by Lee French
“S’alright. She ran away from home, I’m guessing, and got picked up like Shane did. Some kinda promise of money or shelter or whatever, and once she was in the car or van, they shot her up with drugs that knocked her out.”
“Yeah.” She flashed guarded gratitude at him. “That’s pretty much what happened.”
In an effort to get her to trust him, he popped a dragon off his thumb and sent it to her. “Ain’t nothing to fear here. Ain’t nobody gonna take you again.” Part of him knew he shouldn’t promise that. This very place had been raided, and everything they’d just planned to do would make some folks eager to try it again. “Not ‘less they kill me first.”
The dragon landed next to her bowl and nudged the spoon towards her hand. She stared at it with awe and wonder. “I didn’t actually wake up yet. This is a really weird dream.”
Bobby shrugged. “You got any weird urges or itches or anything what feels or looks different than before?”
Sherrie gulped and looked around, finally actually seeing all the people in the large room, watching her. “I…um…I knew where Paul was before I saw or heard him.”
When she failed to follow that up with more explanation, Liam took a break from translating for Elena out of the side of his mouth to ask, “Can you be more specific? How did you know?”
She still hesitated. Bobby dipped his biscuit again and swished it around. “Look, my whole body can fall apart into hundreds of those little critters. I guarantee it ain’t weirder than that. Nobody here’s gonna judge you for whatever it is, so just tell us.”
“Seriously?” Her jaw dropped open.
While taking a bite of the biscuit, he held up his hand and let dragons off until he had nothing past the middle of his forearm. The four dozen or so dragons landed all around her and on her shoulders. They trilled at her in unison. Five picked up her spoon and stuck it into her hand. One peered into her glass of water from the rim, then leaned too far and fell in with a plop. It sank to the bottom and looked all around.
All around the table, he heard stifled chuckles and giggles and laughter.
“Ah, come on,” Bobby said with a roll of his eyes. “Get your little metal hide outta there. You ain’t no ice cube.”
“They don’t need to breathe,” Sherrie said with wonder, watching the dragon swim with all four little legs to the surface. It beat its wings, spraying water all around the cup, and managed to get into the air again.
Bobby could tell it felt sheepish and he called all the dragons back. He knew so much more about what they were capable of than he did when he first discovered them. “Yeah. That’s handy sometimes. What’s important right now ain’t what I can do, it’s what you can do. I showed mine, let’s have yours.”
“Uh, I don’t think I can demonstrate.” Sherrie gulped and watched with fascination as his hand re-formed. “I can…see minds? Not like read them or anything, I just know they’re there. Sort of. All your dragons have separate little minds, but when you’re you, you’re kind of a weird jumble.”
“That’s exactly what I see,” Paul nodded his approval. “Don’t tell our parents, but I’m a telepath. I see them as little sparks and other people as bright lights. Except Kaitlin, but never mind that. You?”
“Um, it’s not that…defined? I don’t know.”
“Makes sense.” Bobby nodded. “It’s like you’re seeing heat, maybe, or feeling it or something, I bet. A little more useful than black-plus, but still a lot less than the rest of us. Folks, they’re trying to cut corners to make more, and either they don’t got it all sorted or you pulled these two out before the dose was all complete. Either way, every single one of those people you saw in Adelphi is one of us now.”
Riker, sitting on Kaitlin’s other side, nodded in agreement. “That makes Adelphi a high priority target. Once we have more hands on deck, we’ll be able to split up and tackle both Adelphi and White Sands at the same time. A basic plan is taking shape, we’ll just need to work up the details. Kaitlin and I can handle most of that.”
Was it his imagination, or did Riker look at Kaitlin like he imagined her naked? Not that Bobby cared, she wasn’t his sis— Er, actually, she was. That didn’t change how little he cared about who she did or didn’t shack up with. It only struck him as interesting.
Liam frowned. “I don’t understand why they don’t just use military personnel. Isn’t experimentation something you sign on for when you go in?”
