“Enable emergency mode,” she subvocalized to the chip.
“Enabling…”
But then a moment later, the bio-chip’s voice came back. “Unable to access. Please provide access codes.”
Yeah, she’d totally do that if she could find someone to ask. And you know, if that person spoke a language she understood. Or understood the language she spoke.
“Where am I?” she asked the chip out loud.
“Unknown location. Unable to connect to server.”
“Yeah, I got that part—okay, what time is it?”
“10 a.m., Mountain Standard Time. Day, month, and year unknown.”
“How long has it been since my first loss of consciousness?”
“86 hours, 22 minutes, six seconds.”
Holy crap. She’d been here for nearly four days. No wonder she’d had that dream! Even her subconscious knew Koko would be worried sick about her, especially with her disappearance coming so soon after her father’s funeral. Her second funeral in as many years.
Fensa needed answers.
Apparently, she’d been zapped into the future. Way far into the future, if her bio-chip couldn’t connect to the servers even in emergency mode.
She stopped mid panic spiral, realizing something else. “Why aren’t you screaming at me to get to a medbot?” she asked her chip.
“All biological systems are in good condition,” her bio-chip answered. “Current medical status: Concussion is…HEALED. Contusions…HEALED. Bladder and bowels…EMPTY. Sustenance Levels…GOOD. Acceptable sustainability for…48 more hours. Hygiene…GOOD. You are…CLEARED…to move about.”
Fensa narrowed her eyes, understanding but not quite believing her ears. “Wait, are you trying to say someone fixed me up, cleaned me, fed me, and emptied my bladder and…” here she grimaced, “bowels?”
“Yes, an unidentified medical device oversaw all bio-functions while you slept.”
Fensa looked again at the holes above the red examination table. Well, that answered any remaining questions she might have had about the bizarre tentacle porn experience from earlier.
So then. Where the Fenrir Wolf was she? Fensa made a very deliberate decision to keep that question foremost in her mind.
She could handle investigating where she was. But when was becoming too scary to contemplate. And Ola’s whereabouts might very well drive her insane—okay, more insane than she already suspected she was.
Because those instruments on the wall… The tubes had not only fed her, but cleaned her, taken care of all her biological needs, and apparently repaired her concussion—which she didn’t even know was possible. Really, everything in this glacier castle or science lab or whatever it was, was at least fifty to a hundred years ahead of her time.
Which meant when she’d arrived at the gate, and saw the people from the facility coming after her… When she’d uttered the same set of words that had brought her now-dead father to the first century of the new millennium… When she’d gotten sucked into the time gate… She’d been transported somewhere no other shifter from her time had ever gone before: the future.
But how far in the future? She could only pray the answer was: not too far.
Because honestly, those crazy shifters with spears didn’t bode well. Nor did the robot with the illegal genitalia. Had she landed in the middle of a post-apocalyptic scenario?
“Action, Fensa. Not fear.”
That’s what her papa would have advised in this situation.
Fensa went over to the wall furthest from her bed. Embedded in it were the same three connected grooves she’d noticed yesterday. A door. She reached out a tentative hand to touch what had to be a seventy-foot high rectangle, wondering why anyone would need a door that big. But then, hot damn! It slid open. No problem.
She walked through the large opening into the cavern’s main room. The one she’d been escorted to by Tall, Hot, and Expressionless a few days ago. This room was just as sweltering as the lab. Had the maybe-robot cranked up the heat? She knew it wasn’t just the clothes because she’d been feeling hot even before she got dressed.
Weird? Definitely. But she was grateful. At least she had a warm shelter, snow boots, and clothes. Which was way more than she arrived with four days ago.
“Do you still have compass functions?” she asked her bio-chip when she entered the dark tunnel. Thankfully she could see some light in the distance, and the tunnel was much brighter than when she’d first arrived with the sun at her back.
“Yes,” the bio-chip answered.
