Dragons vs. Drones (3 page)

Chapter
3

A
s soon as she was out of the city, Dree felt her foul mood lighten. She couldn't stand to look at any more wealthy, young Draconians with their heads shaved into Mohawks or archaic symbols, dragon fangs dangling from their necks. It was almost as bad as staring at the thriving food stands knowing she couldn't afford to buy anything. Everywhere she looked, she saw her parents' disappointed faces or her younger siblings starving in the alleys. She saw failure.

But here in the rolling green hills outside of Dracone, she felt alive. There were worn cobblestone roads leading to the many smaller towns and farms that surrounded the city, but Dree quickly left those behind and cut straight through the tall grass, heading up into the hills and letting
the scent of fresh pine and mountain snow wash the soot from her nostrils. Multicolored birds flitted past her, along with little yellow butterflies that rested on the tips of grass like daffodils. She smiled as she looked up at the mountain.

Her second home.

Dree climbed higher and higher, until the city was a mottled spot of brown on the plains—a sickly puddle. The gleaming palace rose from the middle of the city, seemingly untouched by the utter chaos around it. Francis would be there now, probably with a block of ice perched on his head. Dree scowled and kept moving, leaving it all behind.

Soon she was climbing a steep slope. The grass thinned and was replaced with scraggly clumps of yellowed weeds. She was sweating and happy for it—the exertion was taking her mind off of the incident at the forge. Finally, Dree pulled herself up over a rocky ledge that protruded from the mountainside. A cave was nestled there, hidden by thick brambles and by the shape of the mountain, which blocked the view from the city. It was probably the closest remaining dragon cave to the city—the last place in Dracone that the hunters were looking.

A massive figure moved in the darkness, casting an enormous shadow over Dree.

The sight would have been terrifying to most people, but not Dree. She had been to this cave hundreds of times over the years, and the shadow was a welcome sight.

A lopsided grin split her face as Lourdvang emerged from the cave, filling the entire entrance. His glistening
black scales rippled and shimmered as he walked, his entire body lined with powerful muscles. Lourdvang's wings were furled closely to his back, but Dree knew that they extended some twenty feet on either side of him, like the wings of an enormous bat. He was every part a dragon: frightening and deadly. But Lourdvang's face spoke to a different past—one that humans seemed so keen to forget.

His snout held a mouth of jagged teeth, but he didn't bare them. His eyes were a brilliant blue, brighter than the lake, and they tracked Dree's expression with a warm and cunning intelligence. When he saw her, a line creased his forehead in a frown.

“You got in trouble again,” he said, the words rolling off his tongue in a low, rumbling growl that was accompanied as always by a trail of black smoke.

The smoke was a trait of his particular species. Dracone was home to four different species of dragons, separated into autocratic clans by the color of their scales and the inherent abilities that went along with them.

Lourdvang was a Nightwing. Nightwings' hides were as dark as pure ebony, or shaded purple, and their personalities just and fair, though by now they mostly hated the humans who had turned against them. Once they had been close with humans and were the dragons most often used by riders like Dree's father.

There were also emerald dragons—Outliers, the wildest of the four types—which unleashed bubbling, acid-green flames that burned like molten steel, melting and incinerating
anything on contact. Outliers were also the least intelligent dragon clan, and in recent years they constantly attacked humans on the outskirts of Dracone, always hunting for food . . . and for vengeance for their kin that had been killed by dragon hunters. Only the most daring riders had ever partnered with them, and it often ended in tragedy.

The third species were the golden dragons, Sages, a rarity since the rise of dragon hunting. Sages were the polar opposites of the Outliers: they valued peace and harmony, and they never attacked humans or other dragons. Dree wasn't even sure if they could breathe fire. They instead had the power to provide those who looked at them with feelings of contentment and joy, and still they were hunted. Dree was enraged whenever she heard of a Sage being killed. There were few left, and it was said they had fled far from any human settlements.

