Talker 25 (22 page)

Lorena scores. “What’s God have to say about that, Bible Girl?”

Pam grins, knocks in the puck a second later. “Through God we shall do valiantly.”

They drop the puck again. Lorena glances my way right as Pam strikes. The table dings. Game over. Pam bobs her head from side to side. “And it is he who will tread down our adversaries.”

Lorena fake pouts. “Adversary? Don’t take that shit out on me. God obviously loves me.”

Pam waggles a finger at her. “Language, Lorena. No swearing for a week. We agreed.”

“Fine, fine. How ’bout double or nothing?”

“Okay, but if I win, no consultations for a month.”

“My consultations got you your Bibles.”

“Your soul is worth more to me than any book, even God’s.”

Lorena sighs, hands the puck pusher to Twenty-Two.
“Maybe next time.”

“I’m going to hold you to that. No cursing.”

“What did she have to give up on the off chance you didn’t lose?” I ask Lorena as she cedes the table to Twenty-Two.

Lorena shrugs. “Telling people not to swear.”

“Which is like her favorite thing to do,” I say.

She smiles sadly. “Yep.”

“You okay?”

“Terrific.” She points across the way to the basketball court. “You any good?”

“Horrible.”

“Me too.”

Evelyn emerges from the throng of players, spotting up for a three. A soldier passes her the ball. Nothing but net. High-fives all around.

“I would not have pegged her for a basketball player.”

“More the cheerleader type, right?” Lorena grins. She takes my hand, tugs me toward the court. I resist. “Come on, Melissa, it’ll be fun.”

I pull free. “I’d rather watch Twenty-One kill dragons.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“You know what a foul is?”

I nod. “I play soccer. . . . Played.”

“You ever play against anybody who wasn’t very good?”

“Yeah. Made me thankful for shin guards.” I laugh. “You’re wicked.”

“Hey, I don’t know about you, but I just want to learn. Good thing about basketball, they don’t hand out red cards.”

“I think I like being your sidekick.”

Lorena indicates a skinny guy dribbling a ball on the side of the court. “That’s Billy, another Big Brother.” She winks. “He knows how we like to play.”

We recruit Sixteen and Twenty to fill out the other two spots for our team.

Except for Billy, none of us has any clue what we’re doing. We get clobbered.

But the next morning, there is no “wakey, wakey.” In fact, Evelyn’s the last one out of bed.

In the cafeteria, I manage to eat breakfast without peeking once toward the boys’ table. At some point, the door opens. I ignore the impulse to look up. In the call center, I don’t check the board for his number. I keep my head down and duck into my cubicle. I tally five dragons that day, a mediocre showing, but my personal record. Lester gives me a Baby Ruth. I give it to Twenty-One. She stuffs it beneath her pillow.

We’re discussing graffiti decorations for the cliffside we erected behind the Kremlin when a beep sounds.

“How many died, how many died today?” Twenty-One asks.

“Too many.” I glance toward the screen, expecting video of Blues stampeding through Rio or a Green assaulting Mecca, but today’s message looks current. A journalist clad in body armor describes how a group of Greens opened fire on a Tiny Tots child-care center.

“Please be warned, the footage you are about to see is intensely disturbing,” she says.

Watching dragons incinerate people is terrible, but we’ve all seen it before, sometimes with a much larger victim pool. No, what makes this homemade video particularly chilling are the white-cloaked dragon riders. With shocking ruthlessness, they machine gun any adult or child who escapes the wrath of their mounts.

Most of us weep. Twenty-One laughs until she sees me, then she starts to cry, too. Claire shouts curses as she beats on the screen. I expect Lorena to pull her back, but she’s nowhere to be seen. She must be in the bathroom.

The video ends in a blaze of crackling fire.

“A group of insurgents who call themselves the Diocletians claim responsibility for the attack. Casualties number over one hundred, most of them children. Dozens remain unaccounted for,” the reporter says. “The leader of the group, a former All-Black by the name of Oren White,
released a statement.”

