“I wonder if I could ask Oliver,” Noelle mused.
Marc’s lips pursed together. “Can we trust him?”
“I honestly have no idea. He’s the only other free-range dragon I’ve seen down there. And he doesn’t seem as sick as I felt when I was in the lower levels. I wonder if they found a way to bypass our reaction to silver.”
“That would be… miraculous and terrifying.”
Noelle nodded. They were still a long way from a plan, but Marc forced himself to remove himself from the comfort of his mate’s presence. He would learn more on his shift, he told himself.
Chapter Twelve
Oliver made a motion to Patterson before grabbing Noelle by the arm and pulling her around the corner. She only caught Patterson’s raised eyebrow in mild amusement before she was dragged away. Her heart thundered in her ears. She’d promised Marc that Oliver wasn’t a threat. What if she’d been wrong? Noelle could very well have reached the end of the line and, in the end, she’d accomplished so little.
But, Oliver threw a look back, his finger over his lips before his eyes rose to scan the hall behind them. He shoved her into a small room and her heart gave one, heavy thump. The table, the one Lucia had been strapped to, stood only feet away. Noelle stepped back, her feet sliding apart in preparation of a fight, but Oliver seemed to realize what upset her as his own eyes landed on it.
He paused, struck by the table’s presence while his face darkened.
“What do you want,” Noelle hissed.
Oliver’s head snapped up, the spell the table had over him seemingly broken. His eyes were wide, the whites streaked with veins of red. His face seemed to fall, his shoulders following suit when he held his hands up in defense. He glanced back at the door again, waiting to make sure no one came through.
“I- that’s not what I mean. I picked a room at random, I swear.” He fumbled over his words, suddenly becoming much less imposing. Noelle found herself relaxing, too. Was that his gift?
She squared her shoulders, reminding herself that she could not let her guard down. Not while she was in the lower levels of the GOE facility.
“I swear,” Oliver insisted. “I know what you are and I just wanted to speak to you.”
“Why?” she growled, preparing herself for a fight. Her eyes flicked to the door behind him. Could she slip past him and run? Would she make it to the exit before anyone sounded the alarm?
The look on Oliver’s face when her gaze turned back to him made her fists fall. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were rimmed with tears. “Do you think I like it here? Do you think I want to be here?” His voice was a harsh whisper while he fought to keep their conversation from being heard beyond the door.
Noelle paused, unsure of what to do next. This could be a ploy. This could be his attempt to get her to open up and confess what she was. Yet, a small voice in the back of her mind brought her back to her sister. She remembered what it felt like to care for someone other than yourself, to trust in a smaller voice, even if they weren’t right.
She sighed, her eyes rolling toward the ceiling as if she could see the stars beyond and feel her sister’s presence. Was Mary beside her? Pushing her to accept this man’s words?
“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be a part of this,” Noelle confessed, her eyes dropping once more to meet his.
He nodded. “They might have… made me, but I cannot stand by and watch. I can’t take this anymore. They all scream and cry and, yet, I walk around uninhibited as if I were an equal. We all know the truth. I’m a pet, if anything. A guard dog.”
Noelle let out a breath through her nose. Why was he telling her all of this? Was purpose did it serve?
“I know you’re here to accomplish something. What you plan on doing, I don’t know. Whatever it is, I’d like to help.” He let his worlds hang in the air, an unspoken caveat floating between them.
Noelle’s teeth gritted together. He was cornering her to get what he wanted. She couldn’t blame him. It was smart. Noelle might have a few chips in her pocket that he didn’t know about, but he was willing to bet everything that she had a plan that could help him somehow.
“What do you want from me, then?”
“Help me get out of here.”
Noelle snorted. “You could just walk out and never come back.”
“They act like they own me. Do you really think they’d let me walk off the premises unescorted? I’m an investment they don’t want to lose, like subject I-A-C. I know you know him. You have to. Take me to him and he can help me.”
“What do you think Isaac can do for you?” she asked, truly curious.
“Isaac?”
She shook her head. She’d forgotten he didn’t know the name the electric dragon had taken on, most likely a play on the letters GOE once assigned to him. “You know him as I-A-C, I call him Isaac. Same dude, different name. Isaac can’t do shit for you. At least, I don’t understand what you think he can help you with.”
“I-A-C, Isaac as you call him, found a way to get outside of GOE’s retention system.” Oliver extended his forearm and Noelle noticed a small bump beneath the skin. “There’s a chip in us that not only tracks our whereabouts, but affects our minds if we stray outside of the behavior GOE wants.”
Isaac had an affinity for electricity, Noelle mused as she pondered the implant beneath Oliver’s skin. She recalled the story Dane once told, of finding a teenaged dragon wandering through the Nebraskan woods, out of his mind and without memory of who he was. It was very possible Isaac found a way to fry the implant in his own body, but the implant took with it everything Isaac once knew.
She didn’t know how to tell Oliver that while he looked at her with such harsh hope on his face. He pinned everything, his entire future, on her and his vision of Isaac. Her friend could help this dragon man, but Oliver might lose who he was in the process.
“I will keep your secret as long as you take me with you when you leave this place. Do whatever it is you need to do, then we leave.”
