The escalators funnel into a colossal concourse that reminds me of the one at FedEx Underground, where Dad treated Sam and me to soccer matches while Mom was on deployment. But there are no vendor stations or causeways onto a field here. It’s all bland gray wall, demarcated in giant block letters with the inscription A51-TAACOM.
Colin looks both ways. “This is it. There will only be one entrance. Heavily guarded.” He scans again, extra slow, even though there’s not a ghost of a soul in sight. “Left or right?”
“I got right. You go left.”
He grabs me before I’ve gone a step. “We’re not splitting up.”
“We’re easier targets together.”
“And you won’t have anybody to guard your ass. I know this is hard, but we can’t be rash, Melissa.”
“Fine, but you’ve got to pick up the pace.”
We scuttle across the concourse to the wall, stick close to its edge. Colin speeds up from snail to turtle. He scans ahead. I scan behind. Another escalator well appears on the opposite side. Then another.
I’m guessing we’re about a quarter of the way around when Colin gives me the halt command, followed by a thumbs-down. He makes a circle around his eye with his fingers, then slinks forward at a low crouch.
I strain to listen, but beyond the whisper of my quick breaths, I don’t hear anything but that vast silence.
He stops, holds up four fingers, then waves at me urgently. Retreat.
Grackel sends me an image as I’m backing up. Four white cloaks flank a set of wide double doors, the kind you see in a movie theater or high school hallway. Except these are metal and controlled by a bioscanner.
Colin scuttles toward me, a finger pressed to his lips. He takes me by the shoulders, looks at me, smiles. Somehow happy and sad all at once.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper.
“I’m always with you,” he mouths, kisses my forehead, and sprints back toward the doors.
Colin is going to draw them away from you, Grackel says as I start after him.
Tell him to go to hell.
But with my leg injured, I can’t keep up. Just before he disappears around the curve, he looks back. His eyes wide and pleading, he motions for me to halt. And then he’s gone.
Be still and listen, Grackel says with a telepathic growl. You will hide in the black stairs. He is going to kill the four warriors in white. He believes this will bring reinforcements. He will lead them away. You will stay hidden until all is clear.
We’re not splitting up. We agreed.
Kill emotion, human. You are a warrior, Melissa Callahan. Warriors only bleed when the war is over. Go!
I send her my own telepathic growl as I scamper across the concourse to the escalators and take cover. I peek out, but can’t see anything from my position.
Show me what he sees, Grackel.
No, human, you must concentrate on your task. Hold still. Be calm.
Dammit, Grackel, at least tell him to wait so I can give him—
Shots explode through the emptiness. Four seconds, maybe five, and it’s over.
“Rule one of the hunt: never wake a sleeping dragon!” Colin bellows. He starts shooting again, bombarding the door and wall, by the sound of it. “I’m awake!”
He fires a few more rounds before fleeing. I hear his boots drumming the concrete. For one long held breath, he’s alone. Then the avalanche comes, a fusillade of footfalls and gunfire in frenzied pursuit.
The pandemonium fades, the gunfire becomes more sporadic. I dread the inevitable silence that minutes ago was an ally but now will mean . . .
I push Colin from my thoughts and break cover. I dash across the concourse, staying light on the balls of my feet, machine gun gripped in both hands. I skirt the wall at a quick jog, freeze as I come around the bend and see Elise and two white cloaks treating the four guards laid out on the ground.
The white cloaks don’t notice me. Elise does. She shakes her head, nods for me to retreat in the direction I came from. I shoot the two white cloaks in the back of their heads. She opens her mouth, I assume to scream. I drill her between the eyes.
The steel doors, now riddled with dents, are closed. Though Colin shot up about every inch of wall in the area, he left the bioscanner intact.
I check the bodies. One of the white cloaks Colin shot up still pulses blood from a bullet wound in his abdomen. With lots of grunting and cursing, I manage to prop him against the wall. I yank his arm up to the scanner and press his palm to it.