A video pops up. It’s that guy with the scar on his face, the guy from the Shadow Mountain lookout picture. “The government recently destroyed the Blue sanctuaries, knowingly murdering hundreds of dragon children. Until they admit to this genocide and cease all hostilities, your children will continue to die.”

After a brief discussion between two wise-looking veterinarians, who determine dragon breeding is impossible, the screen returns to episode thirty-two, “Kissing Big Blue.”

Normally, the girls would go quiet, but tonight they’re abuzz with horror over the idea of dragons breeding. I’m trying to get Twenty-One to stop crying when I hear Evelyn mention something about a Silver she saw in the ER.

“They told me it was an albino, but I don’t buy that. For one thing, it wouldn’t talk to me. I don’t think it could,” she says as I approach. She notices me, fake smiles. “Can I help you, Twenty-Five?”

“You saw the Silver?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Is she alive?”

She waves at the screen, all her phony perkiness gone. “How can you be a glowheart after you saw what they did?”

“That Silver is a child, just like those children.”

Evelyn stares at me like I’ve grown another head, then
turns away. I grab her wrist. “What’s going to happen to her? Please, Evelyn.”

Her smile’s back. “They’re going to chop its head off. Usually with a chain saw. But I bet the soldiers will want to test their ax out.”

I flinch. “When?”

She wrenches free. “Tomorrow, after they’re done with their experiments. Don’t touch me again.”

After checking on Twenty-One, who’s curled up in the corner with the dragon brooch, I head for the shower. Each night, except when we’re under punishment, we get one hour of hot water to share. According to the schedule on the bathroom door, it’s not my turn until tomorrow, but some of the girls skip their days.

When I enter the bathroom, Lorena’s lounging against the wall beneath the screen, knees tucked to her chest, smoking a cigarette. A close-to-empty bottle of whiskey sits beside her. She’s been crying. If it were another girl, this wouldn’t be unusual, but the worst I’ve seen from Lorena is a disapproving frown or a sad shake of her head.

I sit beside her, grab the bottle, and take a long drink. “You all right?”

She inhales, looking toward the ceiling. “You know, when I first discovered I could communicate with dragons, I thought I was losing it. I didn’t tell anybody because
you’re not supposed to have imaginary friends when you’re thirteen.

“I later learned that dragons don’t just talk to you out of the blue.” She blows out a stream of smoke. “It was my dad who told them about me. He was a frontline A-B, you know? I thought he hated dragons.”

She snorts. “I didn’t find out the truth until Mom died. The letter the army sent us called her a hero. For dying? How fucking stupid is that? Dad burned that letter, burned the flag they gave him after they buried her. Then he burned down our house.”

I wrap my arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Lorena shakes her head. “I’ve seen what he’s done, but I always had some stupid hope that he might be able to come back to . . . I don’t know. Normal, I guess.” She glances up, and more tears come. “How could he do that? How could he murder all those children, Melissa?”

I gape. “Him?”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “How could he do that?”

Now it makes sense. Horrible sense. Oren White, the leader of the Diocletians, is Lorena’s father.

I fetch another bottle of whiskey from beneath her mattress. We drink until memories fade and blur and disappear. Then we drink some more.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“Five
, Seven, Fifteen, Twenty-Five,” Lester says from the front of the bus. “Twenty-Five!”

I think my CENSIR jolts me, but it’s hard to tell because my head’s been aching something fierce since I staggered from bed this morning.

I look out the window. The battle room? “Why am I being transferred?”

“Because,” Lester says. Typical.

I’m not sure what to expect as I follow the others off the bus. Only Lorena, Claire, and a few from Evelyn’s crew have worked the battle room before. Lorena never talks about it. Evelyn’s girls don’t interact with me anyway, but they always seem pleased with their efforts.

Lester leads us into a dark room of thinscreens and
electronic equipment. We pass a digital map with seven blinking green dots, each located in one of three lakes. Adjacent to a satellite image of an unfamiliar city, Major Alderson and several soldiers operate a massive touchboard. One side’s dominated by indicators, radars, and maps; the other’s split into eight sections, each showing the CENSIR controls of the talkers in here.

