Talker 25 (15 page)

HarperCollins Publishers

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Abruptly
he releases his grip on my shoulder, reaches out, and presses the buzzer.

My relief lasts until the door opens to bright lights mounted on massive video cameras. Mr. D-man nudges me forward. My heel catches on the threshold, and I tumble.

The lights zoom in at me. Mr. D-man helps me to my feet. The cameramen wait for us to pass, then follow close behind. I keep myself steady, hold my head high.

The door at the end of the hallway cracks ajar. Muffled voices come from the other side. The door starts opening again. I chew through a thick layer of lipstick, glance over my shoulder. Mr. D-man and a wall of cameras block any chance of retreat.

When I turn back around, I’m staring at someone I
thought I’d never see again.

“Konrad?” I say. Then I notice something that almost makes me laugh. “Are you wearing makeup?”

“Whatever.” He checks me out. “Looking good, Mel.”

“What are you doing here?”

“They thought you might want to see a familiar face.”

Mr. D-man escorts me into some sort of film studio. Cameras, news desk, green screen, several massive thinscreens. A middle-aged man in a three-piece suit directs Konrad and me to chairs behind the desk.

I glance at Konrad, at my outfit, at the cameras. “This is ridiculous.”

“I would suggest you cooperate, Ms. Callahan,” Three-Piece says. I’ve never seen him before, but that gravelly, deep-throated voice is familiar. “Stay . . . answer questions to my satisfaction, and be assured that you will see your brother again.”

“I want to see him now.”

He ignores me, orders the cameramen to adjust their angles. Once they’re repositioned to his satisfaction, he turns his attention back to me. “Ms. Callahan, when did you first decide to join the dragon insurgency?” he asks, his voice deepening.

Now I recognize it.

“You’re the narrator. Simon something,” I mumble.

“Ms. Callahan, when I ask a question, answer it. Otherwise, remain silent.” Simon snaps his fingers at me. “Eyes forward.”

He repeats his question.

“I didn’t join the dragon insurgency. There was an attack on my hometown.”

Simon touches his tablet, and video from the Mason-Kline battle plays on the thinscreen behind him. He gestures at the Reds crouched in the cornfield. I don’t see the Silver. “When the dragons attacked—”

“It wasn’t the dragons. The jets attacked them first.”

“Of course they did. Because dragons are peace-loving creatures,” he says as the video shows a plane crashing into the housing district, where it explodes in a mushroom fireball.

“That’s not—”

He raises a warning finger. “So after this unprovoked attack, you went across town to the medical tent, under the guise of wanting to see your brother.”

“It wasn’t a guise, you—”

“When actually you were there on a mission to rescue an insurgent from the group that calls itself Loki’s Grunts.”

“I did not. I didn’t—”

The video shifts to shaking footage taken from the bivouac of me freeing James.

“Was that not you, Ms. Callahan?”

“Yes it was, but . . .” But there’s nothing for me to say. I glare at Simon. “His mother had just been killed, and they were going to throw him in a hole, just like they threw—”

“Your mother died in a dragon attack, too, didn’t she?” Simon asks.

“Leave her out of this,” I say. But they don’t.

Unlike the video they showed on the news three years ago, shot via cell phone, this one’s unedited. The Green glides low, its glow brightening as it emerges from the sparse tree line. It rises up, rears its head, and unleashes a rolling breath of fire that consumes the parking lot of cars stuck on the Wilson Bridge. A few survivors jump from the flaming wreckage into the water far below.

Once again, no sound, but I hear the sirens, the jets, the screams anyway. Fake memories. There were no sirens, no jets. Somehow, without warning, this massive assassin had penetrated the most protected air space in North America.

Soon after, All-Blacks and dragon jets scrambled into DC, but the Green didn’t head toward the nation’s capital. Nope. It went straight for Arlington.

The video shifts to a suburban street, two blocks from where I once lived. Trees in the distance burst into flame. People flee toward homes that aren’t theirs, pound on doors, run some more. Never fast enough. The fire vacuums them
up.

The newscast that night blurred out faces and bodies, as if that might reduce the horror. Maybe it does for some—Konrad looks as if he’s about to throw up. Not me. This unedited version pales in comparison to what’s played in my head more times than I can count.

