From the Ashes (Black Harbour Dragons)

by Jadyn Chase

  With a heavy heart, I could barely look her in the eyes.

  “Addison!” Shaw slammed his hand on the desk.

  Natalie repeated her question, “Do we have an understanding, Addison?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. I couldn’t say or do anything else but agree. I didn’t want to be locked away or anything. I needed to finish my work, but the most important thing for me to do was get back to Maverick. We had work to do.

  7

  Maverick

  The sound of heavy duty power tools kept me awake. Shaw and his men were at work in my old room. They moved me into the uh, suite, where the young Black Sapphire died. I wondered what they did with her body. I wondered what Preston Cane would do to this place if he knew what was going on. Would he still cherish his Anthro pets and their species so much if he saw how they were treating us in this lab? I bet he’d listen to me then.

  The never-ending clanging of their machines sent a nerving chill down my spine. I wished I could stop it. I wished I could scale and take off into the night sky. This was becoming unbearable. The minute I began to feel normal, Addison was right there with a dose to either sedate me or pump me full of that other crap. I had to get out of here or at the very least figure out a way to get word to Bart and the others. They needed to know about this serum.

  “Hey, Princess,” Shaw called from the outside of the barred doorway, “I got something pretty cookin’ up next door for you.”

  “Whatever Wingless,” I scoffed, “If I wasn’t drugged up, there isn’t a room in this damn Station that could hold me.”

  “Right and next thing you know you’ll say if you were an Anthro, you could take me one on one,” he laughed.

  “No,” I shook my head, “That’s definitely what you want, but that’s not what I want. What I want is to be left alone. What I want is to find a nice piece of land to share with someone I care about. Make nice little Scaler babies and live happily ever after. You? You want a fight because you want scales. You want to breathe fire and slice through the air, over the clouds, and into the sun.”

  “Not in your wildest dreams-” he began to protest.

  I grinned, “Yes in your wildest dreams, you want to be me. You want to sprout wings and breathe fire. You want to turn shit to ash which is why you’re so hellbent on keeping me here. You want to see if she’ll come up with a permanent solution. If she comes up with that, then you’d want her to be able to develop some antidote, some reversal of sorts. Yeah, I know your type. You were someone’s pet and got turned out. You let one of those Black Sapphire chicks get their talons in you, and now you want to be one of us.”

  “That’s it!” he shouted. He released the bars and charged into the room.

  I didn’t move from my spot on the floor. I’d been leaning against the bed since my last dose. It was the most comfortable spot to be in until Shaw came into the room. He went to kick me but I caught his foot. More and more, the doses of the serum were affecting me less and less. I refused to tell anyone that, especially Addison. I’d already gotten her in enough trouble. Seeing her hauled away in handcuffs wasn’t an image I’d like to see again.

  Pushing Shaw away, he stumbled a bit before regaining his footing. He charged back at me, but this time I darted out of the way before he could knee me in the chest. A swift tuck and roll across the floor left him stunned. His anger continued to grow while I tried my best to keep the fact my strength was returning to myself. Roaring like an Onyx Skull, he ran after me with his hands in the air trying to get a hold of me. Again, I outmaneuvered the big guy finally getting to my feet. I bolted toward the door and pushed the button releasing the bars and locking him inside.

  I could barely catch my breath as I snickered from outside the barred room, “That was great, Shaw. You think you can hand me your keys so I can get out of the rest of this place?”

  There was a look in his eyes as he approached the doorway, one I didn’t like. With a sinister tone he told me, “Oh Princess, you’re not going anywhere but in that new cell.”

  “You’re talking mighty big for someone behind bars,” I laughed, “How exactly do you propose to put me over there, huh?”

  “Like this,” a voice sounded from behind me. The jolt of electricity charged through me like a hot knife stabbing into my lower back. I couldn’t help but scream as the excruciating pain coursed through my body. I could see my burgundy and red scales threatening to reveal themselves, but scaling in the lab would be dangerous. The harder I fought to stop it, the stronger the current felt until it brought me to my knees.

  I collapsed onto the floor, but I didn’t pass out. My body refused to do anything but twitch as the electricity traveled through me. I watched small feet walk toward the barred doorway and press the button to release a smiling Shaw from my chambers.

  “Get him up,” the voice stammered, “And stop playing with my specimen. I need him in prime physical condition.”

  It was Eric.

  “Addi-” I tried calling out to her, but she wasn’t in the lab. I couldn’t smell her. I couldn’t feel her. I needed her to stop whatever this sadistic bastard was about to do to me.

  “Oh no,” he squatted down and turned his head sideways to talk to me, “It’s not her shift. She has no control over what I do to you for the advancement of our program here. And because it’s blatantly obvious she can’t control her emotions around you or about her precious research, we’re just going to eliminate you from her having to make the tough decisions. Take him to his new home. I’ll be sure to let Addison know that he didn’t survive his second escape attempt.”