Finally, there were the red dragons, Flames. Flames were the ancient enemies of humans and other dragons alike, and they were dark crimson, like blood, and much larger than the other dragons. Flames considered themselves above humans and the “lesser” dragons, and history was stained with the blood of those unfortunate enough to stumble into their path. It was said that they considered humans to be locusts sweeping over the lands, which explained their merciless destruction of entire towns and villages whenever they were seen. Thankfully they rarely deigned to leave their realm deep in the mountains, where the vegetation was scarce and the rock was fire-blasted and jagged. Neither
humans nor other dragons dared to venture there. Flames also breathed fire of the most insidious kind—it expanded and enveloped its targets on impact, destroying them instantly. Even Dree was afraid of Flames, and she didn't like admitting that she was afraid of anything.

Dree sighed as Lourdvang lowered himself in front of her like a languid cat.

“I'm always in trouble,” Dree said grimly. She tossed the toy dragonfly on the ground, and it bounced off the rock and lay still. “It's what I do best.”

“You seem different this time,” Lourdvang said.

Dree watched as thick black smoke curled around his nose. It had done that since he was a baby. Dree had found him abandoned in the mountains, and she had raised him in secret, watching in awe as he grew into the magnificent creature sitting next to her. They had been like brother and sister for the past five years, and she was closer to him than anyone, except perhaps her little sister, Abigale. Of course, no one else could ever know about Lourdvang—not even Abi. Both Dree and Lourdvang would be in serious trouble if anyone found out that a dragon and a human were friends. Those days were supposed to be long over. For both of them, the penalty would be exile or death.

Dree plopped herself onto one of Lourdvang's massive feet, leaning up against his leg. She could feel the warmth permeating through him, as it always did. Most humans couldn't even touch a dragon without burning themselves and had to wear fire-resistant armor and gloves—even the
riders. But Dree felt only a pleasant heat emanating from Lourdvang's scales, just like the day she had first tenderly picked him up and held him, when she found this very cave as a refuge from the cold mountain winds.

“I was fired,” she said, wiping the soot from her cheeks.

“Fired?”

“Yeah,” she grumbled. “I kind of . . . hit the Prime Minister with something.”

Lourdvang curled his neck around to look at her, his expression amused.

“And that seemed like a good idea?”

Dree scowled. “It was an accident. Remember I told you my theory about the flying steel . . . well, I kind of tried it out.”

“Did it work?”

Dree nodded, smiling. “Flew around the room! Steel flying. Can you believe it?”

“You have a gift,” Lourdvang said approvingly. “One that even the clan elders say has left this world. I wish I could tell them about you, but—”

“I know.”

Lourdvang looked at Dree for a moment, and then a toothy grin split his lips. “Get on.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? In the daytime?”

“We'll fly east, away from the city. Out over the mountains.” His blue eyes twinkled mischievously. “It's been too long since we flew together, big sister.”

Dree laughed and scrambled onto Lourdvang, digging her hands into the deep grooves where the large, armorlike
scales on his back met the smaller, more flexible ones on his neck. They were iron-hard and felt as hot as burning coal for most people, but Dree clenched them tightly, grinning. Dree loved flying more than anything. In the clouds, it felt like there was no memory of her life below. It was all much too far away.

“Ready?” Lourdvang growled, craning his neck to look at her.

“Ready!”

Lourdvang shot into the sky like an arrow, his gigantic, membranous wings unfurling and catching the northern wind. Dree shrieked with excitement as Lourdvang lifted them higher and higher until the hidden ledge fell away below them. As soon as Lourdvang was on the far side of the mountain, completely blocking them from the city and prying eyes, he shot forward to the east, streamlining his neck and tail and soaring over the snowcapped peaks while Dree laughed behind him.

The wind beat into her face, cold and fresh, and Dree could almost feel the soot and ash leaping off her skin and joining the black smoke that trailed from Lourdvang's mouth as he too laughed and enjoyed the evening flight. They burst above the clouds, which were glowing orange in the setting sun. It was like sailing over a lake of fire.