Four boy talkers sit in a row of lounge chairs. They wear wraparound sunglasses. I do a quick search of faces. No James.

Lester hands me over to Major Alderson, then leads the other girls to a row of chairs on the opposite side of the room, where they’re given sunglasses.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“It’s easier to explain if you watch first,” the major says.

Soon after, a soldier announces, “We are green for mission go.”

“Activate talker VR-HUDs,” Major Alderson says.

The thinscreen that comprises the wall in front of us turns on. Seven columns of radar images and data appear—coordinates, altitude, speed. It reminds me of something I’ve seen in one of Sam’s video games, where he plays a jet pilot in search of dragons to destroy.

“Enable communication,” the major says.

At the touchboard, soldiers operate the CENSIR controls
of the seven seated talkers. An eighth section, sandwiched in the middle, displays my CENSIR panel. I focus on the adjacent screen as Claire’s overseer touches the transmit button and selects the one-to-one option. A list of names appears with Rs or Gs beside them. He selects Korenth (G).

Beneath Claire’s readout, the dragon’s info appears.

Dragon: Korenth (Green)

Call frequency: 93.461 iGHz

Location: Latitude 50.847
^o
; Longitude 100.371
^o
; Altitude 5,397’

Fire status: Inactive

I look back to the map and radar, confused. The green dots are positioned in a jagged semicircle about fifty miles outside of the city.

Seven of them.

One for each talker.

I’m barely able to stifle my gasp.

“Talkers, please initiate communication,” Major Alderson says.

They growl out their commands, which are relayed to their CENSIR readouts as text.

Seven:
Ugarth, we fly today. Behave, and the glory of flame will be yours. Do not, and you will die.

Seventeen:
Fly straight and fast, Morth. Obey, and you will eat well tonight
.
Remember what happened to Valryn.

The others also balance their threats with promises of rewards for good behavior. Except for Claire:
You better listen, Korenth, or your head will find its way off your neck
.

The dragon responses appear in dialogue boxes beneath their names on the touchboard.

If I ever break these bonds, the glory of my flame will find you, human.

I tire of your words and this smell. Perhaps Valryn had the right of it.

Korenth’s the only Green who doesn’t respond.

“Activate eyes,” the major says.

Seven videos pop up on the front screen. Each shows the inside of some sort of metal compartment occupied by a dragon. I can see wings pressing up against walls, animal carcasses littering floors.

At the major’s command, the compartments split open. Seven Greens launch skyward. Soldiers call out instructions—shifts in direction, altitude, speed—to the talkers, who relay them to their dragons. Korenth glances over his shoulder. It takes me a few seconds to spot the camouflaged compartment floating in the lake from which he emerged.

“Discard the packages,” the major says.

The compartment explodes down the middle and sinks into the lake.

Following Claire’s barked orders, Korenth ascends above
the clouds, where he’s joined by the other six Greens. They line up side by side, no more than a few hundred feet separating them. As they fly, I catch glimpses of cameras on the other dragons, affixed to abnormally bulky collars that Alderson informs me are modified to control their fire and reinforce compliance.

He indicates my CENSIR. “Like this, but with a lot more kick.”

And they need lots of kicks. The Greens lurch and bolt at each other constantly. Talkers order them back into formation, but if they don’t fall in line (they usually don’t), they get an electric shock. The stunned dragon, lightning rippling through its body, plummets from the sky for a couple of seconds before the paralysis wears off. With curses and threats, the dragon gets back in line and behaves. At least for a minute or so.

I’m praying one too many shocks will permanently immobilize them when, in near unison, their gazes shift groundward. Through thinning clouds I see scattered homes and a couple of lonely roads.

I smell them. It is time to eat
appears on Seventeen’s screen.

Seventeen’s response:
Not now, Morth. Stay on target, and you will eat better soon. Smell what lies ahead
.

The other talkers give similar orders.

With the promise of the feast to come, and perhaps the
scent of it in their nostrils, the dragons raise their heads and focus forward. According to the map, they’ll reach the city in five minutes.

Seven ravenous Greens. It’ll be a massacre.

“Enemy fighters incoming, Major,” a soldier announces.