Talker 25 (19 page)

I realize why they call it the Smurf pen as I get up close. James’s cheeks and nose are tinged blue. He squints my direction but looks confused. I call his name three times before his eyes find focus on mine. I reach between the bars and press my gloved palm to his face.

He flinches, loses his balance for a moment. “It burns . . . burns. How . . . can burn . . . and be . . . so cold?”

I unwrap the Kit Kat, press it into his hand.

“This is what they give you when you’re good,” I say as he struggles to chew and I struggle to keep it together. “Doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?”

He tries to smile, but it must hurt too much.

I bite my lip hard. “Just do what they want, James. Please.” “They . . . will . . . have . . . kill . . . me first,” he stutters through chattering teeth.

“They won’t do that. They’ll recondition you.”

“Maybe . . . that’s . . . better.”

Despite my best efforts, I start crying.

“Don’t.” He takes my hand between his. “What . . . was . . . phrase . . . you . . . told me . . . about . . . the spirit one?”

“
Baekjul boolgool
,” I whisper. “Please, James.”

“It’s time to go, Twenty-Five,” Lester says from behind me.

“I’m . . . sorry.” James releases my hand and turns away.

“James, don’t.”

He ignores me.

Lester grabs me by the arm.

“Please. Just a few more minutes.”

“Don’t make this difficult, Twenty-Five.” He pushes me into the Humvee. “You should forget about him.”

“Stop telling me that.”

“Just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“You need all the help you can get out here, Twenty-Five. Actions, consequences, it all boils down to this, the most helpful piece of advice anybody will give you: don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re brave.” He points a thumb over his shoulder toward the Smurf pens, grimaces. “It won’t end well.”

We drive to the building where the bus dropped off Twenty-One and Pam. At the door, I hear a boy’s muffled cries from inside. “I’m scared, I’m scared. Please, I need your help. The invisible men are after me.”

“Join us or die!” somebody else shouts.

“Burn, burn, burn!!!”

“What’s going on?” I ask as Lester types in the passcode to the door.

“Greasing the scales,” Lester says.

“Huh?”

His hand slips on the buttons. “Quiet.” He glares at me, removes his glove, breathes into his palm, then starts over again.

As Lester ushers me inside, other voices rise and fall, some with anguished pleas, others with growled commands. After hanging our coats on a communal rack and stuffing gloves and hats into marked cubbies (25 for me,
L
.
ROGERS
for him), I follow him down a short hallway that ends in a fluorescent-lit office crowded with a dozen cubicles, most occupied by an All-Black and a dragon talker. The soldiers monitor tablets while the talkers beg and growl at computer screens.

Major Alderson watches intently from the front of the room.
Actions have consequences
and
Weak links break chains
are written on the whiteboard behind him. Beneath that is a list:
3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 20, 21, 22
. Red and green tally marks adjoin each number. Eleven has the most, with seven reds and two greens. Twenty-One’s right behind, with six reds and two greens.

“Cube twelve,” the major says, writing
25
at the bottom of the board.

Lester guides me to the cubicle adjacent to Twenty-One’s, then sits me on a folding chair in front of a computer.

Target: Pravik (Red)

Call frequency: Unknown

Last known whereabouts: Central Canada

Known dragon associations: Calixis, Korm*, Oryson, Ulg
⁺

Known insurgent associations: None

Your name: Sandra Bynum

Your location: Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Your insurgency group: The Nebraska Reds

“A star by the name means that association is deceased,” Lester says. “A cross indicates that the dragon is imprisoned. Never mention a captured dragon to the target. Here’s your script.”

He hands me a couple sheets of paper. I’m supposed to start by introducing myself as an insurgent in need of a temporary hideout. If the dragon agrees to help, I ask for a location image. If the dragon hesitates, go to the rebuttal section, which has a dozen options depending on the dragon’s response.

Several places in the script require me to fill in the blanks with my or the target’s information. Beside each section, handwritten notes instruct me to
Pretend you’re scared!
or
Get angry.
It seems ridiculous the dragons would buy any of this, but by the time Lester comes back with a cup of coffee, Major Alderson’s already added another green tick to Twenty-One’s tally.