She shook her head. “You make it sound like I’m here to get information, like I can simply pick up something and leave. It’s not that simple.”
Oliver’s brows came together for a moment, then his mind worked out what she meant. “The way you looked at Lucia… I thought it was just repulsion, but you know her. That’s what you’re here for.”
Noelle nodded, just a jerk of her chin. They couldn’t talk much longer. It was going to start to look suspicious. “I will get Lucia out of this place if it’s the last thing I do.”
That was all she said before brushing past the dragon man and bursting into the cool, white hallway. Patterson was nowhere to be found, all at once a relieving and upsetting. She was going to have to play catch up. Patterson was not the kind of man to let her have excuses, even if it’s been one of his own employees who’d pulled her aside. What was she going to tell him?
What excuse did she have for being alone in a room with Oliver? But, before she could make anything up, Oliver appeared beside her, his hand tight on her upper arm. She looked up to protest, anger attempting to flow over her, but the silver kept her heat tampered down and her stomach rolled.
He dragged her, her tripping one over the other, down the hall and out the door to the lower level lobby. Once they burst through the door, he shoved her into the open space. The man behind the desk glanced up, one eyebrow raised. He didn’t look anymore amused than he usually did.
“If you’re going to be sick every time you come down here, tell your boss you need another job. I’m not going to clean up after you every time.”
Oliver gave her a clever excuse for why he’d dragged her off. She was thankful, but didn’t dare give him a nod. The dragon man only gave her a slight wink before slamming the thick, metal door closed.
She gave the man behind the counter a cautious glance. He only jerked his chin toward the stairs. “Patterson said to tell you to order his lunch from the Golden Crown. He said the order number, but I d
idn’t bother to write it down.”
Great, she thought.
Noelle slowly climbed the stairs up to the ground floor. Her chest eased with each step. Oliver was truly on her side, but what he asked of her in return might not be exactly what he wanted. It was up to him and Isaac to sort that out, not her. She would use the dragon man to help get Lucia out of the lower level and then the two enhanced dragons could deal with the implant.
Patterson glared at his computer screen when she arrived back at her desk, his chin in his head as he scowled. Noelle wasn’t afraid of him, no matter what the churning in her gut said when she pushed open his door. His head jerked up at the sound of her arrival and his glare narrowed. She didn’t back down.
“What happened to you?”
A moment too late, she remembered to play the meek secretary. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes darted elsewhere. It was only a matter of time when this fool found her out, she thought. She wanted too badly to stand up to his brutish behavior to remember her place each time.
“I was… I couldn’t help but…”
“Oh, spit it out already.”
“I got sick, sir,” she lied. “The dra-… Oliver pulled me away just in time to keep me from being sick in front of everyone. I don’t know what it was, if it was the nerves, or if it was… you know.”
He studied her, weighing her sincerity. She tried to look like the thought of what went on downstairs made her uneasy. It wasn’t difficult. The problem was burying the anger she also felt. No longer surrounded by the silver in the walls if the lower levels, she felt her fire return. It burned along her skin and in her eyes, making her look toward the floor to keep it hidden.
He sighed, a dramatic sound for a man of his position. “Golden Crown. Order number 9, no cashews, no broccoli.”
With that said, he turned back to whatever figures on the screen had him scowling earlier. She was dismissed. Like that, it was over. It seemed Patterson didn’t care too much to look beneath the surface of his employees.
She turned toward the door, hand on the knob, when he spoke again. “After you do that, pack up your desk because you’re fired.”
Her heart stopped. No. There hadn’t been enough time. They hadn’t made a plan. Not one that would work, anyway. Now, with Noelle without her position, their vision had been smashed to pieces.
The floor seemed to fall out from beneath her. Noelle felt like she was falling, crashing through a black hole with nothing to grab onto to stop her. She glanced back and met Patterson’s challenging glare. He was waiting for her to cry and beg for her job, a reaction he was probably used to.
Instead, she squared her shoulders and darted from the room. There was a small window. She had to find Marc.
Chapter Thirteen
Noelle’s flat shoes made almost no sound as she raced across the tile flooring. By scent alone, she was able to track her mate. He smelled like musk and, unfortunately, cleaning chemicals. Up the stairs, two at a time, she climbed. Marc was busy scrubbing a window when she found him.
He paused, arm mid-sweep, and turned. His brow furrowed, eyes darkening. They weren’t supposed to know one another, that was the idea. But, the game was up and she knew it. Today was their last chance to do anything and Noelle had an idea.
Without a word, she dragged her mate down the stairs and into the lobby of the lower level. The guard at the first door gave her a strange look, but he let her through without question. Apparently, Patterson hadn’t made it known that he’d fired her. It had only been moments ago, she realized.
It was the man behind the desk in the lobby who presented a bigger problem. The man looked up at them, both eyebrows raised. He shot out of his seat when she pulled Marc, or Manny as his badge suggested, toward the door. The man behind the desk threw his hand out to stop her so she pulled on her meek secretary face, complete with a pathetic pout.
