Not after wasting most of your force at the mansion, Koro argued.
They haven’t seen us either, Goral added. Or Nehemaiah.
We cannot simply walk into this meeting. If we do, we may face losses as we did at the last, Nehemaiah added with a growl. The senator will be prepared, regardless of what he believes our forces look like. We will try another strategy.
43
Topher
I don’t have time for this bullshit.
Topher felt a stab of guilt as he walked out into the front of the small group of tables. He knew that much of what Clay saw was probably real. He’d seen the aftermath of some of it. Recently, even. However, he had work to do, and Clay would be one of the many beneficiaries. He faced the men in front of him and caught Abe’s eye. He’d spoken in front of large crowds, lawn-side gatherings, full auditoriums. This was just a conference room, on the large side, but the stakes had never been so high. A soft coo caused him to look up, and Topher sighed in annoyance. Damn pigeons. They were everywhere in D.C. these days. It perched on a wall sconce and tilted its head as it looked around.
Topher was nervous. He ignored the bird.
No doubt Clay had something important to say, but now was definitely not the time. He had representatives from seven very important companies ready and waiting to snatch up this contract, and he had to make them believe. That was the first hurdle for them to surpass. Oddly, most CEOs were unlikely to believe in magic.
“I know all of you have been eager to get a better idea of what we would be looking at here today. You know that this is a tremendous opportunity to get in on defense contracts that will be the new face of how the United States conducts itself in foreign and domestic security.” Topher smiled slyly. “You know that it is going to be a huge pay off. What you do not know is the technology you have the chance to develop.”
He stepped to the side, and five men, all tall and muscular entered through a side door carrying heavy girders as though they were made of foam. The representatives at the tables looked to one another curiously.
“Andre, could you set your girder down?” When the man did as he was told, Topher turned to the crowd. “Donnie! Why don’t you come up here?”
The 65-year-old CEO raised a brow. “I didn’t realize there would be audience participation.”
There were a few chuckles. Topher put his hands on his hips. “You may have a hard time believing what you are seeing today. I need you to know with every part of you that what I’m bringing to the table is not the impossible.”
Don Sloan shrugged and walked up to stand by Topher. “What do I do?”
“Pick up the girder.”
Don laughed. “I don’t think I could, even if this is made of wood and not iron.”
“Try to pick it up. Touch it and tell us what you feel,” Topher instructed. He went to the girder himself and ran his fingers along the cold iron.
Don bent over slowly and did the same. “Iron.” He sighed and gripped the sides. He made a small effort. “Nope.”
“So, you attest that this is an iron girder? We’re not tricking you in any way,” Topher said.
“Not a bit. Congrats on the hunk of metal,” Don affirmed. “And on these strong men here.”
“No human being can carry a girder by themselves,” the representative from Halliwell and Grant said. He rose and went up to the girder himself to see. After he tried to lift it, he looked up at the men who had walked in with them suspiciously. “How?”
“Our new technology can benefit your defenses in two ways. The first is a radical transformation of human capabilities.” Topher smiled smugly. Every man in the room was watching with rapt fascination now.
Topher leaned over and lifted up the girder himself to the sounds of gasp and a few swears from his audience.
“I think you’ll agree that we need to rethink the possible.” Topher pushed the girder over his head and looked straight at Don. “And augmentation to soldiers and guards is only the beginning. Wait until you see what we can do with widespread military defense.”
His muscles burned, and Topher bent his knees and set the girder on the ground. It was an image they might never forget. A 37-year-old senator bench pressing 400 pounds in a crisp business suit. He straightened his tie, and motioned for the men to come forward to continue the demonstration.
44
Minerva
The dragons had a mission, and so did she. Though she was unclear on the how (they’d left them out of their telepathic mile-high war room), the dragons planned to sneak into the senator’s meeting. They’d go and sneak somehow into the senator’s meeting. How they thought they could get a Godzilla-wannabe like Nehemaiah in his true form sneaked in anywhere, she didn’t know. She was headed, however, to the office at K Street.
Minerva had a preferred virus she could download to eat through the system. It would spread and send phishing emails to any accounts that had ever been contacted. She’d also look for any online drives to clear before flat out destroying the hard drive. It wasn’t perfect, but it should get at most of what Senator Jorgenson had been trying to hide.
But her mission was far from Georgetown, and that scared Nerv a little. She couldn’t do the kind of damage the warriors could, but she didn’t like being separate from Saff either. So far, they’d lost close to twenty dragon warriors in this fight.
What if Saff…
No. No time for those thoughts. Once she’d dismounted from Saff’s back, Minerva had to trust the dragons would be smarter this time. They had better intel and more shamans than the last time. They would be all right.
They had to be.
Minerva tried not to look out of place as she strode through the lobby. The good thing about big fancy offices was that the executives and lawyers (and their adjunct staff) worked ridiculous hours. The building was still open, and she was able to sneak in even if most businesses would be winding down by nine p.m. Decked out in the black designer pants and cashmere sweater of a senator’s wife’s (donated unknowingly by Mrs. Jorgenson), Minerva was able to blend in better and avoid awkward questions as she rode the elevator up to the correct floor.
