by Sarah Noffke
Spinning again, Sophia decided she’d take the more congested route. To her devastation, she came face to face with the pirate with the gun on his arm. It appeared to be powered up all the way.
With her sword in her hand but the blade pointed down, hopefully in a less intimidating fashion, she held up her arms, again trying to show her surrender.
Sophia hoped Evan had better luck than her. A quick glance to the right filled her with defeat. On the deck below, Evan was being restrained by four cyborgs, blood covering one of his cheeks. Beside him, NO10JO was pinned in the arms of another cyborg.
It appeared they’d lost this battle.
Chapter Sixty-One
“You’re not sorry,” the pirate in the top hat said as two others bound Sophia’s wrists. He had her sword and was eyeing it with a curious expression.
“We are,” Sophia argued, indicating the many cyborgs nursing injuries on the deck below. “We just wanted to talk to Trin Currante.”
“Now you get to,” he replied. “She’ll listen to your final words before delivering your sentence.”
With brute force, the pirate who had bound her hands pushed Sophia forward and led her down the stairs to the deck below.
“Oh, good,” Evan said, amused at the sight of her. “I was hoping you’d gotten caught too. Now there’s no one to save us. There’s no one looking down at us, ready to swing in and help if we simply ask?”
The hinting in his voice was strong.
Sophia shook her head. “No, we’re being taken to Trin Currante.”
If the dragons entered the equation now, it would turn this into a bloodbath. They had to downplay the threat to the pirates. After eyeing the many cyborgs sporting injuries, it was going to be hard to argue they weren’t there to fight.
You sure you don’t need my help? Lunis asked in her head.
We’ll be okay, Sophia told him as she was violently ushered toward a door opposite of the one to the captain’s quarters.
If things get worse, let me know, he stated. You know what I fear will happen to you once they take you under the deck.
Don’t, Sophia urged, knowing what her dragon was going to say next. The door ahead of them swung open and firelight glowed, illuminating a set of rickety steps.
Lunis laughed. I worry you’ll face Arrrrmageddon.
Chapter Sixty-Two
The last time Sophia had been on a ship, she’d been tracking down information on Quiet’s ship about the cyborg pirates. His ship, the McAfee, had a distinctively different feeling from the State of Grace.
Sophia was fairly certain the ship was haunted. The passage she was nearly pushed down was covered in strange cobwebs, illuminated by the torch flames on the walls.
Ahead of her were several of the pirates, all of them cheering their victory of capturing the dragonriders. Behind her, she could hear Evan mouthing off to a pirate who had him pinned and was ushering him forward.
“I’m just saying, mate,” he called over his shoulder to the cyborg, who had a totally metal leg and a hook on the end of his arm, “we could have gotten along. Seriously we just want to talk.”
The pirate pushed Evan, making him hit the wall. “Shut up. We aren’t interested in talking.”
“That’s fine,” Evan spat. “Just tell me one thing. How much did you pay for that hook and peg? An arm and a leg?”
Sophia groaned. First Lunis and now Evan. She needed friends with better jokes.
I heard that, Lunis said in her head.
So? she challenged as the cyborg head-butted Evan, making him scream from the pain. She could only imagine how much it hurt since she was certain the pirate’s head was partly covered in stainless steel. Evan should have kept his mouth shut.
No, he probably couldn’t, she reasoned, remembering how hard it was for her friend to shush his face in reasonable circumstances, let alone when facing angry pirates.
Ahead, the staircase was ending as they neared a hallway. That’s when Sophia noticed the spiders making the strange cobwebs. One crawled down the wall as she progressed to the bottom. It appeared to be a regular spider, except that half of its legs were metal and part of its body was covered in tiny gears and bolts.
Cyborg spiders, she thought. Now I’ve seen everything.
No, you haven’t, Lunis argued. You should have just seen Cindy’s face when she declared to Paul she wasn’t crazy and the tugboat on the ocean was really a dragon. He told her she was nuts and needed some space.
Lunis! Sophia bellowed. You go fix that right now!
She felt him sulk immediately. Okay, fine. But if you ask me, I’m doing them a favor, Lunis argued. She’s too good for him. He’s like a four, and she’s pretty much a nine.
Seriously, Lunis, I don’t have time for this right now, Sophia argued as she was pushed into a humid room that smelled of mold and gunpowder. She realized the reason for the smells. Firstly, they were on a boat, which was prone to mold. Second, the pirates had brought them to see their leader, and she happened to be hanging out in the weapons locker, sitting on a throne, surrounded by hundreds of knives, swords, guns, and other torture devices.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Sad. Beautiful. Tragic.
Those are the words Sophia would use to describe Trin Currante.
She’d met the woman at Medford Research. The cyborg had dropped enough hints that Sophia believed there was more to her than she’d thought. Sure, she might have been bent on taking their dragon eggs, but this wasn’t a dumb pirate. She’d figured out how to impersonate Trinity, the librarian in the Great Library. She’d figured out how to do something that as far as Sophia knew, no one had accomplished—she’d broken into the Gullington and nearly won against the Dragon Elite.