“Okay. I want to head south,” she said, walking swiftly towards the mouth of the tunnel. “Can you guide me?”
“Yes,” the bio-chip answered.
“Great. I’ll need you to download that survival book to my fingers,” she said, placing both of her fingers into an “L” shape, only to realize she no longer had the damn connector thumb rings that turned the space between her fingers into a view screen. Shit.
Fensa remembered dropping them outside the facility so security would have to access her bioware to track her—which would mean getting clearance from GoGen. That little trick had gained her a good hour she wouldn’t have otherwise had, but it unfortunately lost her the ability to download valuable materials onto her finger screen.
“No Connector Rings available,” her bio-chip answered, confirming her fear. “Would you like the audio version?”
“Ye—” she started to say. Only to stop short when she reached the mouth of the tunnel.
About a yard away from where she stood, was a small hill that hadn’t been there before.
No, not a hill.
She blinked in confusion beneath the weak morning sun.
It was a creature. One she’d only heard about in her father’s stories. And, of course, in various human fairy tales.
A dragon.
A dark blue dragon.
There was a dark blue dragon sleeping right outside the ice castle’s front door.
8
Okay, okay…
Fensa stood motionless as a scared bird in the ice cave’s main entrance. Waiting for the dragon to attack. Just like the ones that had slaughtered her father’s entire family, right before he managed to slip away, using the time gate spell.
But it didn’t attack her. The dragon remained exactly where it was; its long body splayed out sideways, putting her in mind of a hill composed entirely of scales of such dark blue, they could easily be mistaken for black from a distance.
But she wasn’t at a distance. And with her 20/20 wolf vision, she could easily see the angry spikes running down the creature’s back in a pattern that suggested a spine. It also had a tail, so long and thick it could probably be used as a club if wielded in just the right way. But it lay still, too…as dormant as the rest of the body.
Was it…dead? she wondered as some of the tension left her still frozen body. But then the wind picked up, and she smelled it. Death. Humans. Barbecue…wait, what?
Fensa got the answer to her question and the surprising mix of smells when her eyes shifted downwards.
Bodies. Two of them, on the frozen ground just beyond the dragon’s tail. Burnt to a crisp.
And suddenly, there wasn’t just a dragon outside the cave. There was clear evidence of an aftermath.
With a would-be scientist’s morbid need to know, Fensa looked around and found two more bodies. One resting near the dragon’s head in a burned hunk, the other slumped against the glacier cave’s front wall, it’s neck at an odd angle. It had a spear still clutched tightly in its’ hand, but the point was little more than a jagged piece of bone. Misshapen, and no longer pointed…as if it had been broken off.
Or shattered, she thought, remembering her papa’s tales of how the warriors’ swords cracked and clanged off the armored skin of their “serpent enemies.”
Either these unlucky humans had surprise attacked the dragon, or the dragon had surprise attacked them. Regardless, at least four bodies lay scattered before
her, and she strongly suspected the dragon’s massive body might be blocking her view of even more.
By the Fenrir Wolf…
Fensa’s gratitude for the nutrients she’d been tube-fed went right out the proverbial door as her stomach lurched. And that was before her next thought dropped down like an anvil. She was going to have to walk through…that. Past the dead dragon, past the deep-fried humans, to begin what she knew would be a long journey south.
“Oh, help me please,” she whispered to her mother’s God, sending a “let me be strong,” shout-out to the Fenrir Wolf, the Norse demi-god whose rain of angry tears had created werewolves. She prayed to both for strength as she scurried across the narrow expanse between the dragon’s sinister crown of horns and the edge of the glacier.
Just half a yard, she told herself. Then she’d be on her way—
The dragon’s head suddenly lifted. And Fensa leaped back right before it released a tortured yell, somewhere between a scream, and the screech of an old eight-wheeler truck braking hard. The sound waves were so strong, she could feel them ripple through her, the bass shaking her chest as the creature’s cry echoed across the tundra.
