Drake

by D M Gilmore

  Rita narrowed her eyes as the scanned the identity card. “Very well, Mister Jones. Follow me if you would.”

  “About damn time,” Nicholas growled, sounding more and more like a drake every second. He stalked after her into the station, shutting the door behind him with a forceful tug.

  Rita shook her head but did not argue with the strange man. Instead, she opened herself up like a book and answered all of his questions, most of which were about the state of the mana orbs that were left behind. She blinked in surprise, given most of the officers who had asked her questions had asked her specifically about what she knew about the crime scene, who within her network of employees could have possibly stolen them, things like that. She suspected she knew exactly who it was who had stolen the orb, but she wasn’t about to rat him out to the police. Drakes just didn’t do that to one another.

  I smell something, the voice whispered inside Nicholas’ head, this time sounding more distant. Nicholas could feel the source of the voice slink around to the side of the facility, as the presence in his mind seemed to try and tug him along, like it was physically dragging his attention with it.

  Nicholas put a finger to his ear and turned his head to the side, the universal indicator that he was talking into a com, even though Rita could not recall seeing him wear one. “What did you find?” he asked out loud, much to Rita’s surprise.

  “You’re not alone?” Rita asked, blinking in shock.

  “My partner is examining the surrounding area,” Nicholas explained, taking his finger off his ear for just a moment, before returning to the mime and looking away from her.

  Pardrake… About… 27 years old? Maybe 26? The voice continued, pausing every few seconds, and Nicholas could imagine his partner sniffing every corner for traces of scent. Cameras were enchanted. Not for long, maybe a minute at most, but long enough to slip past without making a scene.

  Nicholas nodded and scratched his chin in thought. “Keep looking, try to follow the trail.”

  Signature’s dead, the voice interrupted, much to Nicholas’ frustration, absorbed back into the manaflux, probably existed for less than a minute before it was gone.

  “And the scent?” Nicholas hissed, lowering his voice so as to not fully alert Rita to his conversation.

  Oh right, that, the voice said again, yeah that’s fresh.

  “Then, follow it, and don’t call me again until you have something concrete!” Nicholas stood back at full attention so fast it was almost as though something had snapped within his body. He looked at Rita with a passive glare in his eyes, and she looked back with a look that crossed confusion and concern. “Are you done eavesdropping?” he growled, pushing past her and into the main hallway of the facility.

  Rita followed him nervously as he stomped through the facility, stopping in front of the large steel door that served as the entrance to the generator room. Without a word, he opened it effortlessly, scanning his hand on the biometric panel to the left of the door, and watching with a smirk as it opened at his touch. Rita’s jaw hung open in surprise, as there were very few people for whom the door was keyed in her facility. The fact that the door opened for him meant that he was somebody very important, and her swamp-green scales paled as she stared at the man in shock.

  “I believe that proves enough,” Nicholas growled over his shoulder to her. “Do you plan to leave me to my investigation or are you planning to get in the way some more?”

  Rita shook her head, but did not leave him. Nicholas scoffed in annoyance and rolled his eyes, but did not send her away yet. She could potentially have a use, if he had more questions for her. Without further hesitation, he stepped inside the generator room and began to take a look around.

  The four pylons had all been shut down, their orbs lay dormant in their sockets. Nearly forty shiny, iridescent ovoid shapes, made of pure crystal, caught his eyes, save for one pillar that was missing one orb. “Third socket from the bottom,” he dictated, to nobody in particular, pacing around the room. With a wave of his hand, he called up his personal display, opening up a long spreadsheet of information. He quickly swiped through the pages until he stopped on a tab labelled Scarborough. Once there, he scrolled down until he found the orb replacement schedule.

  Oof, boss, the voice whispered in his head again, I can smell a female. It hatched.

  “Get out,” Nicholas said, doing his best not to show his emotion at what his partner had just whispered into his mind. He whipped around and hissed the words at Rita, who had been standing in the threshold of the generator room while he was examining the pylons.