Dree thought back to the first time she'd flown on Lourdvang, when he was only three years old and about the size of her bedroom. Lourdvang had been shaky and unsteady, and Dree had thought she was about to die at least ten times as he spiraled through the air, but he always
kept flying. By the time they had finally landed, she hadn't ever wanted to get off. For Dree, the sky was home, and Lourdvang was family.

“So you created the fire and the toy flew?” Lourdvang called over the wind.

“Yep,” Dree said, closing her eyes, completely content. “It was awesome.”

They soared along the southern edge of the mountains, where civilization was rapidly spreading across the countryside. Dree saw newly built roads cutting through the lush plains like rivers, dotted with carts and wagons and horses. Towns were popping up where there used to be wild country, while tilled wheat fields were replacing millennia-old forests and meadows. Everywhere, humans were expanding across the wilderness, all under the watchful eye of the celebrated Prime Minister and his cabinet. Most people loved it—the ones who were so quick to forget how things used to be. The ones who suddenly hated dragons like Lourdvang.

“They build quickly,” Lourdvang said, sadness in his voice now.

“And they forget faster,” Dree said, as Lourdvang wheeled back toward the mountains.

Night was falling slowly on the western horizon, creeping out of the earth. It obscured the sky enough that they could fly above the mountains, but it would be dangerous to go any closer to the towns. No one below would be able to see Dree riding the dragon, and no one would believe it even if they did. But they would see Lourdvang, and they might
very well start a hunt for him. His body was a treasure of dragon parts: fangs and scales and organs.

So they stayed far from any human settlements, instead flying over the squat, snowcapped mountains and lush valleys in the range, laughing and talking like they always had. Lourdvang seemed reluctant to end the flight, and Dree certainly didn't want to head back, so they stayed up there for what seemed like hours, Dree taking in the night air and Lourdvang's sail-like wings gliding on the gentle breeze. If Dree didn't have responsibilities back home, she'd never leave the mountains.

It happened before either of them realized. Dree was busy telling Lourdvang a story about her older brother, Roshin, falling off the dock while he was staring at one of the neighbor girls. Lourdvang was chuckling at the image, black smoke spewing out of his mouth with every snort.

Dree was in the middle of describing Roshin's face as he climbed out of the water when she looked down and noticed the mountains had changed. They were jagged and sharp, their sides carved by wind and ice and devoid of any green at all. These were the Teeth, the mountains that served as the entrance to the one place in Dracone where Dree and Lourdvang did not want to be: the realm of the Flames.

“Lourdvang—”

“I see it,” he said sharply, the mirth gone. He wheeled around, beating his wings urgently toward the west.

They were high up, almost in the clouds, and Dree looked around nervously, hoping they had gone unseen.
How could they have been so stupid? They'd never even dared to go near the Teeth before, and now they'd flown right over them.

“Hurry!” she urged Lourdvang.

Dree was just thinking they'd escaped unscathed when she felt an uncomfortable tingle running down her spine. It felt like someone was watching her.

She slowly turned around, knowing what she would find.

Behind them, rising up and closing in fast, were two crimson dragons, each almost double the size of Lourdvang and brimming with muscle. Fire was already flickering ominously from their mouths, red and hot and deadly. Dree knew Lourdvang could never outrun them. No one could outrun the Flames.

They pulled beside Lourdvang and growled something in their dragon language: all grunts and raspy hisses.

When they finally fell silent, Dree leaned in toward Lourdvang's ear.

“What did they say?”

When he spoke, he sounded afraid.

“They're taking us to Arncrag to meet their chieftain.”

“I guess it could be worse,” Dree said.

Lourdvang paused. “They're taking us there to question us before we die.”

Chapter
4

M
arcus hurried into his small apartment, shutting the door behind him. It was a modest place, to say the least. His uncle Jack pretty much lived at work, and he didn't come home until after nine almost every night, so he never cared to upgrade to something bigger. Jack had divorced his wife, Sheila, when he was thirty, and now she lived down in Miami with her new family that Jack didn't like to talk about. As far as Marcus knew, Jack never even considered remarrying after Sheila, and he hadn't brought a date home in the eight years that Marcus had lived with him.