Lester taps the transmit button on his tablet. Three choices appear.
1-to-1, Partial, Full
—grayed out. He selects
Partial
. The CENSIR loosens slightly.

“Go time, Talker Twenty-Five,” he says. “Speak everything aloud. Any attempts at silent communication will be punished. Stick to your lines until you become familiar with protocol.”

“Pravik, Pravik, are you there?” I read from the script. No response. I continue,
Add urgency!
“My name is Sandra Bynum, a talker with the Nebraska Reds. Korm told me that you are a friend to the cause. I tried reaching him, but he’s not responding. Please, I need your help. The invisible men are after me.”

The Red never answers. Lester inhibits me, offers pointers on inflection and emphasis. The information on my monitor switches to another dragon, and I’m assigned a new alias. Lester returns me to Partial and I try to contact Kworl, a Red last seen in Idaho.

Kworl snubs me, too. I plead harder, louder. Another three dragons ignore me.

I’m about to ask Lester what I’m doing wrong when I notice the timer on the computer. Previously, he ended our calls and moved to the next target after a minute of silence, but we’ve been waiting on Demodek for over five minutes.

I look over my shoulder. Lester’s sipping his coffee, chatting it up with the A-B a cube over, not paying me any attention. The tablet that controls my CENSIR is tucked beneath
his arm. More importantly, I think he’s forgotten to inhibit me.

Maybe a better opportunity will present itself down the road, maybe James will come around and decide to cooperate, maybe Baby will figure out a way to escape on her own. And maybe Santa Claus is real.

I focus on Syren, the only dragon I can think of who knows me and might still be alive. Syren, this is Melissa—

“Hum—” I hear her begin, then my CENSIR constricts. Blinding pain shoots through me. I crash to the floor. Screams echo everywhere. Mine?

When I come to, it feels like somebody’s taken a hammer to my skull. My head throbs, my vision’s murky. As the world slides back into focus, I see Major Alderson hunched over me with an amused smirk. A boy stands beside him, stiff and expressionless.

“Welcome back, Twenty-Five,” the major says. “That first one’s always a doozy. Trust me, the second one’s worse. Eleven, how many times did you try to warn the dragons?”

Confusion fills the boy’s face. “Warn them? Why I would I do that?”

“You’ll have to forgive him. His memory’s a little spotty.” Major Alderson holds up three bony fingers. He jabs my CENSIR. “This precious piece of metal around your thick skull has several wonderful features about it.” He jabs harder.
My headache accelerates, the fading spots in my vision swell and swarm to the center. “One of my favorites is that when you’re in transmit mode, it autosenses any attempt at silent communication. Doesn’t mean anything necessarily. You could be trying to talk to God, for all it knows. Thing is, God doesn’t listen. Worse for you, if you get a return signal of any sort”—he claps his hands together an inch from my eyes—“talker goes down.”

He jerks me to my feet. “Now, Twenty-Five, what did you say?”

I tell him.

“No harm, no foul,” he says. “Here’s the thing, Twenty-Five. You’re a needle in a frozen haystack out here. So even if you got a message out, even if the dragons decided to put their lives on the line for a human, the chance of them finding you is . . .” He holds out his thumb and forefinger, then presses them together. “But even those odds I can’t afford. Don’t make me recondition you. You won’t like it.”

That much we can agree on. But that’s not my main concern.

“I’ll behave,” I whisper, thinking of Dad and Sam.

He pats me on the head like a dog. “I know you will.”

Over the next hour and a half, twenty more dragon names cross my computer screen. All ignore me.

“Why aren’t they answering?” I ask Lester.

“Because they don’t know you. Or because they know about our little operation,” he says. “It’s the ones that do want to help that we have to worry about.”

Fifteen more dragons go by before I make contact with Najla. “It has been two white moons and you are the fifth human to aggrieve me with your whines. I grow weary of all this begging. What is wrong with you humans?”

Everything she says appears on my screen in a rolling scroll of text a moment after I hear it in my head. The call frequency field updates from
Unknown
to
97.386 iGHz.