  Rita jumped in surprise and crossed her arms in defiance. “I’m not in the way! I’m just observing, why do I have to go?”

  “I am locking this area down until further notice,” Nicholas answered, raising his voice and stalking up to her and glaring up into her eyes. “You have five seconds to vacate this room before I place you under arrest for interfering with my investigation.”

  Rita’s eyes narrowed, but she could find no reason to argue. The badge he had presented had seemed real enough to her. He seemed to be doing genuine investigating, something the police had neglected to do. At worst, she could always keep an eye on him through the cameras, since they were no longer enchanted. Finally, she nodded in agreement. “COMA, eh?” She growled, turning on her heel and starting down the hallway. “Let me know if you find anything relevant.”

  Nicholas waited for the clacking of her claws against the floor to fade into the distance before he spoke aloud to the voice in his head. “Sorry, I had to get rid of the witness, what did you say?”

  I can’t believe you pulled the lockdown line, the voice laughed. Wait, wait, no, scratch that, I can’t believe it worked, it added, before falling back into raucous laughter, much to the man’s annoyance.

  “Save your jokes for later,” Nicholas hissed turning back to the spreadsheet floating in the air beside him, “what did you find?”

  The egg hatched. Definitely a female. Sapphire, if I have the scent right.

  Nicholas swore and scanned the spreadsheet, looking for every instance of a sapphire mana orb that was being kept in this facility. Sure enough, there were three, one of which had been scheduled for extraction in only a few days. In fact, nearly half the orbs in Pylon Three had been scheduled for extraction. Nicholas swore out loud, to more chuckles from the voice in his head. It almost hadn’t mattered which orb the perpetrator had taken, if it had come from the lower half of Pylon Three, it would have hatched.

  “Can you follow the trail?” Nicholas asked, stepping out of the generator room and dismissing the holoscreen.

  I’ve got a lock, the voice replied, what’s the call, boss? Want me to go after her?

  “No,” Nicholas said, slowly making his way through the facility, pretending to inspect various things that held no actual relevance to him. His primary concern was the safety of the mana orbs, the dragon eggs. “We don’t want to make a scene. Pursue, but keep your distance, make sure they stay mostly out of trouble.”

  Mostly?

  “Mostly,” Nicholas grinned. “If somebody kills our thief, that will save us the trouble in the future.”

  Chapter 14

  Asher left Ruth and the tiny dragon alone in the living room while he retired to his bedroom to think, much to the frustration of the two of them. The dragon didn’t seem to like Ruth a whole lot, and almost seemed attached to Asher emotionally. Around Ruth, she almost seemed angry, maybe protective of Asher, it was difficult to tell. The moment Asher shut the door, she began flying around Ruth and squawking angrily at him, and only calmed down once she realized that Ruth would not play her game.

  Ruth, instead, sat in the ruined husk of a couch, the steel frame still surprisingly able to hold his weight, and just waited for Asher to come back out. After a few minutes of squawking to get his attention, and realizing that the attempt was becoming futile, the tiny dragon alighted on the shredded armrest, and began to sniff at the air around her, dra
wing slowly closer and closer to Ruth’s arm.

  “You’re not so bad, I guess,” Ruth grumbled, reaching out slowly with the tips of his clawed hand, “kinda cute, in a scaly bird sort of way.”

  The dragon paused to sniff Ruth’s fingers, and must have liked what she smelled because she nuzzled into them and allowed Ruth to continue petting her.

  “I can’t keep calling you things like it and the dragon,” Ruth pondered for a moment, “but what am I gonna name you…”

  While Ruth was entertaining the dragon, Asher was facing a crisis all his own. The exchange with Smog was happening that night, whether he wanted to go or not, and if they didn’t show up, there would be hell to pay. That was the first problem, that they had to go. The second problem was that, if they went, would they have anything to give him? Asher considered at first just giving him the bag full of draquartz and telling him that the orb had shattered randomly after being removed from the pylon, and hoped that this would be enough to satisfy him.