“I fly stag,” he always said whenever Marcus teased him about finding a wife.

Jack wasn't exactly a typical parental figure—he basically
let Marcus do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. It was like living with a friend . . . who just happened to be a fifty-two-year-old member of the CIA. Jack and Marcus also had one major thing in common: Neither of them believed that Marcus's father was a traitor. The accusation had isolated Jack at work. The two of them had worked together in the CIA's research department for two years before George disappeared, and they had become best friends. Jack used to say that George was like a little brother: stubborn and headstrong, but brilliant. He also said they had been working on a project together, but when Marcus asked what it was, he always said it didn't matter, as it was now defunct. Jack's favorite line was “Classified.” Sometimes he said that even when Marcus asked how his day went, and then he would smirk as Marcus flushed. Marcus didn't like secrets.

When George disappeared, most people believed the stories, and they also believed that if George was a traitor, then maybe his best friend had known something too. Jack had been investigated for weeks.

Marcus felt the heat rising again, threatening to erupt.
Idiots, all of them
.

His eyes fell on a framed photograph in the hall: his burly father smiling as he held a two-year-old Marcus on his lap. There was no mother in the picture of course—Marcus's mom had died when he was a baby, and Jack didn't say much about her, except that she was already dead when he and George had met at the agency eleven years earlier. Despite that, George looked happy and kind in the
picture, just like Marcus remembered him. He wasn't a traitor. He couldn't have been.

Marcus put his skateboard in the front closet and started for his room.

The apartment was sparsely decorated with a few paintings, but Jack had never put too much effort into the place. It was neat, but hardly homey. There were no photos of Jack, since most had been with Sheila and he didn't want those anymore. The kitchen was spotless and sterile, since they ate takeout almost every night. Dust sat like a blanket on one of the chairs they never used. Brian always said it looked more like a hotel than a home. Whenever Marcus went to Brian's house, he noticed how different it felt. There were family photos everywhere, the smell of dinner on the stove, siblings fighting, parents laughing. He always thought it was what a house was supposed to be like.

Unlike the rest of the apartment, Marcus's room was a mess. He plopped down in front of his laptop, which was perched on the edge of a small desk completely littered with newspaper clippings, scribbled notes, and printouts.

Everything was untidy. Clothes were strewn on the floor, half-eaten sandwiches sat on the dresser, and empty soda cans rested on the nightstand. A massive board was stuck to the far wall, covered with so many tacked-up clippings that you couldn't even tell there was a board under them anymore. They were all the same sort of odd news stories: UFO sightings in Kansas, an ever-increasing number of violent storms across the country, and Americans
turning up in odd parts of the world with no recollection of how they got there.

But more than anything else, they were stories about the mysterious disappearance of George Brimley during a calamitous hurricane eight years earlier. A highly regarded CIA analyst and one of its most brilliant researchers, just gone.

Marcus felt a familiar pit form in his stomach as he stared at his father's grainy picture on one of the clippings. George had Marcus's jet-black hair, though his was streaked with gray at the temples. His eyes were an icy blue, and yet they were as warm as the deep belly laugh that Marcus remembered from when he was a little kid. The articles about George Brimley all had the same theory: He stole government secrets and ran away to Russia, where he was still living in exile. That was the widely accepted story, anyway.

Marcus knew the stories weren't true, but that didn't stop all the men in black suits from combing over every inch of their house and interviewing him at length when he was just four years old.

“Did your father ever speak any strange languages on the phone?”

“Did your father ever have any visitors?”

“Did he say where he was going that night?”

Marcus would just sit there, his hands in his lap. He had only one question.

“Where is my dad?”

Marcus knew the CIA was hiding something. He always had.

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and withdrew his prized creation: Lightning Bug, or Bug for short. It was a drone, small and circular like the ones people attached to GoPros and sent flying over outdoor concerts. But Marcus had built this one from scratch with supplies and advice from Jack, who knew a lot about robotics. It had taken Marcus years to perfect it, but when it was finished, even Jack was impressed.

