by Maia Starr
“Yes, my king!” Azlo shouted.
“I'm done setting charges!” Jex said.
“Good. Get out of here. Help Azlo,” I said.
“No, I won't leave you, my king,” was his response.
“Dammit, Jex, get out of here; that is in order. Do not disobey your king!”
I heard Jex grunt and growl over the radio. He did not agree with my orders. Just then, I saw Azlo flying overhead with Moxor in his arms. I began to shoot all the Clenok cyborgs that noticed them in order to protect him from their gunfire.
“I got that one,” Jex said suddenly at my side.
“Dammit, didn't I tell you to get out of here?” I shouted at him.
“I didn't hear that order,” he said as he grabbed my arm and began to pull me backward. Together, we fought our way back toward the front door.
“I am clear of the facility!” Azlo said.
I looked at Jex. Together, we ran towards the front door and took flight, spreading our emerald-green wings and flying in the facility. We made it out the front door and into the open night sky where we flew straight up. That was the plan. Fly up and as high as you could. The cyborgs had a limited range, and they did not fly.
“Detonating!” I shouted as I hit the detonation button on my armband. In a split-second, the entire facility blew up. Bam! Boom! Bam! Explosion after explosion went off. We cheered in victory.
The heat and fire enveloped us, but it did not matter. We were dragons. We were made from the fire. It did not hurt us. We watched as the facility succumbed to the explosions. It crumbled in on itself. I hoped the fire was hot enough to melt those cyborgs. I smiled. Mission accomplished.
“Go! Go! To the rendezvous point,” I said into the radio.
We flew away from the mushroom cloud of smoke and flame toward a mountaintop high in the mountains with a thick forest that provided us with cover. It was where we had landed our army a week before. Earth was new to us. We knew it was under attack by the Clenok cyborgs for almost a decade. It had nearly decimated the entire population of humans. But it wasn't our fight. But there was a reason that brought us here, and I was now going to be faced with that reason more than I could ever know.
“Set him down on the leaves,” I said to Azlo as he held Moxor. He sat him down on the leaves. I hovered over him.
“Dammit. Why can you never listen to orders?” I said looking at his injury on the side of his torso. We had a good armor; it was part of being a weredragon. But sometimes a gun laser blast could get through if it hit us in the right soft spot. This was what happened to Moxor.
“I am sorry, my king. But we both know that my time was up anyway. The blackness had come upon me. I would rather give my life in battle than to succumb to this strange plague that is new to us. I did not want to die a weak Veruka in bed. Now I have an honorable death. Now I died defending my king and helping the Earth humans. I am at peace,” he said in a whisper as the life was leaving him.
His words were honorable. They were the true words of a Veruka weredragon. They made me proud. He was a good soldier, and I understood what he meant. We gathered around him until his last breath. I had never been prouder or more saddened by the death of a soldier. We had all grown up together, Moxor, Jex, Azlo, and Razook. We were tight even though I was king. We had trained together since we were young. Losing Moxor was like losing a brother. I could see the pain and anguish on each other’s faces as he left us. But we knew that he was right. None of us wanted to give into this strange illness that had sprung itself onto us on our planet. It was unexplainable. But we were too honorable to die in bed, a sick weredragon. We were born to fight, protect, and defend. We knew that if we were in Moxor’s place, we would have done the same thing.
Chapter 2
Dr. Vanessa Lopez
“You don't know what you're doing,” Dr. Bradley Douglas said as he grabbed the test tube out of my hand. He was rough as he yanked it from me. I hated him. His beady black eyes were small and were always staring at me. He was balding, and he always slouched. Still, he was all that I had in terms of fellow scientists. So I had to deal with working with him.
“Yes, I do know what I am doing, Dr. Douglas. You are not giving me a chance,” I said annoyed by his lack of confidence in my medical skills. I grabbed the test tube back from him.
“Do I have to do everything myself? You are useless, Vanessa. Give that back to me. You are going to do it wrong, and then that sample will not be able to be used,” he said to me.
“I am not useless. You are a bully. I have had enough of your crap,” I said as I placed the test tube back on the stand. I pulled off my rubber gloves and stormed out of the lab.
I walked into the bright sunlight and breathed in a cold breath of air. It was a crisp autumn day. The pine trees towered high around me, and I could smell the sap on the tree trunks. I took in a few breaths to calm myself. Nature always did that for me. Even though I spent all of my time in the lab and medical clinic, I preferred to spend all of my time outdoors, even if it was in this prison complex that we had made for ourselves. Being with Dr. Douglas always got my blood pressure high. I needed to take a walk to remember that I was, in fact, a good doctor and scientist. He was just a misogynistic asshole.
“Good day to you, Dr. Lopez,” a young woman said as she walked by me. I smiled a polite smile and returned the greeting. I liked her. She had wanted to learn from me. I promised to make her a student the following year. In truth, I was holding off because I did not want to subject her to Dr. Douglas as well. But we needed more medical staff, and anyone interested was always taught.