  “He deals in draquartz, after all,” Asher grumbled, cycling through some of the ready-made spells on his computer, hoping to find something that would help with his current situation. Naturally, he had no spells that could conjure mana orbs on short notice, and doubted he’d be able to code one before the exchange needed to take place. He sighed in defeat and slumped into his chair, resting his hands on his desk.

  His eyes suddenly caught the shine off the crystal inset into his ring, and he looked down at it curiously. How long had it been since he’d last been human? Asher blinked sleepily, realizing he’d lost track of time, and that the only thing that had mattered to him was Smog’s deadline. He contemplated taking the ring off, to just assume human form for a few seconds, but ultimately decided against it. The manaflux was dangerous to humans, and while he was already infused, he wasn’t in the mood to let more mana into his system than he absolutely had to.

  The thought that dragons were the source of drakes and mana, and somebody had to have known this when mana had first replaced electricity, made Asher break out into a growl. It was infuriating to think that somebody knowingly used a power source that would change the course of human evolution, rather than find a renewable way to sustain power in the pre-mana days. He loved mana, he loved magic, he loved being a drake, but there were so many people who hated all three and wanted to see them gone. So why did they switch to mana at all if somebody knew what it would do?

  Finally, he shook the thought from his head, bringing his focus back to the real issue at hand. Duncan Smog wanted a mana orb, and instead what they had was a dragon. That settled it pretty fast in Asher’s mind. If they gave Smog the dragon, and explained that the orb had hatched into it, Asher was certain that he wouldn’t try to kill them. And just in case, they can even throw in the draquartz remains of her egg, the orb, as a bonus.

  With his mind decided, he threw open his bedroom door and stepped back into the living room, and his eyes widened in surprise. Ruth was sweeping up the remains of the shredded couch and boxes and was shoving them into a large garbage bag. The dragon was grabbing massive pieces of foam in her mouth and was attempting to fly over and drop them into the bag, like a basketball into a net. Every time she succeeded, Ruth would reach into a bag of beef jerky he had left on the couch and would toss a chunk into the air, which the tiny dragon would race after and catch in her mouth.

  “Are you… playing with it?” Asher asked, startling his brother.

  “I’m training her,” Ruth said, proudly as he beamed at his brother, “she’s pretty smart, she picked up this trick really fast.”

  “Well stop, we’re not keeping her,” Asher grumbled, grabbing the bag of jerky off the couch and sealing it closed. He heard a quick whine of protest from the dragon, who already had another chunk of foam in her mouth, but it didn’t try to attack him for it. “We need something to give to Smog tonight, so we’re going to give her to him.”

  “No!!” Ruth shouted, dropping his broom. “Asher, you can’t give Esther to him!!”

  Asher’s eyes narrowed in confusion, and he cocked his head at his brother. “Esther?”

  “She needed a name, I wasn’t going to just keep calling her dragon,” Ruth explained, “so I named her Esther! After our mother!”

  Asher winced a bit at that. “It doesn’t matter what you name her,” he explained, stepping around the couch to grab the bag of draquartz that was left discarded earlier that day, “because Smog will kill you if we show up empty hand—”

  “Then just give him the draquartz!” Ruth insisted, pointing at the bag with the handle of his broom, which Asher swatted away angrily. “He deals in that shit, there’s gotta be at least ten grand worth of draquartz in there, right?”

  “He said that the orb was a time-sensitive opportunity! I don’t think this was ever about money for him!” Asher exclaimed. “He was just paying me ten grand for retrieving it!”

  Ruth’s mouth opened in a silent oh and he lowered his head, and looked from Esther to Asher and back again. The tiny dragon had slinked off into Asher’s room, where it was watching nervously from within the shadow of the door. For the first time, Ruth noticed that her eyes seemed to glow a faint yellow colour, and he wondered how he had missed that before.

  “Asher, we can’t give her to him,” he finally said, standing up straight again, “Duncan Smog is dangerous. You said yourself, mana comes from dragons, that means she’s a living battery. There’s no telling what somebody like Smog’ll do if you give him access to that much mana.”