Again she froze, this time in a rictus of fight or flight. She did not want to be burnt to a crisp, but she also had nothing but her hands to defend herself. No way to fight a flying, fire-breathing armored beast that had already killed four armed humans.
Fensa opted to remain in place, her life flashing before her eyes in a bittersweet scroll of family, facility, and funerals, followed by the fervent wish things had ended almost any other way but this.
But then…nothing happened. For seconds on end. And when a full minute of not getting turned into a pile of ashes went by, Fensa dared to look up—only to stumble back.
Her heart rocketed up into her throat when she saw the dragon’s face. Above two flared nostrils were a pair of red eyes.
Exactly like the maybe-robot’s.
However, while one eye stared directly at her, wide and unblinking, the other—oh God. Her stomach lurched again. The other eye had a spear embedded in it.
And that was how Fensa discovered the true meaning of, “I wouldn’t wish X on my worst enemy.”
Dragon or not, eyes were a funny thing. On an empathetic wince, Fensa closed her own eyes against the painful sight, only to open them again unable to stand the thought of the dragon’s suffering.
Are you crazy, bitch? Run!!! Her human practically screamed, nearly as soon as the sympathetic thoughts popped into her head. “These things slaughtered your father’s entire family—!”
But it was already too late.
The dragon might be a monster, but Fensa wasn’t. She crossed the expanse of snow toward where the dragon was dripping blood out of one eye.
“Is that…you?” she asked it softly.
The creature made a wretched sound, and soon its head and neck collapsed back down to the ground. As if it were not only too weak to answer her question but had also used up its entire store of energy just to look at her. Despite the tremendous roar from earlier, the dragon now seemed feeble. At death’s door, thanks to that spear. In its eye. In its effing eye!
Oh, crap. She was going to have to do this, wasn’t she? She was going to have to…
Catching her breath, Fensa reached up with both hands and wrapped them around the long shaft end of the spear. Then before she could think too much about what she was about to do—to an eye, no less—she yanked back as hard as she could.
She’d thought the roar from earlier had been bad. This time, the sound waves coming from the pained dragon literally knocked her off her feet.
Fensa landed flat on her ass as the dragon reared back, coming to its feet in a furious whip of scales and claws. Had she mistaken him for a hill before? No wonder. Because even on all fours, he towered over her. Even more imposing than a hill, he cast a cold dark shadow over where she crouched, cowering in the snow, grasping the broken spear shaft.
Okay, Fensa decided right then and there. Kindness, despite its good reputation, was way overrated. What the hell had she been thinking? Because thanks to her kindness, she was now likely to die exactly how she thought she would right before she decided to re-enact that old mouse and the lion fable with a goddamn dragon!
But once again, nothing happened. In fact, a moment later, the only heat she felt on her back was from the sun. Fensa rose her head slightly and saw that the shadow was gone. As was the dragon.
Instead, a few meters away, lay a naked man collapsed in the snow. Fensa stood, as unable to let a hypothesis go unchecked, as she’d been unable to walk away from a deadly predator with a spear stuck in its eye. She dropped the spear shaft to the ground and moved gingerly toward the figure up ahead.
Curiously, the man, from what she could see, had no genitalia. Just several horizontal rows of pale scales where a human man’s abs and penis would be. He looked kind of like a Ken doll. But you know, with scales.
So what the fuck was he, then? A dragon shifter? A robot? A dragon shifter robot? If so, then what had she felt yesterday when his body pressed up against hers?
Fensa scanned him for more clues. His eyes were closed, though one now sported an ugly gash where smooth skin used to be.
Had he died from shock? But no, she could see his torso lifting with the effort it took to breathe. It wasn’t the most hearty breath she’d ever seen, but at least he was breathing. And that would keep his organs going…while he slowly died of hypothermia in the snow.