Riker shrugged. “Not exactly. We can refuse, and there would be a paper trail, and we have families. Families ask questions and file lawsuits.”
Nodding, Bobby looked off at nothing in particular He wound up staring at Liam’s eyes. Family. He had his Momma already, and now he had a bunch of brothers and sisters, plus Riker and his men from the sounds of it. “What about you guys? You got families what ask questions and file lawsuits, too.”
“We all do, Bobby,” Kaitlin said with an arched eyebrow.
“Yeah, but—”
Riker laughed without letting Bobby finish. “My family thinks I’m still in Afghanistan. We were told not to say a damned word, none of us said a damned word. Fortunately, none of us has a wife to lie to.”
“Alright, glad to hear it.” Bobby grinned and sat down opposite the two of them. “Is that gonna be a problem when we get on with the part where we go public?”
“Yes, but we’ll live. Contacting them now would be detrimental to mission success.”
“Ayup, that’s how I feel about it.” He really did want to call Momma and talk to her about the things he’d done. Most especially, he wanted to hear her tell him it would be okay, and he wasn’t a bad person. Whether it was true or not, he’d like to hear her say it.
Chapter 9
After the meal, Bobby stood in the doorway of Lily’s room, leaning against the frame. Everyone else batted around ideas for a detailed plan, or caught the last few rays of sunshine, or cleaned up. He’d told them through drooping eyes that he needed some sleep and no one gave him a hard time about it. Shane still lay in his bed, recovering from the drugs. Bobby had a thought to use Stephen’s room, but couldn’t stop himself from taking the detour to Lily’s.
Sebastian had been grabbed right out of that little toddler bed, and his wailing screams for his mother still echoed in Bobby’s head. They merged with the face of that little girl, making him want to hit himself with a baseball bat. Then he saw piles of shredded meat that had once been human. Asyllis, dead. The parade of images marched around him, over and over.
“I ain’t a bad person,” he told the room as he sat heavily on her bed. If he could make himself believe it, then it might be true. Stephen would agree and call him a dumbass with power he hadn’t yet figured out how to control. That had to end now. People kept dying because of it.
“I’m in charge. Nobody dies ‘less I say so. It’s gotta be that way. More damage we do, more likely they lock us up in a box for good. All they really gotta do is stick us in a box with no vents while I’m dosed on that drug and eventually, we all starve to death. So listen up. We gotta have rules to protect us as much as them.”
They didn’t answer—they never did. But he felt something. The only other times he ever felt anything from them while in full human shape had been when their rage threatened to rip them right off his body. This time, he got acceptance from them. Understanding. Almost drowning with Stephen maybe showed them how it could really all go to heckbiscuits.
“Okay. Good. Best to try not to injure anyone too seriously, neither. What I say goes, and you follow my lead. I know how people think, so you gotta trust me to know what I’m doing.”
They got that, too, even if saying those words out loud made him want to laugh at himself. Yeah, he knew what he was doing. Completely. Regardless, he could trust the dragons now.
Still barefoot, he rolled onto the bed and shut his eyes, breathing in Lily’s scent. It felt like no time passed at all before a rapping knock on the door woke him. Somehow, he had no nightmares. Maybe Lil
y chased them away.
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty!” Hegi’s too cheerful voice echoed in the hallway as he walked away. “Thirty minutes ‘til we leave.”
Bobby groaned and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He got up and got dressed, choosing his desert camouflage pants and combat boots with a regular white t-shirt. He downed a breakfast on the go without tasting it, let alone looking at it long enough to figure out what it might be. In a few hours, they’d be freeing everyone else, and that thought rammed everything else aside. All along, this had been his goal. Finally, he got to do it. Granted, he’d thought he’d be liberating only eleven people.
One tense, quiet car ride later, Bobby dropped down into a seat on Liam’s family plane and stared out the window. Half an hour into the flight, Liam, more cool and collected than he’d been in Virginia, cleared his throat and asked politely for everyone’s attention. It had to come from having Elena’s safety assured. Bobby wanted that, too.