I continued my walk, and there were more greetings. I was well known in the small village of Haven Brook. Everyone knew everyone, but I was seen as a leader. People followed me. I didn’t ask for it. It just happened.
We all were in this together. We couldn't leave if we wanted too, not that leaving was the best option anyway.
I took a few steps and turned around. Behind the tall pine trees was a massive wall rising a hundred feet in the air, made of solid concrete. An electrified fence sat on top of it. If you went to the other side, there was a massive tangle of electrical traps. They were there to protect us from the cyborgs known as the Clenok. This is what the world had become.
When the machines learned to replicate themselves, and had developed a shocking artificial intelligence ability, they took over. It happened slowly at first. I almost didn’t believe the news reports. But then it spread more and more. The battles were hard and fierce. Most of us hid away in safe bunkers or at military bases so we didn’t see just how much the cyborgs had grown and how much they were kicking human ass. Before everyone realized the level of devastation, it was too late. They had taken over and were the majority, and humans were the minority and on the verge of extinction.
Haven Brook was where I lived now. We were one of the few isolated and protected villages left on Earth. The others were scattered across the globe. I had never seen one, but we heard about them. Every now and then we would get a transmission from them, but they came years apart. No one wanted to risk sending a transmission that would let the Clenok cyborgs know where they were. So we all lived quietly in hiding, all of the villages scattered across the globe. Haven Brook was one of these villages. I considered myself lucky to be in one surrounded by natural beauty. This village had been a mountain village in the state once known as Colorado. It was the perfect village to build a wall around, and it was self-sufficient with several clean water brooks running through it and lots of farmland with crops. It wasn’t exactly an abundance of food, but we weren’t starving.
I had heard that some of the other isolated protected villages had been built around ruined city blocks. I could only imagine how ugly that environment would be to live in. I counted myself fortunate. Sometimes you could forget about the Clenok cyborgs outside the walls and think you were just living a normal life, the way that we used to before the Clenok cyborgs took over. But then you would remember that t
here were armies of Clenok cyborgs roaming the Earth with one mission: kill all the humans. It was a complex situation to live in, and we had very little hope. Just one look at the massive wall forced you to remember just how much danger we were in.
I kept walking. I needed a good. I wanted to figure out a way to take out the cyborgs, but I was a doctor. Machines were not my expertise. But I had a lot of time on my hands in a town where there was nothing to do but survive. At least I was thinking in those terms. Most were only concerned with keeping the cyborgs out and defending and fighting against them. I felt like I was the only one trying to find a solution to the entire source of the problem, whatever that may be.
The Clenok cyborgs were hard to fight. Our only defense was electricity in order to fry their circuits, but that did not always work. If they were ever to crawl over the high cement walls, we would be doomed.
“Dr. Lopez… Vanessa…” I heard Dr. Bradley Douglas say. I turned around to face him.
“I must apologize. Sometimes I just grow frustrated. I should not have said those things,” he said.
“Apology not accepted. There are two of us in the lab and in the medical clinic. You have always undermined me. I grow tired of it. You say awful things and then a few minutes later apologize. I will no longer play that game with you, Dr. Douglas. If you have nothing nice to say, then don't say anything at all. Didn't your mother teach you that?” I said walking away from him.
I’d had enough of him for one day. This was what he did. He thought that he could say whatever or do whatever he wanted as long as he apologized for it a little later and then all would be forgiven. When I first came here, I thought those apologies were sincere, but now I knew better.
I walked along the sidewalk that went down Main Street. Life went on like a normal town. There was a small gathering area that was a lot like a coffee shop, except nothing was sold there. We didn't have any goods to spare. Everything was rationed, and the food was carefully distributed. But nevertheless, people insisted on being social. So there were only tables and a friendly environment. There was a library and a movie theater that had old projectors, no computers needed. Other than that, there was not much to do other than walk around in nature and hang out. Everyone had a job in order to keep this place a well-oiled system, but most could do their job in half a day and then the rest of the day was for leisure. We considered a day without a cyborg attack a great day. It meant we were successful at staying hidden.
“Good day, Dr. Lopez,” I heard over and over again as I walked, passing the outdoor tables. I smiled even though I wasn't in a happy mood and nodded my head in greeting. I only wanted to get home and be alone.
My home sat away from the Main Street area of the village. It was one of the very last corner houses on a street in the far back of the town. I liked the isolation. Most people lived clustered together and wanted neighbors. There were so many abandoned houses that I didn’t understand why they would want to be so close. But I was a bit of a loner; it had always been my way.