I scan the script for what I’m supposed to do next but can’t find anything that applies. I look to Lester with a shrug. He indicates the section near page bottom—
For arrogant or annoyed dragons.
“Please help me. I am weak. Without your help, the invisible men will—”

“You sound fearful, but your mind is closed, human. I do not trust you.”

Further attempts at communication go unanswered.

Ten silent dragons later, I get my first Green. Bryzmon has just one known dragon association, registered dead. Lester hands me a different call script. A single page with two paragraphs of text. One for introduction, one for rebuttal. Only one fill-in-the-blank (my alias) and one handwritten note (
Growl as you speak
).

“Bryzmon, my name is Christina Grace, I am a member
of the Diocletians,” I say, adding a throaty rumble to my words. “Join us or die.”

The Green responds immediately in a guttural voice that sends a shiver through me. “I will enjoy sucking the skin from your roasted body, human.” His call frequency updates to 98.667 iGHz.

The rebuttal section—
When the dragon threatens to devour you
—is simple. “Join us and you can eat well every day without fear of—”

“I am not afraid, but you should be, human. You sound delicious.”

That’s the end of that conversation.

“Be more assertive with the Greens,” Lester says, and we move on.

Over the next couple of hours, a dozen more dragons answer my calls (thanks in large part to hungry Greens) and I learn a thing or two about my telepathy curse. If a dragon’s on the line, you hear a tiny ringing noise, imperceptible unless you concentrate. Though I can initiate the conversation, only a dragon or Lester seems to be able to end it.

Despite my improved contact rate, I have yet to get a mark on the board. The responding Reds don’t trust me, and the Greens want to eat me. Lester, who seems unconcerned with my lack of results, assures me that success will come, then promptly tells me to try harder.

But I can’t. I’m already putting everything I have into it. I growl assertively at Greens, pretend I’m scared for Reds. Except it’s not pretend anymore. Not even close. I’m so worried failure will result in punishment that my urgent pleas have turned real.

I’m near tears, desperate not to disappoint, when I make contact with Eck, a Red from Colorado whose known associations are all dead. Immediately I know he’s different by the sadness in his voice. Without much prompting, he tells me about his friends, how they were killed by the invisible monsters, how he’s alone and scared.

I scan the script, choke up when I find the appropriate response. “I’m afraid, too, Eck. But together we can be less afraid.”

An image of a snowy mountain range pops into my head. “May the wind be at your back,” Eck says in farewell.

The CENSIR tightens. Lester shows me the tablet, which displays a picture identical to the one Eck sent me. “Twenty-Five, you just bagged your first dragon,” he announces. A couple of soldiers clap as Major Alderson puts a red mark next to my number.

“What’s going to happen to him?” I ask.

“We’ll sync the image to the military database. They’ll bring him in or dispose of him.”

My gaze returns to the mountain in which Eck hides, and memories of gunships and that headless dragon flood my
mind. Maybe there’s a girl near Eck’s cave—wrong place, wrong time—who they’ll capture and stick in a hole before sending her to this frozen hell. And it’ll be my fault.

“He’s not dangerous,” I say. “He won’t hurt anybody. You don’t need to kill him.”

Lester scowls. “Maybe he is some decrepit recluse content to live out his days in the evac territories. But he’s just as likely a clan leader or elder trying to play us. Look, Twenty-Five, you don’t have to like what you do, but it’s your job now, so you better do it well. Remember, actions have consequences.”

As the afternoon wears on, I get better at suppressing the guilt, better at deceiving dragons. Whenever I locate one, Lester congratulates me with kind words or a warm smile. I tell myself the momentary satisfaction I experience comes from the knowledge I’m protecting my brother and father.

By the time Major Alderson calls an end to the day, I’ve located three more Reds, all of them seemingly old. I’m in last place, but I gained a spot on Fourteen since sitting down at my cubicle.

Alderson dismisses the boys first. They line up in ascending order against the wall adjacent to my cube.

“The next time you see James—” I start whispering to Three.

“Who?” he says as the line starts to move.

“Twenty-Six.”

“Shh,” Four says.

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Three says.

My CENSIR jolts me. “No fraternization, Twenty-Five,” Lester says. “Move along, boys.”