More than anything, and even facing almost inevitable defeat, Sophia’s instinct told her there was something about Trin Currante that was misunderstood. Back at Medford Research, she’d said she just wanted to be like Sophia. Before that, she’d overheard Trin Currante say the dragon eggs were the key to solving their problems.
Sophia had reasoned that like so many, Trin Currante wanted to be a dragonrider. A logical assumption was that she stole the eggs, hoping to magnetize to one. She had buried them in the ground, which would speed up the hatching process.
However, in her gut, Sophia felt there was way more to the story that she hadn’t understood. Information was power. Fighting someone without understanding them was haphazard. That was how so many wars throughout history had gone on without an end in sight.
Trin Currante sat on a makeshift throne. It appeared to be made out of crates and was pushed against the back wall of the hull. On the walls on either side of her were weapons of all kinds. Her men flanked her, and behind her and Evan, she felt the presence of the dozen other pirates they’d fought on the deck.
“Well, well, well,” Trin Currante said, her voice somewhat normal, but also sounding robotic. Her snake-like hair made of black wires flowed around her head. She was indisputably beautiful, with her porcelain skin and sharp features. The one human eye alongside the cyborg one was hard to look at. The metal that covered various parts of her body made her seem foreign. Dangerous. Different.
It was then Sophia realized how removed the cyborgs were from society. Why ever they had subjected themselves to such things was beyond her. She knew Trin Currante had gone back to the Saverus Corporation to fight the agency. Sophia had assumed there had been a fallout. Trin Currante had then released many of the subjects and recruited them to her side. Sophia thought that wasn’t enough information and she needed a lot more if she was going to get to the bottom of things.
“Look what the cat’s dragged in,” Trin Currante commented.
“Is that what you call these guys?” Evan asked, indicating the two cyborgs who had him restrained. “I call them jerks.”
Sophia shot him a look that said, “Shut it, dumbass.”
He seemed to get the message as he pursed his lips, blood dripping down one side of his fa
ce.
“Trin Currante,” Sophia began. “We aren’t here to fight you.”
The cackle that fell from the cyborg leader’s mouth echoed in the chamber. “That’s funny, because looking at my men, that’s not the impression I get.”
Sophia lowered her chin with guilt as she tried to keep her eyes off the cyborg with the broken nose or the many with cuts and bruises.
Sophia explained, “We tried not to fight them. We only did that in defense.”
“If we had wanted to, we could be out of these bindings, with our dragons saving the day,” Evan stated with confidence.
Sophia groaned, wishing he’d let her do the talking.
Apparently, one of the cyborgs holding him wanted him to speak less too because he kneed him in the gut, making Evan double over.
NO10JO began barking, madly trying to escape the clutches of the pirate who had him restrained.
Trin Currante cut her eyes at the dog. “Who let that mutt back in here?”
Evan spat on the floor, struggling to rise. “Hey, don’t call him that.”
She laughed. “That thing is useless as far as I’m concerned. All he does is sneak around our facilities and steal food.”
“So, he’s not your dog?” Sophia asked, wondering why they were talking about the stray rather than the topic that had brought them there. This was important, she reasoned. At least, she thought it would be important to Evan, who was worried that NO10JO belonged with the cyborgs rather than the Dragon Elite.
Trin Currante shook her head, producing a motorized sound. “Of course not. He kept coming around at our last facility. How he got here with you though, that’s a surprise.”
“He led us to you,” Sophia explained, deciding it was better to be honest to garner trust.
Trin threw her head back, her hands clutching the sides of her makeshift throne. “I knew he was a good-for-nothing sneak. Always spying on us. Playing tricks, pretending to be something he wasn’t.”
“That’s why I got him around the neck, boss,” the pirate with the top hat said, holding the cyborg dog by his scruff.
Trin Currante nodded in approval. “Yeah, good thing we figured out how to control that mutt.”
“Wait,” Sophia interrupted, confused. “He’s one of you. How can you be so cruel?”
When Trin Currante smiled, it seemed all wrong, like she was both satisfied and pained at the same time. “We aren’t the same. We might have been made by the same person, but I don’t allow just any into my ranks.”
“But the spiders,” Sophia argued. “I don’t get it. That’s why we are here.”
“I thought you were here to exact your revenge on me for almost killing you,” Trin Currante mused, running her eyes over Sophia. “I see I failed in that regard.”
“No, I’m here for answers,” Sophia argued. “Actually, I’m here to help you.”
Trin Currante stood suddenly, her joints making mechanical sounds. “Help me? Why would I want your help, dragonrider?”
Sophia stood up taller, although the cyborg behind her was tugging on her restraints, trying to keep her back. “You tell me. You said you wanted to be like me. You said the dragon eggs were how you could save your men. I’m trying to figure out why.”
Trin Currante took a long moment to study the three intruders. “I don’t understand. Why? Why do you want to figure us out?”
“Because something doesn’t add up,” Sophia explained. “If you help me figure it out, maybe I can help you.”
“Why would you want to help me?” Trin Currante roared, her face flushing.
Sophia braced herself against the sudden eruption of anger. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I will. I need information about why magicians are disappearing all over the world, and you need something only the Dragon Elite can help you with. I thought, maybe in a civilized world, we could work together to our mutual benefit. But I’m going to need your help.”