Before that day, I never realized how much noise penetrated a dragon shelter’s walls. I couldn’t hear the jets or the dragon, just the sirens and the screams. Horrible, horrible screams. Sam, Dad, and I huddled together beneath the dim glow of a lightbulb run by a generator I had once complained was too noisy.

Then I heard the car horn. Not random or chaotic, but rhythmic. Someone trying to draw attention to herself.

Dad promised me it wasn’t Mom. Yes, she was coming home from work, but there were plenty of shelters to stop at on the way. And yes, she would hide in one. Because she loved us. She wouldn’t jeopardize herself. Sam may have believed Dad’s logic, but I didn’t. I doubt Dad believed it either.

The footage spins to Mom’s VW Beetle—bright fucking yellow—racing straight for the charging Green, horn blaring. Two blocks before they meet, Mom veers to the right and disappears down a street.

The dragon shifts course, belching fire at its new target.
The Bug races toward the Potomac, a yellow blur that pops in and out of view. One after another, houses erupt into massive bonfires, the Green only a half block away from Mom before they disappear off camera.

I close my eyes, shut down the tears, knowing what comes next. A crisp black-and-white military video, taken from a drone, that shows dragon and car exiting the suburbs and crossing barren fields toward the river.

“Whoa!” Konrad says, and my eyes snap open.

The video isn’t the one from the drone. It’s faster, lower to the ground, swerving back and forth. Tinged at the edges in a green glow. A cloud of fire at the bottom of the screen reaches toward the yellow car.

It takes me a few seconds to find my breath. There was a camera on the dragon. In all that blackness, it should have been disoriented, should have crashed into a building or into the street itself. Yet it never did. The news nicknamed the dragon Leprechaun. But it wasn’t luck that kept it aloft.

Someone was guiding it, being its eyes.

The Green performs a midair somersault, turning its attention from Mom’s car to the two drones flying toward it. Three missiles blast into its chest. A shaking explosion fills the screen. When it clears, the dragon’s on the ground, the camera pointed at the yellow Bug flipped over in a field cluttered with weeds and the remnants of a fourth missile.

The video cuts to static.

“Your mother died saving you, your family, and countless others from that murderous Green,” Simon says. “But you don’t blame the dragon for her death, do you, Ms. Callahan? You blame the military.”

I wipe the tears from my eyes. The makeup job must be ruined, but Simon looks pleased.

“Well, Ms. Callahan?”

“There’s plenty of blame to go around.”

“But you blame them most,” he says.

“Yes!”

“Your mother was quite the hero,” he says.

They know about Mom. They’re going to out her. There’s nothing I can do to stop them, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me come any more unglued. So I blink away the last tears, and meet him and his cameras with the best go-fuck-yourself face I can muster.

With a tiny smirk, Simon shifts his attention to Konrad. Several minutes of farmboy answers to generic questions. (“She’s cute, but I prefer blondes. That’s a good look for you, Callahan.” “Maybe I should have seen it coming. She tended to be quiet in class. Kept to herself.” “I just thought she was stuck up. Good grades, teacher’s pet, you know the type.”)

Finally, in his best concerned talk-show-host voice,
Simon asks, “Is there anything you’d like to say to Ms. Callahan?”

“Melissa, I know you’re angry. My mother was killed a long time ago by dragons, too. The military’s doing the best it can to keep us safe. Sometimes they make mistakes. Sometimes our loved ones die. Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense.” Konrad adopts a contemplative look that’s almost comical. “It’s enough to drive someone crazy. You confuse friend—”

“You aren’t my friend, Konrad. And I’m not a traitor.”

“No talking, Ms. Callahan,” Simon says. “Start again, Mr. Kline.”

“It’s enough to drive someone crazy. You confuse friend and enemy, right and wrong, good and evil. The dragons have taken so much from us, but if we let them take our humanity, if we give up on each other, they win. Mel, I don’t blame you for all this. I feel sorry for you.”

“You always were an idiot, Konrad.”

He shrugs, stands, and removes a transceiver from his ear. “We done here?”

Simon nods.

“Good luck, Callahan. I really do feel sorry for you.”

After Cosmo Kim returns me to my dragon-queen best, Simon orders Mr. D-man to handcuff my wrists to the chair arms.