  Now it was Asher’s turn to pause. He genuinely hadn’t thought of that. Esther literally radiated mana, more so than the orb he had stolen ever had. What if Smog had wanted the power source rather than the crystals to sell? What if he needed it to power a job that would devastate the broodtown, or worse, a neighbouring city? Asher swore under his breath and scratched his chin nervously, as he began pacing back and forth.

  “Alright,” he finally said, after doing nearly two laps of the room in thought, “I’ll admit you have a point. Smog is dangerous, and giving him a dragon is a really bad idea,” he admitted, nodding a little bit to himself, “but that doesn’t change the fact that he wants the orb and he’ll kill you if we don’t deliver. So tell me, Ruth, what do we do? What spell do I have that can get us out of this mess, because I sure as hell don’t know, and I don’t think I have time to program something elaborate before five pm.”

  Esther suddenly squawked in excitement and flew into the room, doing a rapid lap overhead before diving into the bag in Asher’s hands. He yelled in surprise as her added weight made him drop it to the ground, and a dozen fist-sized crystals spilled out onto the floor.

  “Esther,” Ruth admonished quickly, “bad girl!”

  Asher was about to agree, but watched in surprise as the tiny blue dragon began to arrange the crystals together, doing her best to link the ones that seemed to be of similar shape. By the time she was done, Asher could see the beginning of what seemed to be a centimetre thick eggshell. His eyes widened in surprise, and he quickly ran back into his room, and Esther leaped into the air to follow suit. Without another word, he dropped into his desk chair and called up the code for a spell, one that he hadn’t had to change in a very long time.

  “Bro?” Ruth called, ducking under the doorway to step into the bedroom while Esther alighted on Asher’s shoulders, once again coiling comfortably around the base of his neck.

  “Fixit!!” Asher exclaimed excitedly, as he saved a new copy of the spell on screen and began to hammer away at the code, adding new lines and swapping them out for some old ones.

  “Bless you?” Ruth said, thinking for a moment that maybe his brother had sneezed rather than said an actual word.

  “No, no, my Fixit spell! The spell I use to hold my car together!!” Asher exclaimed, not looking away from his code for even a moment. “Grab all the crystals and bring them in here, I have an idea!”

  Ruth’s eyes widened with realization, and he ducked back
out into the living room and ran to scoop up the bag and the crystals on the ground, sweeping them into the bag with his hand. He quickly ducked back in and dumped the contents of the bag onto Asher’s desk, just beside his floating, holographic keyboard.

  “Code compiles,” Asher said, his face splitting into an excited grin. “Let’s see if it works.”

  Asher reached out into the air and pressed the run button at the top of his screen. The room filled with the smell of ozone as his computer released the spell into the air, and the crystals on his desk began to crackle with mana. One by one, the crystals floated into the air, swirling around the centre of a slow-moving vortex which carefully slotted them together, like the pieces of a three-dimensional puzzle. Every time the crystals stuck together, they made a jingling, clicking sound, which made Esther squawk curiously.

  Finally, after only a minute, the spell ended, and resting on the desk before them was a shiny, sapphire, egg.

  “No way,” Ruth whispered, reaching out to touch the orb. As his fingers came into contact with the surface, the whole egg crumbled inwards. “Shit, sorry!!” he apologized, pulling his hand back.

  “No, that’s fine,” Asher assured him, as he went back to coding the spell, changing parameters here and there. “The spell only put it back together, we need to run it continuously to hold it together,” he explained, as he returned to typing the spell. “I think I can extend the range to about 20, maybe 30 meters, since the object is much smaller than my car, but anything beyond that will leave me with no mana to protect myself when he inevitably double-crosses us.”

  “What about Esther?” Ruth asked, sitting on the edge of Asher’s bed, which buckled angrily under his weight.

  “I’ll keep her in my bag. We’ll need her to bargain with if this goes south,” Asher said, his voice dropping as he made a concentrated effort to focus on his code, rather than glance at the dragon.