Which wasn’t her problem, she reminded her sentimental wolf. She needed to be on her way. Put as much distance between her and this dragon as possible, and head south toward hopefully warmer weather, and friendlier natives. Yes, that’s what she had to do. It was the most logical plan of action—
Okay, who was she kidding?
After what her bio-chip stated as nearly thirty grueling minutes later, she’d finally managed to drag the dragon man’s body into the lab. With her wolf strength, she was stronger than any muscle-bound human male. But it had still been some serious hard-going because, even in his reptile Ken-mode, the dragon still weighed a metric ton.
Fensa’s arms were incredibly tired by the time she reached the ice castle’s inner lab; she settled for getting him as close as she could to the red metal examination table. And she didn’t bother attempting to heave him up onto it.
But thank the Fenrir Wolf, the lab—as she’d hoped—was smart. Almost as soon as she got him near the table, the blue wall above what she assumed were medical tubing holes lit up with glowing letters that resembled a cross between her papa’s runes and Korean.
And…. yes! She’d been right about the holes. After a bunch of flashes from the blue wall, the medical examination table retracted, and a handful of tubes descended. With a little squick of discomfort, she watched them enter his body in several places, including between the scales covering his lower torso, and up his nose.
So yeah, this would be a good time to cut out. She’d done her good deed. Got Mr. Dragon Man back to his lab, and he’d most likely be all fixed up in a jiffy. Better to be long gone when he woke.
Fensa lingered, though, looking around the lab because she still didn’t understand… All the tech in the lab was beyond anything she’d ever seen before, but the men who’d attacked him had been wielding spears. Again, with the damn spears!
What could it possibly mean? Her thoughts drifted back to an earlier hypothesis, about this being some sort of post-apocalyptic era. She thought of that old Einstein quote, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Yeah, time to go, she decided after a few unsettled seconds of peering at the high-tech room. Fensa grabbed a few of the shiny rocks from the pile, but that was it, since she wasn’t even sure what counted as money in this time period. Time to get on the road. Go find some answers. And hopefully whatever was left of her civilization. Would Michigan be a better bet, walking from what
she hoped was Alaska? Or should she try to get back to Arizona? Michigan was where she’d grown up, but walking to Arizona would be an easier, warmer walk. Assuming the entire world wasn’t covered in a radioactive winter or something…
God, it was hot in here… Seriously, why had he turned the heat up so high? Even if she were still naked on the exam table, this room would feel unbearably warm.
Fensa swayed a little and fought the urge to strip out of her new clothes. No, no, she had to go. Get on the road.
She forced herself to walk out of the lab, and start putting as much distance between her and the dragon as possible. The lab door whispered closed as soon as she stepped both feet into the outer room as if delivering a quick good-bye. However, she only made it as far as the pile of polar bear furs before she fell to her knees, her entire body weak. The clothes she’d been so grateful for less than an hour ago had gone from practical to suffocating.
She tore them from her body, desperate to have them off, all the while cursing. Had she come down with some kind of infection? Wolves were supposed to be immune to most human ailments, but that had been in her time. Who knew what this post-apocalyptic future held?
But then she peeled off her pants…and the scent hit her. Hard. The pants must have had a built-in odor eliminator, or else she would have known right away. As it was, by the time she got her pants all the way off, the room had filled up with the smell she was emitting. Pungent and dark, with a sharp, acrid undertone. A scent so strong, even a human would have sensed it if he or she were standing close enough. And depending on the level of infrastructure, it could be scented by a wolf up to ten miles away.
With a grim plunk, the memory of the bio-chip going over all her missed events after the funeral came back to her. “You’ve missed…Appointment with Dr. Donegal…Scheduled visit with Koko Lonewolf… Monthly check-up with Sanpha Bhediya.” Sanpha Bhediya, the med student who came to the facility each month to administer mandatory heat control shots to all the she-wolves. Those who hadn’t received their monthly heat shots weren’t allowed to remain at the facility. For obvious reasons.
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 22