“You don’t deserve this,” he whispers as he applies the cuffs. He backs away. “She’s secure.”

“Not yet.” Simon pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and stuffs it in my mouth. “Can’t have you ruining the surprise.”

Sam enters tentatively, shies from the cameras, covers his eyes against their bright lights. I call his name through the gag, but it comes out as a moan.

My brother turns toward me, but Simon and the cameras converge around him and obscure our view of each other.

“Hello, Sam,” Simon says. “Do you know who I am?”

“Simon Montpellier. Are Frank, Kevin, Mac, and L.T. here, too?”

“Unfortunately they’re out filming other sequences. Ellen explained to you what we’re doing?”

“Shooting the pilot for a potential
Kissing Dragons
spin-off.
The Insurgent Epidemic
. That’s an okay name, I guess, but I’d go with
The Other Side
. It’s simpler, right, and more mysterious.”

“It’s a working title, but we’ll take your suggestion under advisement,” Simon says, laughing. “Did Ellen mention why we invited you here?”

Sam gives some answer about discussing the recent attack by insurgents on Mason-Kline. He doesn’t have a clue what
they’re going to spring on him,
who
they’re going to spring on him.

“. . . and she told me I’d get to meet one of those bastards. They nearly killed my father, and they kidnapped my sister,” Sam continues, his tone shifting from angry to anxious. “Ellen says you guys know what’s happened to her. If Mel’s dead—”

“She’s not dead, Sam,” Simon says. He steps back, the cameramen part, and Sam’s looking at me.

“Mel?” He turns to Simon. “What . . . what’s happened to her?”

“They call it Stockholm Syndrome,” Simon says.

“No, not my sister.” Sam squints at me, blinks several times in fast succession. “Not Melissa. She hates dragons. They killed our mother.”

“Maybe she thought that once.” Simon taps a button on his mini tablet.

“Yes, I blame the military.” I didn’t even say that, but somehow it’s my voice echoing through the room. “It wasn’t the dragons. The jets attacked them.”

“But . . .” Sam shakes his head, his face squeezing up like he’s fighting tears. “Mel? Why?”

Simon guides him to the chair next to mine. “Who knows why this happens, son? Grief does strange things to people.”

Sam sits, looks at me every couple of seconds, hurt and
uncertainty in each glance.

Once the cameramen have repositioned themselves, Simon removes the gag. “Don’t listen to a thing they say, Sam. I’m not an insurgent. Don’t believe them. Don’t believe . . .” I follow Sam’s gaze to the thinscreen.

It shows the doctored image of me atop Old Man Blue.

“It’s a lie, Sam. You know that! Sam, look at me. You know I’m not a traitor. Look at me, dammit!”

But he doesn’t. The screen switches to the video of me helping James escape the medical tent. This one’s not doctored in any way.

Sam clenches and unclenches his hands, his jaw quivering.

“Sam, they were going to hurt—”

“No!” He leaps up, his face redder than his hair. “You helped him? How could you?”

“James isn’t a bad person, Sam, he’s not—”

“James? James! What about Dad? What about Dad?” He takes a step toward me, then smashes his fists against the desk.

“I’m not a traitor, Sam,” I whisper, but any hope that he might believe me is destroyed when the next clip appears.

Taken at a distance, zooming in, it shows me hanging from the ladder of a red dragon, James holding me. Mason-Kline gets pulverized behind us.

“How could you, Melissa? How could you? After what
they did to Mom?”

“Oh, Sam. It’s—”

“No, Mel. You don’t talk to me.” He raises his fist, gives me one last glare, and storms from the room.

“Wait! What about Dad? Sam?”

The slam of the door is the only answer I get.

“I’m done,” I say. “Take me back to my hole.”

Simon shakes his head. “Patience, Ms. Callahan. Just one more, and you’ll be finished.”

Finished? All that’s left in this puppet show is Dad. He wouldn’t believe their lies. He’d trust me, believe me . . . love me.

No matter what?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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The
person they bring in isn’t my father.

It’s James.

Two agents drag him in, shackles around his hands and feet, one of those metal circlets on his head. He’s skinnier than I remember. Sunken cheeks and multiple bruises hide behind a layer of makeup. They’ve dressed him in a fancy white suit, complete with a silver dragon pin on the lapel.