by Liz Ellor
“When was this built?” she asked
“The tunnels and other buildings were constructed in the sixties,” said Captain O’Brien. “The Eyrie was built recently.”
“Why do you call it that?”
“Cantilevered.” Kyle said, his voice regaining some strength. “An eyrie is an eagle’s nest, right? Something you build in the sky.”
“I’m not the one in charge of naming things,” said O’Brien.
The guards lead them up to the Eyrie’s forth floor, which could have nearly contained a football field. Katrina had vaguely expected a room covered in weapon racks and work-out equipment, but the room was instead full of crates and boxes, the walls smelling of new paint. Someone had assembled a shooting range at one end of the hall. Kyle’s eyes lit up when O’Brien handed over his pistol and opened a crate to reveal a dozen pairs of earmuffs and goggles. “Dr. Harper ordered me to assess your marksmanship.”
They donned the equipment. Kyle’s smile nearly stretched off his face as he pivoted and fired five shots into the center of the target.
“You’re very good,” O’Brien noted.
“Made the Olympic team.” Kyle arched an eyebrow, cockily. “You hunt?”
“Some. Give your friend a chance.”
Kyle passed her the gun. A bulls-eye had been drawn in silver Sharpie on the grip. Is that a spell? Is he a witch? Did he touch me? Witches could read auras, which gave them much more generalized information than telepathy, but were often more accurate. But O’Brien’s gloves were still on, and if he was a Descendant, that meant he was refraining from magic use. It took skin contact to use magic on another person, and he didn’t strike her as a very touchy guy. They’d send in a trained aeromancer to do that job.
And if she failed to convince him, she might have to stand at the other end of the range for target practice.
She donned the goggles, braced herself, and shot. Her bullets all hit the target, with three in the center and two on the edge. Damn it. Kyle often said he sunk into a trance staring down a barrel. Katrina wasn’t sure what a trance even felt like.
“How’s that?” she asked, handing the gun back to O’Brien. He reloaded.
“This is a baseline assessment. Not an evaluation.” He nodded at the woman who’d come up with him. “Dorcas, bring the targets to Dr. Harper’s lab. You—”
“What the fuck?” Kyle shouted, and sprinted to one of the windows on the east-facing side of the room. “Holy shit! Katrina! You’ve got to see this!”
She hurried over. The security officers laughed.
A great grey shape plummeted down past the window. Borghild? she thought, but even a valkyrie’s wings weren’t that long.
“Out there,” Kyle whispered, his voice hoarse and quiet, like he wanted to not wake himself up. He pointed outside, his hand trembling.
Three grey shapes came together and split apart in the distance. Birds, she thought, but something was off. They didn’t move like birds. The shapes were agile, their long membranous wings curling and changing shape as they darted around in the sky. Skin flaps on the ends of their tails acted as rudders. Their long necks wound around one another as they connected, snapping at each other’s shoulders. The talons at the end of their long legs raked at each other’s bellies. Their bodies were cat-sized, with wingspans up to seven feet long.
Dragons.
The creatures before her eyes belonged in children’s fairytales. Here they flew in the flesh. How? Dr. Harper must have made them in her lab, cobbling them together from a hundred different species of reptile. Indigo will lose its shit. If the world knew these creatures existed, interest in legends and the supernatural would surge to an all-time high. People would start asking dangerous questions, and the answers would lead straight to the Seal.
“They’re amazing,” Kyle whispered.
“Can they breathe fire?” Katrina asked, pressing her fingers against the window glass, unable to look away.
“Unfortunately, no,” O’Brien said. “But the older wyverns can carry light artillery. We believe they might be very effective in pacifying crowds, although they were designed with air to air combat in mind.”
They could get out of range before a pyromancer could break their guns. “The older ones? You called them wyverns, right?”
O’Brien grunted in assent.
Another wyvern circled around the cluster of three. This one had a body the size of the Hummer they’d rode in on and wings that could have cast a football field in shade. One flap of his wings sent the small ones scattering back towards the mountain’s peak.
“That would be Veick,” O’Brien said. “The Alpha. He’s in charge.”