I walked in and ate a light snack of a slice of bread, a chunk of cheese, and a large container of water. Then I went down to my basement to work on my own project. No one knew that I was working on it. They would probably not approve of it. It was very dangerous, but I thought it was necessary. It involved using a laptop. This was forbidden. Laptops were very dangerous nowadays. But I knew that if we wanted to defeat the machines, it was going to take a machine. But I felt like I was the only one that understood that.
You see, once the artificial intelligence machines took over and started to manufacture Clenok cyborgs to kill humans, all of Earth eventually outlawed computers and digital devices. It made sense. Any computer could be used against us by alerting the regional keddle of its existence. Then the keddle would send in a band of cyborgs to check it out. Since humans used digital devices, it was easy for them to find us in the early days. So eventually all digital devices were outlawed and burned.
The keddle was the main source of instruction to a group of Clenok cyborgs. A keddle was a very large machine that oversaw a local army of Clenok cyborgs. We thought of it like a general overseeing an army. But this was much more sinister and harder to stop. We didn't really understand them.
My secret project involved trying to create a computer virus that could be uploaded to a keddle. If the keddle went out of order, then the Clenok cyborgs it oversaw would stop working. So I always thought taking out the keddle was more important than taking out an entire army of Clenok cyborgs. But no one could ever figure out how to create a virus to upload it to a keddle because they did not want to run the risk of creating the virus using a computer. But how else could it be done? It was necessary.
So when I moved into the abandoned house, I was fortunate to find a very advanced top-of-the-line laptop hidden away in a safe inside the walls. When I found that, I told no one. I knew what needed to be done and no one would understand.
So in my free time, this is what I did. I taught myself computer coding. I had a medical background, not a computer background. But I was a scientist after all, and I could pick up anything. So every day I went through the computer books, teaching myself about code. But I never turned on the computer. I wasn't ready for that. I still had a lot to learn, and I wouldn't work using the computer until I knew what I was doing. It was the best way to protect the village.
Chapter 3
King Karik Korinth
“We lost a good soldier two days ago. His loss will be remembered forever. But we have come to Earth with a mission. We have to carry on that mission and honor the death of Moxor. He would want it that way,” I said as I sat around the table with Azlo, Jex, and General Razook. They were my trusted counsel and second-in-command.
“So what is our next move?” Azlo asked.
“Continue with the plan that we had previously set in motion. First, we debilitate the local Clenok cyborg army. We have done that with the raid on the facility. Now, we find the nearest human habitation. Our scouts are searching. As soon as we have coordinates, the two of you will accompany me to the village. General Razook will stay behind and look after the army until I call upon them,” I said.
“Just the three of us? That sounds dangerous. What if the humans are hostile to our arrival?” Azlo asked.
“That may be their first reaction. But it would be even more so if we show up with an army. No, it is better to show up just us so that I may speak with them and tell them why we are here,” I said.
“Sounds good to me. If the humans can help us with this new plague burdening the Veruka here and on Tivoso, then I am all for it,” Jex said.
“Yes, we must help the humans fight the Clenok. They could have answers for us. Their medical expertise is far more advanced than ours. They might be able to figure out why we are suffering from this plague all of a sudden. But we will not have those answers unless we protect them from the Clenok cyborgs. I think it is a good trade. We help the humans to protect themselves, and in return, they help us with their medical advancements. I only hope they're open to it,” I said as I stood up and began to walk back-and-forth in the room of the grand ship. We had come to Earth from Tivoso with an entire fleet ready for battle. My ship was very fast and grand, and now that it was parked, it served as my home in the forest.
“They will accept our help once they see our army. I am sure that the Earth humans have nothing like it. Plus, they cannot shift the way that we can. We are fierce dragons. The humans are fragile,” General Razook said.
“Yes, I agree, and…” But I could not finish my sentence. I suddenly felt like I was in a fog. I felt weak. I stumbled and put my hand down on the table to hold myself up.
“My king!” Azlo shouted as he stood up and grabbed me. The other man stood up and came to my side.
“I am fine. I am all right. It was just a moment of… confusion,” I said trying to bring myself out of the fog. They were quiet as they all looked at each other.
“It is the plague,” Azl
o said.
“No, not him. He is our king. We need him. The Veruka cannot survive without him,” Jex said.
“I said I am fine,” I said getting frustrated. But I knew that he was right. It was the plague. It was the first symptoms that every weredragon said they felt. Once they started the first symptoms, they had a month to live.
“There is no time to waste. We must go soon,” Azlo said.
“I will go find out where the scouts are. I will have a location of a human habitat before the end of the day,” General Razook said. Then he ran out of the room to get to work.
“I guess we will not need to take a sick weredragon with us on the journey. I am the one that could be tested,” I said.
“No, it is too dangerous,” Azlo said.
“I am the one that gives orders here. Now go, both of you, and prepare for our departure. We will need a small speeder ship and supplies. We will leave as soon as we have coordinates of a human village. Now go,” I said.
