“Just for the time being. Take a vacation for a few weeks. Let them cool down. Let them find the dragon on their own.”
“Even if this were my fault, I wouldn’t do that. What people need to see is someone willing to take a stand, not someone who runs away the first moment things become difficult.”
“Bravery won’t save you.”
She gritted her teeth. “Neither will cowardice.”
“It’s not cowardice. It’s practicality. You should know when to lay down your guns and when to fight. Now is not the time to fight.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m not leaving. Those people Baba Yaga killed need justice, and I will find a way to get it for them.”
“And you would risk your life for complete strangers? For the actions of men who stole your life’s work and implemented it poorly and recklessly? This is not your fight, Kamala.”
“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. I’ve already made my choice.”
“Then Allah help you.” He hung up.
Kamala threw her phone at the couch. It bounced off the cushion and hit the carpet. She glared at it for a moment, raked both hands through her dark, short hair, and turned on her heel to march into the bedroom.
Jack was all of six-foot-two. For much of his adult life, he’d slept on a full mattress, and even though he had a King-sized bed in his place now, he hadn’t shaken the habit of pulling his long legs upward towards his body. Even sleeping in her Queen-sized bed, he curled up his legs and slept on his side. She shut the door as softly as she could and regarded him. He slept facing her to avoid putting pressure on the injured side of his face. His mouth hung open slightly and his hair stuck straight up off his forehead like always. He hated the word, but she thought he looked adorable this way.
She tugged the comforter back and slipped onto the bed next to him, careful not to shift much weight or it would wake him up. She set Jack’s phone alarm for an hour and curled around her pillow.
A moment later, Jack’s weary voice filled her ears.
“How’d it go?”
“I want to strangle him.”
“Figured as much.” He looped one lanky arm around her hips and drew her into the front of his body. Warmth surrounded her. She closed her eyes and drifted off.
3
THAT IS THE LIFE OF A MAN
Jack’s alarm didn’t wake them. Instead, Kamala jolted awake as his phone screeched “Son of a bitch!” and then rhythm and blues music followed it. Disoriented, she fumbled around on the nightstand and answered without thinking.
“Dr. Jackson’s phone?”
“Is this Dr. Anjali?” a female voice asked.
She frowned, and then remembered the fact that they had basically been attached at the hip for over a year now, so it was normal that people assumed she’d be the one answering his phone. “Speaking.”
“This is Agent Dunham of the FBI. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
She sat up, more alert now than when the phone spooked her. “No, not at all. What can I do for you, Agent Dunham?”
“We’ve gotten a request for your presence at the precinct. Can you and Dr. Jackson meet us?”
“Of course, but who put in a request for us?”
“That’s the more interesting part. Not who you’d expect. The Tokyo police have been coordinating with their government and they sent a representative over specifically to see you.”
Kamala swallowed to wet her suddenly dry throat. “We’ll be there as fast as we can.”
Roughly thirty minutes later, Jack and Kamala were walking into the Cambridge police department. They were brought into the superintendent’s office, and found it had a small group gathered inside.
They had already been introduced to Deputy Superintendent Ed Burns from their investigation after Pete had been stolen. He was a tall man with steel-grey hair and frown lines reminiscent of Tommy Lee Jones. He stood leaning his backside against the desk behind him with his arms crossed, his eyes cool as he surveyed the people in the room.
The other familiar face was FBI Agent Michelle Dunham. She was average height with an athletic build, an asymmetrical bob haircut, and sharp brown eyes. Said eyes were all for the bald, green-eyed man next to her.
The first stranger made Jack wary despite having a softly amused expression as he saw the two of them. He was leaning a shoulder against the window and had angled his body in a way that he could see everyone in the room at once, but his gaze wasn’t directed at anyone for more than a second or two. He had a solid build and non-distinct features that made it hard to determine his age, but Jack guessed he was in his early fifties.
The second stranger was a Japanese woman with shoulder length hair wearing a white shawl over a black dress. She was the only one seated at the table across from the superintendent’s desk. Her laced fingers sat on top of a bound portfolio and something akin to relief flooded over her features as the scientists entered the room.
Jack shut the door behind them, took one look around, and immediately said, “So a guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender, ‘Do you have any helicopter-flavored potato chips?’ The bartender says, ‘No. We only have plain.’”
The Japanese woman and Superintendent Burns didn’t react. Agent Dunham shook her head slightly. The bald man actually smirked.
Jack shrugged. “Sorry. I make jokes when I walk into rooms this incredibly uncomfortable.”
He offered his hand to Burns and Dunham, who both shook them briefly and did the same when Kamala offered hers as well.
“Thank you for coming in,” Agent Dunham said.
She gestured to the bald man. “This is Agent William Fry. He’s with the CIA.”
Jack shook his hand next. “Scratch one more thing off the bucket list. Never thought I’d meet an FBI and CIA agent within a month of each other.”
“Life’s funnier that way,” Agent Fry said, revealing a slight Jersey accent.
Agent Dunham then gestured to the woman sitting at the table. “This is the liaison that the Tokyo criminal investigation department sent, Ms. Mariko Kazuyoshi.”