He swiveled his chair to see Kaitlin rubbing shoulders with Riker. Liam sat across the small table from the pair, next to Paul. They’d left Elena behind to watch over Shane and Paul’s sister. Hegi, Platt, Hansen, and Carter sat in the rest of the chairs, all close enough to hear so long as no one whispered.
“We got a plan now?” Bobby asked.
Kaitlin nodded. “Yes, but first, I wanted to share something that I ran across while searching for stuff last night. Hannah must have seen it if she spent even two minutes looking, though she might have ignored it because of the date. It’s a forum post about an article in the Juneau Empire, the paper there. Most of it’s an environmentalist rant. There was a chemical spill in the city five years ago, caused by a train accident. It affected a mostly Inuit area the worst. A few people were killed and a bunch were hospitalized. This poster mentions Kanik Okpik as if he’s some kind of martyr. He was injured and got acid burns on part of his body, but survived, at least up until this posting was made.”
Something about that tugged at Bobby’s memory. “You got them pictures I gave you?”
Nodding again, Kaitlin tapped and clicked on her laptop, then spun it around so everyone could get a good look at the pictures of Jayce. “Where did you get these, anyway?”
“I found the camera in Jayce’s apartment.” Bobby shrugged and peered at the much larger version of the image on the screen.
“What were you doing in Jayce’s apartment?”
“I was in Vegas anyway,” Bobby shrugged, “figured I’d have a look. Cops went through it something fierce. Kinda like they done did at the farm, only nobody was there to resist.” He pointed at the screen. “Look at his hand.”
Riker flipped between the before and after pictures for everyone. “That’s freakish. I saw these before, but it’s still just plain…freakish.”
“It’s the result of mind control,” Kaitlin corrected. “But yeah, the hand. That could be acid burns.”
Bobby noticed Riker putting his arm on the back of Kaitlin’s chair, and his body shifting to lay claim to her. He thought Kaitlin noticed. Yep, these two definitely had something going on. “You know, I kinda wonder if there’s something about the human-alien cross we are that makes us all more…frisky than usual folks.”
Liam coughed, hiding a half a grin behind his hand. Paul blushed. Riker looked up at him with an arched eyebrow and said nothing. Kaitlin grinned. “I wouldn’t be surprised, but we are all in the same age group, you know. Confined area. Shared doom and freakishness. So, you decide to get all up on Lily and—”
“Hey now,” Bobby pointed at the screen with a chuckle. This foreign feeling, of being amused and wanting to laugh, made him hope they could all keep things light for now. They’d all have plenty of time for brooding later. “Plan time.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Kaitlin took control of the laptop back. Between her and Riker, they had good ideas, complete with maps. “The important part is we’re up against someone who can do that kind of mind altering to probably anyone.”
Paul cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Technically, I can do things like that, too. I used it to get us out of the facility the other day. I can probably defend against it, I’ve just never tried.”
Hegi leaned in and fixed Paul with a suspicious glare. “How do we know you didn’t put a mind whammy on Sarge to get us all to go along with this?”
Paul shrank back from him. “I, uh,” he gulped, “just because I can doesn’t mean I would. I haven’t really let loose and seen what my limits are because I’m afraid to. I don’t want to be a monster with a horde of zombie drones to do my bidding. That’s just…wrong.”
If only Bobby had ever felt that way for more than a few minutes, a lot of people might still be alive right now. He crossed his arms and tried not to scowl too much at Mr. Goody Two Shoes. “This whole shebang may be up you and Stephen and Andrew and me, then. All of us can resist Kanik. We gotta change the plan on account of that?”
Riker thought about it and glanced at Liam, who shrugged. “Yes, I think we do.”
“Let’s get on that, then. We got, what, three more hours? There any food on this here plane?” Bobby spent the rest of the flight eating and trying to memorize what he needed to do. They had a plan, a backup plan and a retreat location. Here was hoping Stephen got his stuff back as quick as possible, because out of all of them, the vampire would probably be the biggest help.
They touched down in DC at 12:11pm, and found Riker and Platt’s two cars waiting for them at the airport with sizable parking fees. Liam covered them.