Veick’s round yellow eyes pierced through the Eyrie, locking on her and Kyle. A steep, boiling rage radiated from those glowing orbs. She knew well the powerlessness that inspired such feelings.
These creatures are intelligent.
“I don’t think he likes us,” Kyle muttered, voice still awed.
“He’ll probably send you an angry email before the day’s out,” O’Brien replied.
“Captain? Are these the new recruits?” The speaker was a younger man who’d just climbed up the stairs, dressed in the same uniform as the other security officers. “Loyal soldiers for the cause!” His smile might have been light and friendly, but his words were designed to trigger certain thoughts to spring to the center of the mind, thoughts that would show where their loyalties lay. The aeromancer.
He extended his bare hand for a shake. Katrina brought up her defenses and clasped it eagerly. Skin met skin, forming a conduit for the magic. Shawn’s burning finger sank into her thigh. Pain rushed up her leg, hot and intimate and shameful. A picture of his Indigo I.D. flashed through her mind.
“Pleased to meet you,” the aeromancer said, and moved on to Kyle.
It was an old trick, and one aeromancers had few tools to fend off. Indigo taught it to all agents. New recruits were ambushed on their walk home and beaten. Some they burned, some they waterboarded. Her throat swelled at the memory of her own time strapped to the ‘drinking chair’. Memories of trauma unsettled aeromancers; made them feel like they too were living the horror. Agents specializing in telepathic intelligence gathering a high risk for PTSD. Their training told them to avoid exploring traumatic memories unless absolutely necessary. She’d shown him just enough to make him think an agent had abused her, and that seemed to convince him she was truly on their side.
And yet, she didn’t feel victorious, even though she’d gone toe to toe with the enemy and won. Criminal Descendants, miles of wilderness, and creatures that shouldn’t exist surrounded her. In the city, Indigo had organization and numbers on their side. Some part of her had assumed the same was true of everywhere.
The security officers sent them downstairs to change into exercise clothing, Kyle to the second floor and Katrina to the third. She found the floor had been divided into twenty smaller rooms, like a big, empty dormitory. Or a barracks.
Her belongings—Shawn’s butterfly knife and a bag of candy from the plane—had been placed in the largest suite, which boosted a kitchenette, dining area, and its own bathroom. Someone had even ordered her fridge fully stocked. New clothing hung neatly in the closet. As far as apartments went, it was the largest amount of space she’d ever had to herself.
They’re trying to recruit me. She’d heard stories like this from her more successful colleagues, twisted as it was. Dr. Harper wasn’t joking. They really do want me to work for them. The other rooms on the floor were empty and small. All occupants of those would end up sharing a communal shower. Me, in management. Hell, Indigo doesn’t need a spy here. Their shitty HR department will do the Valve’s uprising in long before it starts.
A group of men and women in lab coats had gathered on the top floor by the time Katrina returned. The scientists strapped heart rate monitors around their chests and set them to running laps on the track, which looked so fresh she’d bet the surface had only been laid weeks
ago. She worked up a glorious sweat by the time they called ‘stop’, but the calm that usually followed her runs had been replaced by paranoia in the presence of so many watching eyes.
They pulled barbells out of the crates, and the scientists scribbled down how much they could lift. They stretched in a dozen different poses, and the scientists noted down their flexibility. One woman whipped a tape measure around Katrina’s leg without saying a word. Her cool fingertips left Katrina’s skin tingling. Measuring muscle-mass density. What exactly is this procedure of Harper’s supposed to do?
When the tests ended, the doctors gave them fifteen minutes to shower and the security officers escorted them back to the elevators. Kyle and the captain were talking amicably about deer hunting. One woman, Dorcas, asked how Katrina was doing, but she couldn’t find words to respond. The weight of the mountain felt like it was crushing her.
The hospital building protruded from the mountain slope. Just the light coming through the windows told Katrina it hadn’t been build as a hospital originally—no military building would leave their most vulnerable facility exposed.