“I’m just trying to fix my mistake,” she whined, for once trying to use her dainty body to her advantage as she tried to shrink in on herself. “It’s my fault that I was sick and it won’t happen again, but I want to make sure it gets cleaned up correctly.” She paused, looking around for dramatic effect. When Oliver was nowhere to be seen, she added, “The dragon man wasn’t very good at cleaning it up.”
The man behind the desk rolled his eyes. “For heaven’s sake,” he grumbled before falling back into his seat and waving her on. The light near the door changed and the door itself made a clicking sound and Noelle felt her heart leap into her throat.
It was now or never. She tried to explain that in the look she threw her confused mate. He had to know something was up. He wasn’t allowed in the lower level, but as he’d told her, people didn’t look at the janitors. She’d almost wished she’d strapped the wiretap to Marc.
She swallowed hard. They were in the lower levels. The real question was, how were they going to get out of there? She didn’t even know where Lucia was being kept. Had she acted too quickly? Was she going to get both of them killed?
Marc grabbed her and pulled her to a stop. His eyes were questioning. She tried to shake her head, to silently tell him she’d lost her job. Now that she thought about it, it was Oliver’s fault. She turned back to the white halls, eyes scanning the space for the familiar dragon man. If he wanted out of here, if this was his fault, he was going to help them.
All she had to do was find him.
Noelle dragged Marc around the lower levels by the fist she kept in the front of his overalls. He followed, surprise still on his face. Both of their hearts raced. Her eyes scanned the halls in search of Oliver. He’d been there only moments ago. Where could he have gone in a short amount of time?
There, she caught a glimpse of familiar, dark skin moving around a corner. She darted after the figure, hoping and praying she was right. If she grabbed the wrong person. If she alerted the wrong person then this, everything they worked for, it was all over in a moment. Noelle and Marc would find themselves in silver cuffs and thrown into one of the white rooms with no windows.
She slid around the corner, her hand slipping from Marc’s overalls. The dark form walked away from them, but it was certainly Oliver. She could tell by the gleam of the lights over head on his shaven head. She wondered what kind of beast lurked beneath his skin, but only for a moment before lunging for his shirt. She grabbed ahold of it and yanked him back with her.
He let out a soft cry of protest that made her heart lurch. Her eyes snapped up, scanning the halls around them to see if anyone heard. This was their last chance, their only chance.
“What are you doing back down here?” Oliver hissed.
They rounded the corner, his eyes falling on the still confused Marc, and his voice vanished. Noelle, still on edge, scanned the hall around them. They were going to get caught. Something awful would happen, she couldn’t stop the thoughts that poured into her mind. All she could do was shake her head to try to dispel them and get back to the task at hand. Those thoughts would do her no good in this moment.
“Patterson fired me,” Noelle hurriedly whispered. Both sets of eyes on her widened. One set had the grace to hold a hint of guilt. “It’s now or never. Plan or not, we need to try.”
Oliver’s spine straightened and he held up a finger. Noelle watched him with guarded curiosity. She feared he was about to rat them out. Noelle very well could have put her faith in the wrong person, so she snuck after the dragon man as he walked down the hall into an open room full of equipment. The room was empty, most of the scientists on lunch in another room, she figured as she looked at the jars of chemicals and the glass distilling contraption that one might not want to eat around.
Oliver put one hand on top of the glass distilling contraption, looked back at Noelle and Marc, and yanked it down. The glass crashed to the ground and skittered in every direction. Oliver danced back from the contents that sprayed in every direction. Noelle didn’t want to know what had been inside it.
Immediately, a light flashed and an alarm sprang
to life. She heard the rushing of feet clamoring for the nearest exit. Noelle’s heart lifted when she raised an eyebrow.
“You have three minutes until the clean-up crew comes down.”
Marc nodded, launching into action. He ran for the nearest doors, yanking them open one by one as if he might find his mother hiding behind one. Noelle shook her head. They had minutes to do this. Searching for her room by room was not going to get them anywhere. She turned to Oliver, an unspoken question in her eyes.
“Level D,” he said, his voice low.
Noelle swallowed. If the levels went alphabetically, D would be the fourth floor below ground level. She raced toward her mate, grabbing him and not stopping. He followed without a word. The trust between them was implicit.
Together, they flew down flights of stairs. Noelle skidded down a few of them in her race to reach the bottom, marc catching her by her armpits before she crashed to the floor. Level D was deep in the ground and she could feel the silver becoming thicker in the walls around her. It made her skin crawl and her stomach churn.
They were close.
***
His mate was insane. Marc wondered what she’d done to get fired, but when he saw the guilt in the dragon man’s eyes when she announced it, he had an idea his mate didn’t do anything at all. Whatever happened, there was no going back. There was only moving forward. Marc swallowed and pulled his chin up.
For Marc and Noelle, it meant racing down flights of stairs on an enhanced dragon’s word. He eyed the dragon moving beside him, graceful despite his bulky size. The dragon’s dark skin spoke of an African heritage, not quite as light as Anya’s. Other than what Marc could see with his own eyes, he knew nothing about the dragon man. His stomach danced with butterflies. Could they truly trust the dragon like Noelle thought? Or, was he leading them into a trap?
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