  There wasn’t anything I could do as Shaw and another guy came into the room to haul me out of there. Every muscle in my body tensed and wouldn’t let go. I tried desperately to keep my eyes open so I could see where we were going, but it all looked like grey cement walls. There weren’t any noticeable markings or notations to tell me whether we were going left or right, up or down. Panic began to settle over me, and I couldn’t remember the last time I actually felt panicked.

  By the time we came to a stop, the bright white walls of the lab were something I begged to see again. The place we were in was obviously not as finished of a space as my last holding cell. They tossed me onto the ground where I landed in a puddle of murky water.

  “You can hose down the place from that chain in the corner,” Eric called down to me.

  I’d been thrown into a pit of sorts. The walls were cement like the rest of the building and stood about ten feet tall. Two piles of straw and grass rested in the corner while a raw chunk of meat sat in another corner with flies buzzing around it.

  “You plan to get what kind of results from keeping me like a rabid beast?”

  “You are a rabid beast,” he growled. “Now eat the putrid fucking meat so we can get started on these trials.”

  “Trials? So what we were doing in the other place wasn’t a trial?”

  “No, not at all. That was Addison being a veterinarian. I’m not that. I’m a biochemical weapons engineer, and you are going to be the first Scaler in history to die from my Shave gas.”

  “Do you realize how insane you sound? You don’t have enough of the serum to do that.”

  “Unlike Addison, I am not stupid enough to believe there’s a one for all treatment. It would be a hell of a lot more convenient, but right now I’m only interested in perfecting the process. We can streamline it later. Sleep tight, Princess,” he sneered and pressed the remote on a button.

  Before I could even tell what was happening, nozzles protruded from the walls around me. A teal-colored gas began to spew out of them, and moments later a plastic lid was placed over the opening. Eric watched me from up above as this poisonous gas consumed me. I’d much rather be electrocuted. My chest tightened as my lungs fought for air. I couldn’t stop coughing as the gas hadn’t anywhere else to go but inside of me. Every breath I took was harder than the last. My eyes watered. It felt like my throat closed.

  It all faded to bla
ck.

  The gasp of air I took sounded like I’d been underwater for hours when I woke up. The plastic lid had been removed. The air was breathable again. The pile of straw was soaked with what I hoped was my sweat. I hadn’t any idea how long I’d been out but a part of me wondered how potent that gas was. Flexing the muscles in my forearm, a single scale flashed but then disappeared into my skin. They were winning and I had to get out of here. If he figured out a way to release this gas in Black Harbor … I didn’t want to think about the results.

  I took several deep breaths. While the air was far damper than it was in the lab, I was a lot closer to the outside world. I needed to see where I was being held. The nozzles were still protruding from the wall, so I decided to use them. I anchored one foot a few inches above the ground while pitching the other one on the wall next to it. Once I was nozzle height, I used it as a foothold to let me peek out the top of the pit. I had to pull myself up the last three feet only to see another lab, but not as bright as the other. The one main difference was the beam of light shining through a square window. While it did have vertical bars across it, there wasn’t a pane of glass or anything to block the fresh scent of salt water from trickling inside.

  My muscles gave out not too long after that. My strength wasn’t anywhere it needed to be to get out of here. The ten-foot tall pit would require me to pull my way out of it and after a tiny dose of that gas, I was scared that I would never get the opportunity. Maybe Eric was right. Maybe I was going to be the first Scaler to die from his shave gas.

  8

  Addison

  “Where the hell is Maverick?!” I yelled to Shaw and Natalie. “How do you expect me to finish my work when you move my specimens without my knowledge and without my permission?!”

  Natalie eyed Shaw who shrugged his shoulders. Eric walked into the lab with a sinister grin across his face.

  “What are you doing here? Where did you put him?” I questioned.

  “Your specimen tried to escape again, and he had to be put down,” he said nonchalantly.

  “Bullshit!” I shouted.

  “Addison, calm down,” Natalie told me.

  “No! I won’t calm down! My work, work that you guys insist on me doing, was hitched to that last specimen and-”

  “Oh we know what was hitched to that last specimen,” Eric chuckled, “But no worries, Addy. Shaw and I disposed of your distraction and will have another live specimen for you shortly. Isn’t that right, Shaw?”

  Shaw scowled at Eric, “I’ll get my men on it.”

  “Good, and in the meantime,” Eric turned to me, “Why don’t you just sit down and read a book or something? Try to figure out why the intermingling of species is barbaric and a detriment to the ongoing battle Anthros have with restoring their rightful place in this world.”

  I’d heard enough. Without any warning, or forethought, I thrust the butt of my palm into his nose and followed it by a right hook. Shaw jumped around the island to pull me away from hitting him again. “You sniveling little piece of shit! What did you do to him?! Where’s his body!? In the name of science, why would you dispose of a specimen’s body without a detailed and recorded autopsy? He’s lying, Natalie. I know he is. He swiped Maverick because his ego couldn’t handle that I’d be nicer to the Scaler than to him.”

  “I oughta strap you down to that table and have you autopsied!” Eric shouted as he held a towel to his face. The blood began to trickle through. A smile unintentionally spread across my face as he growled, “I’ll kill you!”

  The room fell silent once those words slipped from his mouth.

