by Dan Koboldt
“That’s where I introduce your mutation and prove that it causes disease.”
“I don’t know what that’s going to accomplish. Other than putting a dragon in a wheelchair.”
“It’s a proof of principle. If it gets you a formal diagnosis, then maybe you qualify for a drug trial. Or even gene therapy.” And I could even lay the groundwork for that, with Build-A-Dragon’s resources.
“It’s never going to work,” he said.
“Let me worry about the science. At this point, you’re only qualified to play video games.”
“This isn’t about science.” Connor pointed at Octavius. “Look at what you’ve made. It’s something tangible. Something real. How are you not just astonished by it?”
“I’ll admit that the dragon thing is cool, but I have bigger plans for that place.”
“As usual, you’re focused on the wrong thing. I’m fine, dude.”
I looked at his wheelchair and remembered how slow he’d been to climb back into it when Octavius scared him. He wasn’t fine. He was stubborn, and shortsighted, and unwilling to take my help. “Yeah, you’re something. I should go.”
“Come on, don’t be like that.”
“It’s fine.” I turned away from him. “I want to slip out before Mom gets home.”
He tried a different tactic. “She’ll be just as ticked if you don’t wait for her.”
But she’d be just as ticked if she came home to find I’d brought a reptile into her house. Again.
“We were never here.”
His jaw tightened. “See you.”
I walked out, with Octavius on my shoulder. He looked back at Connor and made a soft chirp, as if confused. That makes two of us. The renewed sound of machine-gun fire followed us down the hallway and out the front door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Short Happy Life
Between Summer’s interference in our geocaching and Connor’s sudden lack of enthusiasm, weekends were really starting to suck. Hell, maybe I should have gone on Mom’s wine tour. It was almost a relief to get back to work. Besides, Evelyn had told me that one of my customs would be hatched in-house, so I kind of wanted to watch.
When a customer ordered one of Build-A-Dragon’s mainline production models, like the classic Rover, they got an egg in the mail with specific instructions on how to make it hatch. It was just easier to ship an egg than a live dragon and allowing the customers to hatch the dragon themselves was vital for the imprinting. For custom dragons, however, the clever folks in marketing realized that hatching them in Build-A-Dragon’s facility was yet another thing for which we could charge a premium. The owners of the pink-and-white birthday dragon had opted for this.
When the appointment reminder flashed up on my screen, I grabbed my lunch and hurried to the viewing gallery on the employee side.
They had the garish egg nestled in a soft nest in one of the large incubation rooms along the south wall. A nice-looking Latino family sat on one of the benches in the viewing gallery with the nervous excitement of first-time dragon owners. It was hard to miss the little girl. She looked about eight or ten, and literally bounced with excitement. Her dress was a bright shade of pink that, unless I missed my guess, would be a perfect match for the birthday dragon I’d created.
The parents were really spoiling her. Their smiles said they knew it, too. Hell, after watching the girl press her face against the glass for the third time, I kind of wanted to see her reaction myself. There was a man sitting in the back row, off by himself, in a dark suit and sunglasses. I didn’t recognize him and wondered if maybe he was the family’s security guard.
A scaled pink-and-white nose poked out of the eggshell. The family at the observation window clapped and cheered. Watching them hug one another with rapt excitement on their faces made me forgive myself for creating such a ridiculous dragon with my arts.
The pink dragon tumbled out of the shell, blinked uncertainly at the sunlight streaming in, and stood on wobbly legs. I had to admit that it was kind of cute. The delighted girl squealed loud enough that I heard her through two Plexiglas walls. The noise didn’t put the dragon off, though; my tweaks of the neurotransmitter system had seen to that. It only knew how to love and be loved. This showed in the way it capered for them along the glass, turning its body back and forth to be admired.
We were all so focused on the birthday dragon that we didn’t notice the second hatching in the incubator room. I hadn’t even realized there was another egg in there. If I’d seen it, if I’d recognized the mottled grey shell, you can bet I’d have hit the panic button.
Because that was the attack dragon, and it had a different sort of programming entirely.
The hatchers didn’t realize anything was wrong until a blur of black scales shot across the room. Until the attack dragon clamped its jaws around a certain pink-and-white neck. Until it was far, far too late.
The birthday dragon made a pitiful sound, its tiny mind incapable of processing the idea that something could harm it. I swear that the attack dragon paused just to be sure it had our attention. Then it wrenched its head in a sharp movement. The birthday dragon’s neck snapped with a sickening crunch. It went limp and tumbled to the floor.
A quick-thinking hatchery staffer dropped the curtain on the observation window, but the damage was done. The little girl was an inconsolable pink ball of screams and tears. Her mother was crying, too, and her father’s face was furious. They’d probably be suing us. But the man in the dark suit and sunglasses showed no reaction. It was like he expected it to go down this way. Right then, I realized who he was: the buyer for the attack dragon, who had come to take delivery.