The door clicks. I open it. A tangle of voices swarms me.
“A-B squadron coming up E Street. I’m flanking around and coming in high.”
“Take that, you scale sucking sons o’ bitches!”
“Apaches spotted in the flak cloud. Disengage and regroup at beta mark.”
“Don’t wanna get burned, shouldn’t have tickled my dragon!”
“Who’s kissing who now?”
“Pentagon defense perimeter has been cleared. Let’s move in for an attack run.”
I steel myself and enter.
47
Allie’s hive is a domed arena ringed from floor to ceiling with scaffolded cubicles, modular ramps, reinforced catwalks, and enormous thinscreens.
Hundreds and hundreds of thinscreens. From the causeway where I lurk, I spot a few that are blacked out. The rest bring back horrid memories of Georgetown in bright, vivid color. Aerial battles here, blazing skyscrapers there, death everywhere. . . .
On a cluster of screens to my left, through a thick haze of black smoke, I see the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Black House, the Pentagon . . . all aflame. Farther down, I catch glimpses of the New Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building. . . .
Manhattan burns brighter than D.C., but I think that’s only because the buildings are taller.
White cloaks oversee the devastation. They wear headsets and sit in high-tech armchairs that have joysticks built in on either side.
I watch one operator involved in a dogfight with a trio of DJs over the Potomac River for about three seconds before I realize what’s happening.
In the battle room, talkers told the dragons what to do via verbal commands. Here, Oren’s figured out a way to communicate with them via joysticks.
More than communicate.
Control.
He’s turned mass destruction into a veritable video game.
And the CPU, the queen bee, is Allie.
She’s in the middle of the arena, strapped to a metal chair, a skullcap fixed to her head. Tubes protrude from its circumference and wrap around a center column, spiraling toward the ceiling. At the apex, they spread out and follow support beams to hubs that look like giant internet routers. Dozens of smaller tubes extend from the opposite sides and funnel into the thinscreens.
Even at this distance, a hundred feet, maybe, I can see that her jaw’s locked open in rictus. Her eyes are rolled back in her head. On the rare occasion a screen blacks out—when a dragon dies—I hear her hoarse voice over the din, shouting the dead dragon’s name for a few seconds before returning to her catatonic state.
White cloaks patrol the catwalks. White cloaks patrol the arena floor. I cannot rescue her.
Two choices.
Grackel?
What is it, human?
Did you ever hear my mother sing?
Once or twice. The old Red chuckles. Her voice hurt my ears.
Do you remember the words?
Of course. They were incredibly silly.
Could you sing it to Allie?
I expect her to go silent, but she must decide to include me, too. At first it hurts, and not just because her guttural voice screeches the lines, but soon . . . the emotions . . . I hear them in every word . . . feel them . . . they are not Grackel. They are Mom. And they are far more beautiful than any rainbow.
I swap my machine gun for the Beretta.
I steady my breath.
I raise the gun.
I listen to the song a couple more notes.
I blink away the tears.
I send Allie to the stars.
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About the Author
JOSHUA McCUNE was born on a navy base in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He grew up in London and Washington, D.C., went to college in Texas, and got married in New Zealand. He worked as a telemarketer, an SAT instructor, and a robotics engineer before becoming an author. He currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his family, writing stories of people and places just beyond the reach of planes, trains, and automobiles (but not dragons).
www.kissing-dragons.com
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Books by Joshua McCune
TALKER 25
Talker 25 #2: Invisible Monsters
Credits
COVER ART © 2015 BY SAMMY YUEN
COVER DESIGN BY SAMMY YUEN AND PAUL ZAKRIS
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
TALKER 25 #2: INVISIBLE MONSTERS. Copyright © 2015 by Joshua McCune. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN 978-0-06-212194-3 (hardback)
EPub Edition © May 2015 ISBN 9780062121967
15 16 17 18 19 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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The Other Side Page 29