  Shaw let me go and grabbed Eric by the shoulder to lead him out of the lab, “Let’s go get you cleaned up. We should remember that we’re all on the same team here and that no one is going to kill anyone. We’re all working towards the same goal.”

  I shook my head because I knew that wasn’t true. They were obscuring my research and Shaw had just chosen his side. I had to find Maverick. Turning to Natalie, I wanted to appeal to her, “Where would they take him?”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed.

  “You know he wasn’t lying when he said he’d kill me? I know he’s got Maverick stashed in here somewhere. Come on, tell me so I can get him out of here. You know that whatever those two are planning will devastate all of us, not just the Scalers, all of us. How can you trust anyone like Eric? He’s programmed to engineer death. He doesn’t want to win the battle, he wants to exterminate a species! Please help me, Natalie.”

  “I don’t get what you guys do in here. I do know that we’re in a battle to regain some sort of power against these things that outrank us in just about any way possible, but I can see and understand how you feel about the work you are doing. I understand that Eric is beginning to show the signs of someone who’s unstable and unpredictable. So what I will tell you is that if Shaw and Eric have taken your subject to another part of the Station, it would be more heavily guarded than other areas since he has a tendency to escape. That’s all I have to say about that.”

  Okay, that was something I could use. I wasn’t sure of when to start searching but I knew it had to be soon.

  It felt like she was reading my mind, as she walked out of the lab, she turned to me, “And if you notice, Shaw and his guys typically go on their nightly tour of Black Harbor from seven to two. There’s usually one or two left behind to keep us safe, but odds are…”

  Her voice trailed off as she walked away. My pulse raced as I practically ran to my room. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I’ve never rescued anyone before. Rope? Maybe I would need rope. Wait! A knife too, perhaps? How would I distract the guards on duty?

  My reflection stared back at me as if to knock me upside the head. You know how to distract the guards on duty. I just had to find him.

  When seven arrived, I waited a few minutes before I ventured out of my room and into the halls of the Station. It was quiet. There were others here on staff, but everyone was here for a reason. We all had a job that somehow contributed to the goal of winning the war. It wasn’t my goal, but I couldn’t deny the progress of my work since I came here. Maverick, well I didn’t know how he fit into everything, but I didn’t want to find out his place through Eric. No one deserved whatever it was my colleague had in mind.

  I swore that my heart thumped so loudly through my chest I could hear it echo down the quiet halls. I never realized how quiet they were until I was sneaking around in them. Just like Natalie said, of all the doors I’d walked by, there was only one with a soldier guarding it. I thought it was some type of utility closet, but why would a closet need armed protection?

  I let my hair fall, releasing it from its ponytail before I approached him. I had a bag strewn over my shoulder and my clipboard in hand. No one ever questioned me when I carried my clipboard.

  “Hey!” I shouted to the soldier standing there.

  “Dr. Marshal,” he sighed with his rifle resting in his palm and across his chest.

  “Is Eric in there, by any chance? I have these results that just don’t make sense to me, and I sure could use his expertise. I mean take a look. When that hydrogen particle was manipulated by the fire producing mechanism at the back of the Scaler’s-”

  He cleared his throat, cutting me off, “No he’s not here and don’t talk to me about them. It’s bad enough they’re out there trying to bring another one here.”

  “It’s not here already?” I asked him with a raised eyebrow.

  “No, they just went out tonight to go get him,” he replied.

  “So the shifty looking fellow running the halls upstairs isn’t the new specimen?”

  “No, but I’ll go check it out. Stay out of this room, Dr. Marshal. It isn’t safe.”

  “You’re wasting time. Should I just call Shaw instead and have him come back here because the Scaler they dropped off is on the loose and you’re refusing to do anything about it?”

  He wanted to say something but took off running instead.
He turned around with a questioning expression on his face.

  “Top floor, by the gardens and livestock,” I told him.

  “Figures,” he shook his head, “Freaking animals.”

  As soon as he turned the corner, I began fumbling around with the lock. There was a keypad positioned on the wall. I wondered how many different combinations I’d have to enter to gain access to whatever was behind that door. I took a deep breath and thought about it. When I let it out, fingerprints surfaced across the plasma screen. I took a deep breath and huffed on it again. I wrote down every button that was pushed and went through a list of combinations until I finally unlocked it. It was the date he arrived at The Rock; about a year after I was brought in. It was so easy, but then again, we weren’t set up for the strictest security protocols. No one could get to us, and Scalers didn’t care that we were out here.

  The door opened, and I made sure to close it behind me. The room was dark with brown walls and black equipment. There was a camera set up near the corner of the room, but it was pointing down. I walked over to see a plastic covered pit with some sort of teal smoke moving around in it. Searching the space around it, I saw a remote on a table next to the camera setup. I pushed a few buttons and the smoke filtered out to the small window set against the floor. The plastic cover pulled back once the space cleared out. There he was, passed out on a pile of hay in the corner. His veins illuminated with the same hues as the gas. I had to get him out of there.

  “Maverick?” I whispered. Tears threatened to fall as I stared down at him. He wasn’t moving. I hoped I wasn’t too late.