I sat there with my PB&J in my hand for a long time, too stunned to move. I’d never really seen one of our attack dragons in action before. The thing was just so fast. Merciless, too. Part of me felt terrible for what had happened to the birthday dragon. The other part felt a harder, colder truth. I design one hell of a dragon.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
LATEST TRIAL FAILS
BOSTON, MA—Hopes for a cure to canine facial tumor disease (CFTD) were dashed last week by the announcement that a promising immunotherapeutic agent failed in animal trials.
Canizumab, developed by the animal health division of Bingham Pharmaceuticals, had shown the most potential of any therapy tried so far.
CFTD’s sudden appearance and unusual properties have baffled scientists. While population-scale epidemics have been documented in other species—including a similar transmissible tumor disease in the Tasmanian Devil population of New Zealand—natural or acquired resistance typically allows a subset of the population to survive. No such resistance has yet emerged among canines.
One reason CFTD has proven so difficult to treat is that the tumor cells hide themselves from the immune system of an infected dog. Normal healthy cells produce a protein, called MHC, that helps the body distinguish its own cells from invasive pathogens or unhealthy cells, such as tumors. Early investigations of the tumors of infected dogs, however, revealed that the cancer cells do not produce MHC.
“MHC proteins help the immune system distinguish between a dog’s own healthy cells and invading or infected ones,” said Dr. Ellen Marley, a cancer immunologist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved with the trial. “By not producing them, CFTD renders itself invisible to one of the body’s best avenues of defense.”
Early on in the epidemic, scientists sequenced the genome of CFTD tumor cells and found that they harbored thousands of DNA mutations—far more than most human tumors. Strikingly, many of the mutations were shared across all tumors. They disrupted genes that normally helped dogs fight infections, recognize unhealthy cells, and remove them. The pattern of shared mutations is unusual and led scientists to believe that the tumors might somehow be transmissible from one dog to another. Subsequent investigations uncovered evidence that this was, at least in some part, true. Most cases of CFTD emerge after contact with an infected dog. Because the tumors are initi
ally small, many owners did not realize their dogs were infected until they had spread it to other animals. Worse, there appears to be a latent means of environmental infection for some dogs. A sidewalk or dog park visited by a single infected animal can give rise to new cases days or weeks later.
Many researchers believe that immunosuppression by the tumor cells is key to their survival (and the host animal’s demise). Canizumab, by targeting this mechanism, was expected to help a dog’s immune system clear the tumor cells before they took hold. The drug passed initial safety trials late last year.
“Canizumab targets two therapeutic mechanisms simultaneously,” said Dr. Jonathan Fisker, senior scientist at Bingham Pharmaceuticals, after the conclusion of the initial safety trials. “First, it inhibits the immune cell checkpoint that tumors leverage to evade T cells. Second, it boosts the immunogenicity of tumor cells to make them better targets for immune elimination.”
A phase II trial began almost immediately to prove efficacy. This is where it seems that the drug’s performance saw some challenges. Though it was well-tolerated by infected and healthy dogs alike, the drug failed to stop the relentless onslaught of CFTD. There was no significant difference in survival or tumor burden between dogs that got Canizumab and ones that received the placebo. The announcement of the trial’s failure sent biotechnology stocks tumbling on Thursday.
The outcome is not only disappointing for investors, but also for the millions of dog lovers around the world who hoped Canizumab would bring our furry companions back. Worse, the high-profile failure makes it even less likely that other biotechnology firms will invest in new CFTD research in the near future.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Strange Allies
For the rest of the week, I waited for the fallout from the birthday dragon incident. I jumped every time someone passed my office, thinking it was Greaves coming to yell at me. Or worse, Fulton arriving to escort me out of the building. I figured it was only a matter of time until one of the customers spoke to a reporter, and the online news channels started bashing us again. Then the ranks of the protestors outside our building would swell again, and I’d have to leave even earlier to get to work on time.
The guilt ate at me. I should have told the hatchers about the attack dragon so that they kept it in solitary. No one knew that—once the eggs left the God Machine, they fell under the hatchery staff’s purview—but I could easily take the blame for this. Hell, if the fallout was really bad, they might even fire me. I confessed these fears to Evelyn, and she told me not to worry about it. It was a hatchery issue, not our department. I wasn’t sure I believed that.
The week dragged on forever. I only got through it by looking forward to Saturday, when I thought we had a good shot at finishing Big Mesa Star. I’d rested, I’d planned, I’d checked the rankings of geocachers far too often. I’d also scoured the boards for hints of how to find the waypoints on trail number four. Only a handful of people had completed the Big Mesa star, but the most recent had only been a month or two ago. That told me it was beatable.
I hadn’t slept well all week. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the attack model snapping the pink dragon’s neck. Heard the nauseating crunch of bone and cartilage. It was like a song I couldn’t get out of my head. Saturday morning was no exception, so I just got up, roused Octavius, and drove out into the desert.
Fog still shrouded the rocks of the parking lot at Big Mesa Star; that’s how early we were. Octavius still dozed in the passenger seat while I laced up my boots. We had the lot to ourselves; even the highway traffic was quiet.