Trin Currante began pacing. As she did, her men stiffened as if afraid she might take her anger out on them. Her joints made strange noises as she moved. When she stopped abruptly, the hydraulics in her body hissed.
“The mutt came around because we are drawn to each other,” she explained, uncertainty written on her mechanical face. “It’s the same reason we’ve got the infestation of the spiders, rats and other creatures created by the Saverus Corporation. I guess they are drawn to us because they think we’re the same. But we’re different. The only way to get away from them was to get on the water.”
It made sense to Sophia. She could find magicians if she tried. She was certain she’d forever be magnetized to her dragonriders, for all of her life. That was the thing—we were always drawn to our own, she thought.
Sophia dared to step forward, although the cyborg pirate who had her pinned objected to any freedom. She halted and offered Trin Currante a sympathetic expression.
“I know you think we came for a fight,” she began. “But that’s the farthest thing from the truth. We tried to tell your men that.”
Trin Currante cut her eyes at the many men at their back and shrugged. “They’d been hungry for a fight. You could have come bearing gifts, and they would have fought you.”
Arrrrrtichokes, Lunis said in her head, nearly making Sophia burst out in a laugh.
She shook off the urge and tried to refocus.
“I realize we should want revenge on you after everything that happened,” Sophia went on. “You tricked me into giving you our secrets by impersonating Trinity from the Great Library. You poisoned the groundskeeper of the Gullington, taking down our borders and putting us on the defensive in ways we’ve never experienced. You stole one of the most precious things we have, our dragon eggs.”
Trin Currante sighed, not appearing proud of her actions. “I tried to kill you. I tried to kill all of your kind.”
Sophia nodded. “Something tells me you had a good reason. If you tell me, maybe we can help you, then maybe you can help us. I suspect, although I don’t know why, that we have a common enemy.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
“Twenty-two,” Trin Currante began. “That’s how old I was when he Saverus Corporation abducted me.”
“Abducted?” Sophia asked, not having expected this. She’d assumed the cyborgs had signed on and then rebelled when things didn’t go as planned.
Trin Currante gave her a sadistic smile. “Oh, yeah. I was like you. Young, beautiful. A magician with my entire life stretching out in front of me. And then…”
Anger filled her face, and an instant later, she shot her metal-covered fist into a nearby wall, smashing through it easily. Thankfully it wasn’t an exterior wall and water didn’t come pouring through.
Trin Currante’s men seemed unfazed by the sudden act of violence. Sophia suspected they had to be used to it. Maybe aggression was part of what happened to them during the change. Either way, after being abducted by he Saverus Corporation, Sophia didn’t blame the cyborg for the anger.
“You were taken, then,” Sophia urged, trying to encourage the leader of the cyborg pirates to talk. She cut her eyes at Evan and he pouted, not as intent on being a jerk as before. Hopefully he was starting to understand the importance of this mission and not bring violence when they were seeking cooperation.
“We were all taken,” Trin Currante explained, gesturing with a mechanical hand to the men around her. “Brandon, when were you taken?”
A man a few down from Sophia straightened. “When I was fifteen.”
“And you, Brian?” Trin Currante asked a man on the far side of the room.
“When I was eighteen,” he responded.
The leader of the cyborgs returned her attention to Sophia. “You see, Mika Lenna only wanted us if we were young. Magicians and young. Those are the two ways to qualify for his experiment. The one he invites you to, or rather forces you into, taking out most of what makes you human and replacing in us something that makes it impossible for anyone to look at us the same ever again.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Breathe, Sophia told herself, assimilating all this new information. “Mika Lenna,” she repeated, not having heard the name before.
Trin Currante’s mechanical eye flashed red from anger. “He’s the leader of Saverus, the cruel agency that did this to us.” She indicated her body.
Evan shook his head. “You didn’t want to become cyborgs?”
The pirate holding him tightened his grip, making Evan’s knees give out as he crumpled to the floor.
“Don’t!” Sophia screamed, reaching for her friend. She was yanked back by her captor.
“Stop,” Trin Currante ordered, making the men holding Evan and Sophia let up.
Recovering, Evan heaved as he got back to his feet.
The leader of the cyborg pirates seemed to soften as she regarded the two dragonriders. “You really don’t know?”
Sophia tilted her head to the side. “We’ve had little luck finding out anything about the Saverus Corporation. All we know is that you ransacked the place and took many of the cyborgs with you.” She decided to leave out the part about how Trin Currante apparently had access to the kill switch placed in their brains that could end them at her will that she’d used when they had three of their hostages at the Castle.
Letting out a long breath, Trin Currante continued to stride past her men and then in the other direction. “No, we didn’t want this to happen to us. Who would wish for such things?”
“So, this Mika Lenna?” Sophia asked, wishing the cyborg holding her would let her go. Her wrists were starting to ache, and her fingers were tingling from a loss of circulation. She reminded herself she had all her parts, so there was that at least.
“He’s an evil man,” Trin Currante explained. “Not even a magician, just a man with a lot of money and power and many strange things he’s done to himself.”