The next stage wasn’t too hard: the lock picking she’d done a hundred times and slipping out the picks from her bun were business as usual. Same with disabling the alarm. The next stage was harder. She wasn’t hopeful enough to think that Senator Jorgenson wouldn’t have patrols or special security paid for to check on his office every so often. The faster she got in and out, the better.
Slipping into his inner office, Minerva sat down at his desk and booted up his desktop. Sure enough, the comp screen blared to life, some generic desktop image of a forest staring back at her. She cracked her knuckles in front of her. She didn’t have all her favorite tools this time. Sometimes she had a couple flash drives that could help her crack things, nothing magical, but a few tricks saved for an easy system.
Realistically, this could take hours she didn’t have.
But she knew a bit about Senator Christopher Jorgenson now. She started with a few things she could Google on her phone—his kids’ names and birthdays, combinations of the above, anything that might come from his wedding date or wife’s name. It sounded dumb, but then one of the most popular (and idiotic) passwords out there was “password” and some people even tried “123456,” since it was easy to remember. These were the gimmees along with mom’s maiden name and any easy to dig up info that any hacker tried first.
But so far nothing.
Frowning, Minerva drummed her fingers on the keyboard. So far kids, wife, the usual hadn’t helped. But she hadn’t tried anything with Clay yet. She entered a few things. Just Clay’s name then mashing it up with random numbers. After that she did a mishmash of “Clay” and the birthdate listed for him (again, thank you, Google).
“Fuck,” she hissed.
Some use she was. Saff and a team of dragon warriors were gathered together to take on god knew what kind of team of suped up guards and crazy weap
ons the senator had cobbled up, mad scientist style, from the eggs. All she had to do was breach a damn desktop.
“If Clay were here maybe I could con it out of him…”
Wait.
It seemed like a longer shot, but maybe she was thinking of the wrong type of birthdate. The date all this madness really started, the time starting Senator Jorgenson’s obsession with the supernatural was July 4, 1996. Clay’d told her. Holding her breath, she tried every combination of Clay’s name and the date she could.
When that didn’t work, Minerva rubbed her fingers over her lips. What else would he use? Something personal, that he wouldn’t think anyone would guess… Suddenly, it struck her, and she pumped her fist in triumph when “Buddy07041996” worked.
Breathing again, she added, “See, and that’s why it’s half psychology.”
She sighed, hearing the gentle timbre of the Senator’s voice: Clay? Look, buddy, this is not a good time.
“Should’ve listened to your little bro, man.”
Moving quickly, she went to where she always looked online to download her favorite viruses and malware, and then she made sure to send copies via email to every employee and underling in Senator Jorgenson’s email. It was sloppy for a senator to reuse that password on everything. Then again, people were like that. The last thing she did was hoist the tower up onto the desk and use the picks she had to open it up. Working fast, she yanked out the motherboard and a few other key pieces and smashed them to nothing. Then, to be doubly sure, she hurried into the office bathroom and ran the remains under a steady stream of cold water.
“That’ll help. And soon any idiot working for you will have their cell and their comp eaten through, the second they open an email. Hope you kept the top secret evil scientist on your payroll out of your address book, but you apparently had crappy passwords so….”
She wiped her hands off on the towel and eased out of the bathroom with a broad smile planted on her face. Even though she was scared for Saff and the alpha team, at least the sabotage of files had been done to the best of her ability. Anything else after this bust, she bet Clay could and would help them find. He knew better than anyone the cost of magic when unleashed on humans, even if it clearly wasn’t dragon magic warping his mind and his senses.
Minerva felt like she was on top of the world until she slid out of the office to find a large man with black, oozing eyes and a neck a thick as a tree trunk glaring back at her.
“You’ve got to be shitting me.”
The man was still coherent enough even through the plague to speak. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” He cracked his neck. “Boss is busy, but he’ll want to speak to you in the morning.”
That was all she needed to hear. The damn office was at the far end of the hall, and it was a sprint to the stairs. No way she’d risk the elevator. Waiting for the doors to open would let No-Neck catch her. Swallowing hard, Minerva feinted right and dodged around the guard’s left side. Her lungs burned and her muscles ached down the hallway; fear and exhaustion warred within her from a truly fucked up day. She had her hand on the door handle to the stairwell and forced it down, and then screamed when the handled didn’t give.
“Who locks a fucking stairwell? That’s a fire hazard!”
She didn’t have time to try for the elevator. No-Neck was on her, and he had one, meaty hand around her throat. Hoisting her into the air, the guard laughed as she kicked at him, her short legs sometimes failing to even connect with his stomach at all. When they did, he only urged her on for more. The breath was forced out of her, and her vision swam until darkness covered her eyes. In the haze and the pain, for a brief, shining instant, she saw her abuela. It wasn’t some go to the white light vision, but just a memory, something long forgotten between them a few days before Christmas.