She and Kyle were separated and stripped. Blood samples were drawn. Every inch of her body was photographed. They’d gotten hold of her medical records from New York, and they ran past each item with her. Childhood bee-sting allergy? Check. Right leg broken in three places after a ‘car accident’? Check. History of alcohol abuse? Teeth-gritted check. Gloved hands moved over her body. She focused on humming a Taylor Swift medley, in case one happened to be a telepath.
They slid her into an MRI machine and flashed dozens of pictures on the screen above her: abstract symbols, kittens playing in a field, wyverns flying. Many photos of wyverns—of their long faces and longer legs, their brown-veined yellow eyes, pointing forward like a hawk’s, the way flat, shimmering scales swirled across their brows, the patterns of veining in their wings, each as unique as a fingerprint.
The pictures made her suspicious. What do they care about what we think of their first generation experiment? You couldn’t have air-to-air combat without missiles to launch, or a competent gunner, at the least. Goddamn it. They want us to ride them, don’t they?
She muttered as much to Kyle when the security officers came to escort them back to the Eyrie. “Cool,” he said. “Always wanted a dragon.”
Captain O’Brien frowned. “They’re called wyverns. I warn you, don’t go slipping up around Dr. Harper. Or worse, a wyvern. Tends to offend the big ones, and when they’re angry, they go for your limbs.” He rolled up his sleeve. Arcs of tooth marks—long, like crocodile bites—dotted his upper arm. Katrina noticed the edge of a tattoo in his armpit, shaped like a red flame. A witch, indeed. She couldn’t fault him for wanting a permanent heat spell, working here.
“I thought they had human brains,” Kyle said, confused.
Katrina sighed. “They might. But it’s not like they’ve got human vocal cords to say ‘go fuck yourself’.” She glanced at O’Brien. “They don’t, right?”
He shook his head.
The next few days blurred into a series of tests and evaluations. They ate meals either in the hospital or in the small cafeteria on the bottom floor of the Eyrie. Either place, the scientists surrounded them. Kyle spoke openly, as he always did. Katrina had to bite her lip to prevent herself from screaming the truth. Priorities. Kyle versus millions. The guilt nagged at her, pushing until she’d give anything to make it go away. It culminated in a desperate trip to the scientists’ store on the ground floor and an attempt to swap her watch for beer.
“No, ma’am,” said the woman behind the counter. “Dr. Harper would have my head for messing in her experiment.”
“Come on,” Katrina pleaded. “It’s a good watch. Just a little.” Just once more time, before they start in on me. Who’ll know what’ll happen then? She could indulge her weakness for just a little longer …
But the woman didn’t budge, and a nearby security officers decided Katrina was too far from the Eyrie, and escorted her back.
She spent the night staring up at the ceiling of her suite, eyesight blurring as she slid in and out of sleep. What kind of person was she, to try and drown her feelings of responsibility with alcohol instead of telling Kyle the truth? Why can’t they have rehab for selfishness? Logically, she knew her actions were justified—but logic had never driven Katrina too far. She’d chosen to enter Indigo against everyone’s advice, and she’d fight to get back in against all sanity.
She wouldn’t let them put her on easy duty this time. Forget watching frat parties in Boston for a single werewolf brother. She’d tell them to send her to China or India, where she could keep order in a territory with millions of people and thousands of miles to watch. Or maybe to the Middle East, where she’d blend in better, where agents were desperately needed. Whatever good she’d do there would outweigh what she had to do to Kyle. This fortress must be brought down. It endangers every person in the world. When the time came to escape, she couldn’t run the risk of bringing Kyle along. I will do good. Some day. Somehow.
Dr. Harper came for her the next day, right after her scheduled time for psych evaluation ran over. “You’re twenty minutes late, Katrina.”
Katrina wiped her face across her sleeve and tried to look like she hadn’t been crying. Dr. Vasilyev, a tall Russian man with a quiet air, stood. “Dr. Harper, this patient is in urgent need of counseling.” Kyle had confessed what had happened on the cliff, and Vasilyev had gently brought it up after the questionnaire, and Katrina had realized she couldn’t keep pretending it … the suicide attempt … hadn’t actually happened.
“I don’t doubt it,” Dr. Harper said. “But the set up is time-sensitive. They won’t wait for long.”
“You’re really going to do this, then?” asked Vasilyev.