“You know, in all this,” Bobby said, “I don’t figure why that pigtailed girl was so important.”
Kaitlin shrugged. “Maybe it was just so you could feel justified killing that agent.”
“I s’pose.”
“Is that really the only detail that’s bothering you?”
He rolled his eyes. “A’course not. Everything else seems bigger, though, like it matters. That one little girl, she weren’t much. Just a kid.”
“Are you talking about the little girl at Hill Air Force Base?” Liam, also in the back seat, leaned forward to fix him with a stern glare. “The one you tried to abduct?”
Bobby opened his mouth to agree with the first question. Before he could, the second one made him glare at Liam. “After what you seen, you still buy that line?”
Liam frowned. “Yes, and I guess I shouldn’t. Her name is Elizabeth, she’s the granddaughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Hanstadt. Her father is a Major in the Air Force. Elizabeth was there that day because her mother was recovering from surgery.”
“Privek tell you that?”
Still frowning, Liam nodded. “Yes, actually. He was very forthcoming with certain kinds of details.”
Riker and Hegi glanced at each other. Since Hegi happened to be driving, Riker turned around to face Bobby. “That little girl saw you turn into dragons?”
“Yeah.” Bobby scratched his chin idly, watching the scene replay in his head. “That agent thought she was my kid, or Stephen or Dan’s. He shot at her, not me. I took that bullet for her and killed him.” His now jaded self marveled at how shiny and naïve he’d been only a few weeks ago.
“That might be the one thing that winds up keeping all our asses out of a sling here.” Riker glanced at Hegi again, then back out the rear window at the car with the others. “We should take the party to his doorstep once we’ve gotten all your people out.”
“What about the people at Adelphi?”
“He’s the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Riker shrugged. “If he can’t get that sorted out, no one can.”
“I agree.” Liam pulled out his phone and futzed with it. “There’s no way we can just waltz back into that facility now. They’ll be on alert and have pictures of us handy. I’m sure there was security footage of every one of us that went in, and it’s been examined by now. Privek’s suspicions about Paul and me have been confirmed, and he knows Riker and his men are on the other side, as well as knowing Kait
lin is with us. By now, he’s checked and knows you’re out, too, and that you freed Asyllis.”
Bobby looked out the window and tried to think of what Privek and Kanik might do, if they’d change things a lot based on what had happened over the past few days. The problem was, he didn’t understand them, not really. What did they want? He had no real clue. Probably, if no one explained it all to him, he’d never understand. “I think the question we gotta find the answer to is why he took everybody from the farm. The real reason, I mean. Once we know that, seems to me we’ll kinda have a handle on the why for everything else.”
“I’m going to see what I can do to get us a meeting with the good General.” Liam tapped his phone and held it up to his ear.
Bobby gaped at him. “Just like that?” Apparently, the company he currently kept was more rarefied than he knew.
Liam snorted. “We’ll see.”
Bobby went back to staring out the window, watching the scenery go by. If not for the need to be able to coordinate, he’d be out there flying instead of in here squished between Kaitlin and the door. Actually, he’d be there by now. In the background, he heard Liam on phone.
“Hi, uncle Glen, it’s Liam. I was wondering if you could do me a favor.” He chuckled at whatever Uncle Glen said. “No, nothing like that. I have a friend in the Army who’s gotten into a little bit of trouble, and I was wondering if there’s any way you could set us up with a meeting of some sort with General Hanstadt to discuss it as soon as possible. … Yes, I understand that, but this is a fairly unusual situation. … Tell him it’s about Elizabeth’s Hill dragons.” From Liam’s face, Bobby got exactly nothing. The guy must clean up if he ever played poker. “Yes, those words exactly, … No, I can’t explain right now. … Sure, lunch next week would be great. I’ll see you then.”
“Next week?”
Liam kept his phone in hand, scrolling through his contacts again. “I’ll meet my uncle for lunch next week. He’ll text me back if he can get us in to see Hanstadt.”