Her abuela telling her the myths and legends of the island she’d come from, the rumors and whispers of the way their own family had been tocado—touched—that all there was to do was reach out.
To search for it when she was in need.
Cold swept through Minerva; she didn’t have much time. What was it? Six minutes without air total before her brain died? It felt like she wouldn’t need that much. Panic lanced through her and she lashed out again, but she didn’t kick the guard.
She’d meant to, but something else happened.
He was thrown from her by a force that seemed to shimmer and bend the air and light around it, bowling into him before dissipating completely. Minerva shrieked as she fell to her knees and then hopped up, reaching for her picks as the only weapons she had left at close range. She didn’t need to bother. While No-Neck was still alive, even she could feel the hint of his heartbeat in the room, he wasn’t going to wake up any time soon, not with how shallowly he was breathing.
“What the hell?” She looked down at her hands, which shook almost uncontrollably. She’d done something, something far more than just sense the eggs and the children inside crying for her. Maybe Clay…
No, whatever was going on had to be a weird side effect of hanging out too long with the dragons or being infected by the plague. She wasn’t different and she wasn’t some freak, and she was anything but like Clay.
Taking a deep breath, Minerva hurried for the elevator. It didn’t matter that Saff had ordered her to stay away from the senator’s mansion until Team Dragon completed their mission. Screw that. Nothing ever went according to plan with them, and what were the odds they were going to start now?
Yeah, slim and zilch.
She yanked out her cell and programed for Uber. She needed to get to Georgetown in double time. She had an ice dragon to keep an eye on.
45
Topher
He had them eating out of the palm of his hand. There was no doubt about that. Of course, when one showed a room of sixty-year-old-plus executives a substance that could act not only as the fountain of youth but give them the strength and physical prowess they’d never had—no man ever had—then they started not only listening but drooling over it. The fact that what Topher explained was magical in origin didn’t seem to matter, even after his confession about the eggs and their power. The entire panel of CEOs and defense contractors only wanted to know when they could be given a taste of the power too, become their own Hercules.
Perfect.
And this wasn’t even stage two of his presentation. He’d have bids in the billions by the time the night was out; that much was obvious.
A few more pigeons landed on the ledge, and they swiveled their heads in unison to stare as Topher kept talking. A shiver passed through him, and Topher tried to ignore it. Pigeons were everywhere in this city. They were as common shitting on the monuments here as they were in the streets of New York. He was only anxious because he had been mean to Clay, dismissed him, even when he knew after Rog that Clay had to have actually seen something truly horrifying.
But this was for their future. For Clay’s future. Give him about an hour longer, and they’d have all the money they could ever need to research a cure for Clay’s condition.
Also, fuck those garbage birds. Who cared if a hundred were perched outside?
One of his assistants wheeled out the massive lead case where he’d sealed off three eggs. He had more squirreled away in his home, deep underground and protected, but he only needed the three to demonstrate other capacities of the magic. Topher nodded toward the young woman. Elena maybe? He had a hard time keeping track of all of his assistants.
“Now, gentlemen. I want to truly show you the full capacity of the magic at hand.”
“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation still, even after seeing it with my own eyes. We’re having a conversation about magic,” the CEO of Halliwell and Grant marveled.
“And you haven’t seen anything yet.” Topher pressed a latch on the box and with a quick hiss, the edges of the top recessed in order to reveal the bright trio underneath. Two eggs the color of rubies
thrummed with life and a third, one of a royal blue, did the same. “These, men, are dragon eggs.”
The assembled executives, despite what they’d seen, broke into a riot of laughter.
Jameson, the head of Ansen Chemicals, laughed so hard he slapped his knees. “Son, you’ve shown us amazing things, but I’m from Texas. I know something about tall tales, and I’m not here to have my leg pulled. Dragons.”
Topher gritted his teeth and kept his smile in place. Years of life on the road and at town halls, ones filled with giving speeches to less-than-receptive constituents, had schooled him in never losing his implacable façade. Lucky for Jameson on that. Nothing was going to spoil his big unveiling. Especially not some idiot who imagined himself, even now with his bolo tie, as some industry cowboy.
He picked up one of the red eggs and concentrated. Even he was still learning how to access the magic within. There was something clear with the eggs, something that metaphysically linked thoughts to the egg’s actions, even if the damn things seemed to resist at first. Breathing deeply, he aimed the rounded top of the egg to a spot on the wall beside him and willed what he wanted.
An arc of thin, crimson light flashed out and burned a five-inch diameter hole clear through it. Topher stuck fingers through and smirked as all the men gaped at the darkness of the night sky through the opening.
“Gentlemen,” Topher said, reminding himself not to come off too smugly. No need to oversell it now. “Welcome to the future of warfare. And, yes, like I said: dragon eggs.”
Jameson snorted. “I don’t know if I buy all this hocus pocus, but something like that? I’ll cut you any check you want.”
“The bidding starts at five hundred million, but I think we can get far higher than that.”
Sirens and Scales Page 136