“No. I’ve strung you all along for eight years of research. I’m taking the patients out back and shooting them in the head.” She folded her arms over her labcoat. “Have I ever not done something I’ve said I’d do?”
Katrina glanced down at her body, wondering how she could say goodbye to something she both loved and hated for what it could and couldn’t do for her. If this goes wrong, it could be goodbye to everything. She wanted to live, now more than ever. She could fake a panic attack and maybe get Dr. Harper to postpone the procedure. Let them test Kyle first, see if it worked, and then—
No. He’d be waiting for her. She couldn’t let him do this alone.
So she stood, bile rising in her throat, and followed Dr. Harper out. Borghild closed in tight behind them, and Katrina knew there was nowhere to run.
They marched her into the elevator. Dr. Harper pressed the button marked ‘S-1’, and the car sunk downward. “Take these.” She pulled a packet containing two white pills from her pocket.
“I’m fine,” Katrina said, automatically.
“That was an order.”
Katrina swallowed the pills. Her heartbeat sped up. Drugs or nerves? Her head spun. Drugs or nerves?
The world outside her body floated away. When the elevator touched down at the bottom of the shaft, Borghild pushed her forward, and Katrina realized she’d forgotten Borghild was there.
Kyle was waiting further up the stone tunnel with Captain O’Brien. He had a warm smile on; the captain had his fists clenched. Cold wind drifted down from where the garage opened on the outside.
“Ready?” Kyle asked her. He took a step forward and stumbled. She caught him, grabbing on tight to his wrist, and pulled up the tunnel. Bizarrely, she felt like she was walking the aisle at her wedding. Stone-cold air slapped them across the face as they left the garage. Outside, the wyverns waited.
Four of them, she thought, but then her head throbbed and her eyesight swam until all she saw were gray walls of flesh rising up to surround them and the red flash of a caribou carcass. Yellow eyes peered up from above the body. She’s massive. This wyvern was only slightly smaller than a Hummer—and Katrina knew she was female. Information radiated fr
om the wyvern’s body, each new fact trying to rip a hole in her skull. A bone stuck in her long throat, a mix of curiosity and apprehension, a name ripping through the air like bad static from a concert speaker: Payaa.
Katrina fell to her knees. What’s in those drugs? Her hand reached for the carcass. The world tilted sideways. Her fingers brushed something smooth and warm. She slid into darkness.
Part 3: The Subject
Noise.
It played on repeat, weaving in and out of her body, distorted, round and ringing. It was not entering through her ears. She heard hissing, chirping … and then it vanished into a thick wave of wind, and then the peeping returned.
“Look at the delta patterns,” said Dr. Harper, her voice quivering with hope. “There’s an echo. It worked.”
“She’s still comatose. It’s too soon to tell. We could lose her and a fertile female, Phyllis. The risk—”
“We set out to take these risks. And that’s Dr. Harper to you.”
An avalanche of wind and silence buried the voices. Cold washed over her like the current of a river, and her skin burned, and warmth leaked up from her core.
Someone pressed a thumb to her shoulder. A thousand nerves shouted. She hadn’t known how sensitive skin could be—yes, yes you know, that’s how skin works.
“Ms. Harris?” Dr. Harper asked quietly.
That’s me. Katrina Harris. She reached for herself, grabbing for memories: concrete pounding under her sneakers, Annie laughing in a party hat, a thousand hands clapping when Senator Winters announced her campaign. Threads of control swam down her prickling limbs. Her thoughts threatened to leak out the back of her head, sucked down by a force stronger than gravity. No. My thoughts. Me.
She opened her eyes.
Vertigo hit hard. Shadows scattered. Whiteness seemed to swallow up her world—no, it’s just the damn ceiling—and suddenly, every crack swam into vibrant focus, every jagged edge and tear in the plaster. The colors took on a new dimension; a sharper contrast. Something’s wrong. She turned her head sideways to look for Dr. Harper and realized her peripheral vision had been cut short, erased at the edges. Her vision zoomed in and out on every flickering muscle in the doctor’s face: her jaw, clenched, her smile, forced, her eyes, holding back tears.
