could help it, not even now when we had a job to do, which our superiors had told us was of the gravest urgency.
Defensively, gripping the edge of the bar, Rowan asked, “What about the things I can do? What has that got to do with anything?”
Mace and I went up to the bar to talk to her up-close. It gave us a closer look at how incredibly beautiful she was, but at the moment her beauty was only a distraction. Mace shrugged off our mutual reaction to her and got right to the point. In a hushed voice, he faced her and said, “Ms. Campion, the Scale Patrol has seen the data about you from Genomics. We know about your special talent. And our superiors seem to believe that there’s something even more special about you than other humans with your…ability.”
It was then that something else clicked in my mind. During the briefing, there was something that came up and that was hushed up as quickly as it was mentioned. There was a mention of heredity, or to be precise, of “genes being passed on.” As in genes being passed to offspring—Rowan’s offspring. Meaning…a child, or children. Mace and I didn’t make much of it; we had to concentrate on just getting here and getting her into our custody. But what could it be about heredity and Rowan’s children…?
We were both impressed that Rowan stood her ground and didn’t seem to find us intimidating. She hushed her own voice and replied, “Are you telling me the people at Genomics have been sharing my confidential data with you? The data about my introns and how I can become partly…what you are? What gives them the right to do that? I didn’t give anyone any permission! If I’d known they were going to do that, I would never have gone in for…”
I stopped her right there. “It’s a matter of national security, Ms. Rowan. And probably world security. That’s all we know for the moment, but we have to ask you to come with us.” I glanced up at the screen. “Look at what used to be St. Louis. Time is running out.”
Mace added, “What our superiors know, the Plex probably knows too. The Plex raided Genomics Laboratories. They stole data. We think part of what they took was your genetic profile—all the studies that Genomics did about you. That’s why they called in the Alliance. Up until now, the Plex have only been interested in destroying cities and populations. Now, the Alliance thinks for some reason they’ll be zeroing in on one human. You.”
Rowan’s skin flushed. She took a half-step back, as if wanting to find some place to run and hide. And for the first time I heard a note of concern for her openly expressed in Mace’s tone. “Don’t be scared,” he said. “We’re here to make sure nothing happens to you.”
There was no question that her beauty was having as much of an effect on Mace as it was on me. This was quickly starting to become not just a mission, but something more personal, in spite of our need to stay professional and detached. There seemed to be no way to resist wanting to get attached to her. That could jeopardize the mission as quickly as it started—if we let it.
“Listen,” she said, watching her customers out of the corners of her eyes as they started to get up and walk out the way the others had done. “I don’t know what the Plex might want with me, but there’s nothing special about me except that I have this mutation that gives me partial Dracon traits that I can turn on and off. There’s nothing else about me that anyone could be interested in…”
That was when we heard the sound coming from outside—the whirring sound of something approaching from overhead. Mace, Rowan, and I looked up and around. We saw the last customers near the door, on their way out. One of them, a woman, took on a sudden, wide-eyed look of terror. She let out a scream and pointed behind us.
We looked where she was pointing, at the big glass doors letting out onto the terrace, and saw two figures descending onto the deck from above. The only thing human about them was their shape. Their bodies had a plastic sheen. They were sexless, not male or female. Their faces were hairless and expressionless, their clothes generic and form-fitting with no details. They touched down on the deck and gazed into the cafe with emotionless eyes.
Mace and I reached for the Firebreathers in our holsters. We had managed to precede them to their target by only minutes.
Rowan whirled around to face us again, looking as frightened as her last customers who had just bolted. “I thought you said you didn’t have any reason to think they were coming!”
Taking my weapon in hand, I answered, “I said they shouldn’t be coming here the way they just did St. Louis. This isn’t like that. This…”
Mace cut me off. “This is what they sent us to stop.”
With the cold eyes of the figures on her terrace fixed right on her, Rowan started to back away and come around the other side of the bar to where Mace and I were. While watching the figures on the patio for whatever they were about to do, I just noticed that Rowan’s skin was starting to break out into scales.
Then, with a shattering din and an explosion of flying glass, the Plex broke into Rowan’s cafe.