Kamala and Jack shook her hand as well. “What can we do for you?” Kamala asked as Jack pulled out her chair at the table before taking a seat as well.
“First of all, this is sensitive information,” Agent Dunham continued. “None of it is to leave this room. You both understand that, but it needs to be said anyway. With that in mind, we’ve called you in because the Japanese government has requested your assistance capturing Baba Yaga.”
“We would like to help however we can,” Kamala said. “Where do we start?”
“Well, before you say yes, we need to give you the details. They don’t mean a simple consultation or a lecture. They want to put together a team to hunt her down.”
Jack arched an eyebrow. “Uh, a team? Like the Avengers? Because I call dibs on Tony Stark.”
Kamala elbowed Jack in the gut. He coughed. “Sorry.”
“What he means to say,” Kamala continued after shooting him a glare. “Is why would we be field agents? We have the data that might explain how the dragon was developed and cloned, but we aren’t the foremost experts in dracology. What reason do they have to believe we could be useful in capturing the dragon ourselves?”
Agent Dunham gestured to Mariko, who popped open the portfolio. She withdrew a small stack of glossy photos and passed them to Kamala. Some were shots of the dragon from various angles, clearly taken by witnesses to the attack in Tokyo. Another was a fuzzy shot of a large, dragon-shaped blob in the morning sky. “We understand that this is a highly unusual request, but let me explain what’s going on. From what we can tell, Baba Yaga is a cold-blooded reptile, and so our search has been fruitless with heat signature-based technology. This restricts us to a visual sighting. Baba Yaga fled the city in the middle of the night, making it extremely difficult to pinpoint what direction she went in. We’ve had our military circling the surrounding areas for hours and we still haven’t determined her loc
ation. At the moment, we’ve put out a massive reward for anyone who might stumble across the dragon in hopes that we can find her before she runs into another heavily populated area, but so far the closest tip we’ve gotten is someone spotted her heading west, possibly in the direction of Aokigahara, as it is a forest where she might try to hide or make a shelter for herself. We believe that with what you’ve learned about the varanus lacerto species you bred, you can shed some insight on how she would behave and what to avoid as we attempt to subdue her.”
Kamala met Jack’s gaze. He made a faint nod in the direction of Agent Fry. “Who else would be on this team?”
“Agent Fry, of course, as he is sanctioned to operate outside of the United States,” Agent Dunham said, but there was an undercurrent of disapproval that was palpable. “We’re also in talks with the leading dracologist expert and a dragon hunting historian.”
Kamala narrowed her eyes slightly at the latter. “And what is the intent? Capture or execution?”
Mariko jumped in again. “Like you, we prioritize the capture of the creature alive, but if necessary, we would have to put it down for the safety of our citizens.”
“I see.” Kamala set the photos down. “Has anyone come forward to claim the dragon as their creation?”
“Understandably, no,” Mariko continued. “The number of crimes they’d be charged with would be sizeable. Our CSU is currently combing through the remains of the building where they believe she escaped from. That is the first site we would like to take you and Dr. Jackson to in order to begin the search.”
“Where is the department in the search for Dr. Yagami Sugimoto?”
Mariko sighed. “There are whispers here and there, but at the moment we have no leads. He has the money and power to stay off our radar, but it’s more than likely he is involved with the creation of Baba Yaga. He would have access to the kind of laboratory and materials to make it possible.”
“Have you spoken with Keiko Sugimoto?”
“She hasn’t provided anything of use yet. She also has extremely high-powered lawyers who have all but banned us from interrogating her. It’s the same with her father Makoto. For the moment, we’ll have to rely on our own resources instead of fishing for answers with the sharks.”
Kamala rested her folded hands on her lips, staring at the photos. “How long before you need an answer from the two of us?”
“We need an answer by tonight. Getting you to Japan loses us almost an entire day and every hour counts until we find the dragon.”
“My partner and I need to discuss this,” Kamala said, standing as Jack did as well. “We’ll contact you with our answer by tonight, but rest assured: either way, we’ll offer our help. We just have some things to discuss in the meantime.”
“Thank you.”
The two scientists nodded to the others and then left. Neither said anything until after they’d gotten back in Kamala’s car and the engine purred, blowing swirling puffs of vapor into the cool morning air.
“So,” Jack said. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
“Neither did I,” Kamala replied, leaning back into the headrest for a moment. “I think we can safely say this has been the most stressful 48-hour period since Pete’s birth.”
“Amen,” Jack sighed, running a hand down the uninjured side of his face. “We still have a lot of things to get done today, but I think we’re clear after about four o’clock to have a nice, long chat before we make a decision. Assuming our heads don’t explode from the stress first.”
“Right. We’ll stick a pin in it. No discussion until this afternoon. Work only.”
Jack stuck out his pinky. “Swearsies?”
Kamala rolled her eyes, but wrapped her little finger around his and tried not to smile. “Agreed.”