Then I heard the steady rumble of a big truck coming down the road. Luckily, I hadn’t woken Octavius yet. Dragons were becoming more common in Arizona, so it was reasonably safe for us to take these little excursions into the desert. I wasn’t brave enough to stroll around with him in downtown Scottsdale or anything, but out in the desert people knew better than to ask too many questions. Still, this close to the road, it would be just my luck to encounter a park ranger or something. I edged closer to the Tesla as the truck rolled into the lot with fog lights ablaze, crunching gravel beneath its oversized tires. When the lights swept over me, I finally got a look at the profile. It’s not a truck. It’s a Jeep.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.
I tried to ignore it and lace up my boots as quickly as possible. Which would have worked, except the Jeep parked haphazardly right next to me.
“Still trying to beat me?” Summer called.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m trying to beat Big Mesa Star.”
Riker popped up in the back seat and grunted at us. “Hush!” she told him.
Octavius stirred once but went back to snoring in my passenger seat. Some watch dragon.
“So. How many times have you tried Big Mesa Star?” she asked.
Once last month, and another time about a year ago. But I didn’t want to admit it, so I shrugged.
“This is our third try,” Summer said.
“Wow. Really?”
“I keep losing signal in the basin.” She had the doors off her Jeep, so I had a good view as she put on her boots.
God, she’s got long legs.
I figured I might as well pony up some honesty. “It’s our third try, too.”
“Ha! I knew it.”
“Yeah, well, we’re serious this time.” After the week I’d just had, I really needed to win something. “Didn’t get as far as I thought I would last weekend. Some of the markers were a little hard to find.” I made the last bit slow and accusing.
She looked at me flat-eyed, not giving anything away. “Maybe if you’re nice, they won’t be.”
It wasn’t that I’d been trying to be mean to her. It had just come naturally. It reminded me, strangely, of the attack dragon that had killed the birthday dragon. Which I still felt terrible about but had come down to pure instinct. Just like my instinct of sniping at Summer back when she’d started becoming a problem for me and Jane. But that was the past. We’d sparred so often, Summer and I, that Jane got a little jealous. Which was ridiculous, if you actually listened to the barbs we exchanged, but whatever. All that stuff was well in the past and I intended to keep it there. “I can try that.”
“This geocache is hard enough as it is.”
“That’s for damn sure.” I chuckled. “Maybe we should help each other.” The words came out before I really gave them thought. Then again, if we sabotaged one another like we did last time, neither of us would get the cache. Watching her might be informative. It might even help me figure out how to beat her.
She gave me a side-eyed look, as if she’d heard that thought. “What are you proposing?”
“An alliance.”
“Until the cache is found?” She mulled this for a few seconds. “Deal.”
“How far did you get last time?”
“Two points. But I marked the coordinates of the next one, so I can go straight to it.”
“So did I.”
She held her wrist beside mine for a double-check. That’s when I realized we had the exact same watch.
“Hey, we match,” I said.
“Yours looks like it was in a plane crash.”
I noted that her watch didn’t have a scratch on it, though the wristband showed some age. “Psh. It just means we’re more willing to get dirty.” I walked back to the car and roused Octavius from the Tesla. “We’ve got some company.”
He craned his neck past me to get a look at them. When he recognized them, he raised his wings and started hissing.
“None of that, now,” I said. “They’re friends today. Got it? Friends.”
He cut off the hissing, but never took his eyes off Riker.
Summer clipped the pig onto a retractable leash. “You ready?”
“After you, Number One.”
She snorted. Riker took the lead down trail #4, pulling at his leash like a rotund sled dog. It started off at a gentle incline, heading right down into the b
asin. I told Octavius to scout ahead; it never hurt to have eyes up above. Summer and I kept comparing the distance to target on our watches. If those numbers started to jump around, it meant we were losing GPS signal, and couldn’t trust any directions. We’d have to backtrack and start again.
Riker kept his snout to the ground, sniffing everything. Now that I thought about it, a pig’s peerless olfactory abilities could be useful on a geocache. He seemed fairly well trained, too. More than Octavius, at least, which wasn’t saying much.
“I’ve never seen a dragon like yours,” Summer said.
“He’s one of a kind,” I told her.
“A customized one?” Her eyebrows went up a little. “You must be doing well.”
“Well, I sort of get the employee discount,” I said, by way of avoidance.
“I thought you were all about playing God with human DNA. Back when, you know . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m still working on that.” But maybe not hard enough, a little voice inside me said. Causing dragon-on-dragon violence didn’t offer much in the way of accomplishment, though. That poor little birthday dragon. It shouldn’t bother me as much as it did.
“With dragons?”
“It’s complicated.”
We walked in silence for a moment.
“Have you heard from her?” she asked, meaning Jane.
“Not for a long time.” I knew better than to stay in touch. I didn’t want to hear about whatever guy she was dating, or what color she’d dyed her hair. Just thinking about it tore at me. “You?”
“The same.”
We fell into silence. I sure as hell didn’t want to say more about her, and from Summer’s tone, it sounded like she felt the same. Well, not exactly the same. I doubt her heart hurt the way mine still did when I thought of her. At least they weren’t in touch anymore. That would have made it even more awkward than it already was.
Octavius came to the rescue. He glided back a minute later, trilling a little victory call.
“I don’t speak dragon, but that sounds promising,” Summer said.