“Just like your father,” he had said proudly. Then he turned somber, but when Marcus asked what was wrong, he just said he missed his friend. Marcus suspected that wasn't the entire story.

Still, Marcus was proud of his creation. Bug was extremely sophisticated with a complex sensor array and artificial intelligence. It was also designed for a very specific reason. Bug was built to scan and record weather patterns—specifically thunderstorms.

“Ready to get to work?” he asked tenderly, carrying Bug to the window.

Marcus spent more time with Bug than pretty much anyone other than Brian. It had a small video camera and electrostatic sensors mounted on the front, and its circular hull was a bit of a hack job of screws and uneven, bumpy welding attaching all the scrap metal he'd used from the local dump. Bug wasn't pretty, but it had been doing its job for over three years now.

And if Marcus was right about the dates, then this was its last run.

He opened his bedroom window, the wind and rain
streaming in, and put Bug on the ledge. Hurrying back to his laptop, he opened his remote program, powered Bug on, and sent it flying up into the clouds. Shutting his window, Marcus got to work.

The image was a bit grainy and obstructed by the torrential rain, so Marcus switched the view to a thermal one and saw red flashes streak across the sky. He wanted to find the center of the electrostatic activity—the heart of the storm.

As he sent Bug flying toward the city, where the lightning was flashing over Arlington's downtown core, Marcus opened his notes on his laptop. The notes had a log of every storm that had passed through Arlington County in the past eight years and the dates they fell on. He tracked the numbers and smiled.

Eight years ago the county's largest storm hit on June eighth. Seven years ago it was January seventh. And so it went on. Every year a massive storm fell on the corresponding day of the month. Last year, when it had fallen on August second, Marcus knew without a doubt that it was a countdown . . . a clock. If there was a storm the next year on the first of a month, he had to act. And today was October first.

There was no way the storm dates were a coincidence. Something was happening, and Marcus was eager to find out what they were counting down to.

As Bug continued on its course, recording electrical activity in the atmosphere, Marcus stood up and started pacing around his moss-green bedroom, his eyes locked on the storm raging outside the window. The squat oak trees lining
the parking lot were billowing and twisting like tongues of fire, while leaves and trash swept across the faded concrete. What did the storms mean? What was that thing watching him in the clouds?

And did any of this have to do with his father?

Marcus dropped back into a chair and started typing in his log, feeling the anxiety and curiosity and anger welling up again. The warmth spread quickly through his fingers. Marcus looked down and scowled. He'd done it again. The computer keys were melting, the letters already heavily distorted from previous incidents. He quickly pulled his hands away. Jack hadn't been overly thrilled about buying a new Xbox—a laptop might be too much to ask. Marcus sat there for a moment, staring at his pale, slender hands.

On top of everything else, he was constantly melting things. Marcus had scoured the Web for any possible explanations, but he'd come up empty. He'd wanted to tell Jack, but something held him back. Jack had done so much for Marcus after his dad disappeared, and Marcus didn't want to freak him out. And what if Jack decided that he'd finally had enough and sent Marcus off to an orphanage or something? That was not an option.

Marcus was worried, though—worried that somehow all of it was connected. The storms, the disappearance, the fire that poured out of him. Even the mysterious aircraft.

He looked at his window again, wondering if the answer was in the storm.

His eyes widened.

Marcus slowly stood up and walked over to the window. He rested his trembling hands against the glass, staring out in disbelief.

There, hovering in a triangle and mostly obscured by the fast-moving clouds, were three triangular black objects, stark against the turbulent gray sky like drops of ink. They were completely immobile despite the wind—pointed like an arrow at the window. Marcus knew what they were now: drones. Someone was watching him.

The three drones hovered there, red eyes blazing and fixated on Marcus's apartment. On him. Marcus slowly backed away, his mind reeling. A cloud rolled by, and the drones were gone again. But he knew they wouldn't go far. He turned to his laptop.

It was time.