Around five o’clock that afternoon, Kamala sat on the couch sipping organic hot chocolate that Jack had made her. The TV was on, but muted, still running the latest updates from the Baba Yaga attack via the news. So far, she still hadn’t been sighted. There were scores and scores of interviews of firsthand accounts of that night as the authorities tried to piece together what happened and build a timeline to establish what could have contributed to her escape. Every so often, they cut to some political puppet commenting on Kamala’s statement from the previous night.
Jack sat next to her on the couch, blowing under the mound of marshmallows piled in his own mug to cool the cocoa. They sipped in silence, watching the news, before Jack eventually broke.
“Do you want me to go first?”
Kamala nodded. “If you wouldn’t mind. It might help me gather my thoughts.”
“Which of the nuclear bombs should I try to defuse first?”
She almost smiled. “Whichever you prefer.”
Jack took a long breath. “I, uh…when I freaked out last night, I want you to understand that it had nothing to do with you. The problem that I have with you being pregnant is that I never once thought about having a baby anytime in the near future. I’ve never grown up around children. I have a big family, but they only visit during holidays, so I didn’t have to learn how to babysit, or change diapers, or even hold a kid for more than a couple minutes at a time. Hell, I’ve never even been in a situation where I could find out if I even have paternal instincts. Everything that scares me about this isn’t about whether or not we could raise this baby. It’s whether or not I can help you raise the baby. You’ve known me long enough to be able to list off my faults. I’m terrified that one of those hidden faults is that I’d be a lousy father, and that the kid would end up resenting me the way I’ve resented my own father.”
He wrapped his long fingers around the mug to keep them steady and so she wouldn’t see them shaking. “But regardless of how I feel, I want you to know that this isn’t my decision. It’s yours. It’s your body. It’s your life that will be more affected than mine. I would never presume to tell you what to do with it. This baby is a joining of the two of us, but it’s you who would carry it to term and you who would give it everything it needs to survive, physically speaking. As far as I’m concerned, I want you to know that whatever decision you make, I will support it without faltering. I don’t want to influence you. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t tell me what you want to do or that you have to agree with me.”
She shut her eyes for a moment and also breathed deeply to calm her nerves. “I appreciate that more than you know. So much more, Jack. However, I’m afraid I will need more than that before I can tell you what I’m thinking. Forget about me for a second. Look inside yourself. Your heart. Look at your life. Look at where you thought it would go later down the line. Look at your dreams and your aspirations. Look at your future. After you’ve done that, I want you to tell me…”
Kamala settled her hand on his wrist, running her thumb along the back of his hand. “Do you want this child?”
Jack nodded and closed his eyes as well. He thought about where he’d been so far; the hellish pursuit of their dragon in the city of Tokyo only a month prior, the stressfulness of being the constant center of attention with the media, the long nights and early mornings full of lectures and lab experiments, and even the benchmarks in his personal life of past lovers and his relationships with family members. He thought about how easy it had been to be with Kamala and how it would all become infinitely more complicated with a baby on the way. He thought of the lost time that would occur, of the monetary costs, of the hours upon hours he’d spend learning how to care for a little one. He thought about how almost every anxious thought he’d have about who that child grew up to be in their unpredictable world and how it would all be on their shoulders. He thought about how he could shove this terrible choice inside a box and lock it shut forever, never having to deal with it, if he went in one certain direction. Everything would go back to normal.
Everything but one.
And then he thought about the dream he’d had of a little brown-skinned, black-haired child with a laugh like sunshine a
nd eyes as bright as the cosmos, hiding under the covers, waiting for him, only him. Such a tiny thing, and yet he remembered her so vividly that something in his chest tightened every time he pictured that round face and messy curls. He hadn’t told Kamala about the dream since the nature of it seemed so out-of-place, and because of how it had ended in a nightmare that still made him shudder sometimes. What if it did end in disaster? In heartbreak? In separation?
“I’m scared shitless,” Jack said, his voice hoarse. “But…I want to see where this goes. I want to see if I can be enough not only for you, but for the baby as well. I want us to keep it.”
“Okay,” Kamala said softly. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
He cleared his throat. “What about you?”
She lifted her hand and stroked the side of his face, smiling as tears dripped down her cheeks. “You silly man. I was just waiting for you to say that. Don’t you know me better than that?”
He laughed. “Really? You’re still yanking my chain even now?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Always, my dragon.”
She pulled him in for a sweet, slow kiss and settled her hand along the nape of his neck, playing with the tiny hairs there as she met her forehead with his. “You’re not alone in this. I have never been this afraid in my entire life. I have endless doubt about myself, about what motherhood will do to me, to my family, to our relationship, but…to tell you the truth, I knew after I took those tests that I wanted to keep it.”
“How did you know?”
“I prayed for an answer and it was shown to me. I saw a little girl with my hair and your eyes. She was smiling, happy, like a child should be. She was beautiful.”
More tears fell as her smile widened. “And I cannot wait to meet her.”
Something warm filled Jack’s chest and made his heart swell. “Me too. Let’s do this. We’re gonna parent the shit outta this kid.”
Kamala laughed. “Well said, Dr. Jackson.”
She kissed him again and drew back, wiping her face clean of tears. “One down, one to go. What about their proposal? Should we go into the field to hunt Baba Yaga?”
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