Talker 25 (25 page)

I shake my head as I try to calm my breathing. I force myself to swallow. “Mom used to do that as a joke. ‘Say hi to the camera, everyone!’ He and Mom made a game of it. Punch buggy with drones.”

The screen switches to different drone footage, dated six months ago, labeled
21
. Lots of open farmland. A glowing green dot appears on the horizon. Moving fast toward a dilapidated house. An old man steps onto the porch, a rifle in hand.

The viewpoint shifts to the dragon.

The man gets off three useless shots before the Green sets everything aflame, including him.

“Is that real?” I say. “Did they really do that to her family?”

It’s not Lorena who answers, but Twenty-One. “Yes, yes, yes. Burn, burn, burn!” She’s clutching the dragon brooch so hard that the tail’s pierced her skin. “Kill the dragons, yes, yes. Kill the dragons, or the dragons kill them.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

My
CENSIR shocks me awake.

“Wakey, wakey, everyone.”

Almost a month.

I’m out of my bed faster than everybody except Evelyn, but I still get a second shock.

Almost a week of that.

“Faster, Twenty-Five,” Lester says.

On my way through the cafeteria serving line, I peek toward the boys’ table. I tell myself I’m looking to see if Nine has recovered yet—he hasn’t—but my gaze lingers on the empty seat next to Eleven.

“Scoping out your next target!” Four shouts.

I cast my eyes floorward, see a pair of boots coming my direction. I glance up. The A-B pretends not to notice me.
I dodge, but he adjusts, just enough to clip my shoulder. I catch myself from tripping, but my tray tips and breakfast tumbles to the floor.

“Watch it, talker girl.”

My CENSIR shocks me.

“Stop antagonizing the soldiers, Twenty-Five,” Lester says.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I say. “It won’t happen again.”

But of course it will. Sidelong glares, muttered curses, lewd catcalls, sometimes physical retribution. I ignore it the best I can, and when I can’t, I apologize because I know it rankles them even more. They want me to lash out, to prove that I’m some heartless monster, maybe. I will do everything they ask of me, but I refuse to let them break me.

The grind of metal biting into scales echoes from the far end of the ER, a dragattoir bigger than the Air and Space Museum I visited on a field trip a lifetime ago. Instead of old planes, space modules, and tour guides, we’ve got torture slabs, computer-controlled “test” apparatus, and Mengeles.

And chain saws.

Lots and lots of chain saws.

The dragon being sliced and diced on the slaughter slab by a half dozen All-Blacks glowed out at the electrics station five minutes ago.

On the slab to my left, a car wash of flamethrowers drenches a Red in fire that looks green through the tint of my safety goggles. The filtration mask I wear beneath my jacket hood cannot block the stench of charring flesh.

To my right, mechanized syringes insert a human-length needle into a Green’s neck. Veins of viridescent light race through its broken body before vanishing at its tail stump. The Green flickers off and on, arrhythmic. I see Fourteen flinch, a soldier laugh, as another pantomimes a spasm. The Mengele controlling the syringe system gives a thumbs-up.

“Clear!” shouts Patch, my Mengele supervisor.

I turn my attention back to my victim, a Red named Ryla. I clamp the hood of my jacket tight to my ears. Nothing in this place is as loud as Mjöllnir. Well, almost nothing.

The giant hammer swings down from the wall onto her left shoulder. Bones shatter. Her eyes burst open. She shudders, rattles her bindings, defecates.

Despite my improvised earmuffs, despite her muzzle, I hear her anguished squeal anyway, though it is a whisper compared to the scream that blasts through my head.

I breathe through my mouth, slow and deep like Lorena told me as I exited the bus this morning. Doesn’t matter. Breakfast rises in my throat. I swallow it back for the third time today.

Patch shows me an incomprehensible graph on his tablet.
Subject 247-R (Ryla): Impact Force
. “It’s got brittle bones, this one.” He pulls up another graph.
Subject 247-R (Ryla): Telepathic Volume
. “It maxed out at one hundred and twenty-two decibels. We’re getting to it.” Using the computer console adjacent to the slab, he repositions the hammer over the Red’s right shoulder. “Ask it again, Twenty-Five.”

“Ryla, what are the names of your friends?”

“Kill me.”

In my head, her voice remains defiant. From the speaker in Patch’s tablet, the words are robotic, monotonous.

“Tell it this is not a killing blow,” he says. “Tell it if it continues to resist, we will prolong its suffering.”

I tell her.

“Kill me.”

Patch taps his goggles. Lester and Tim, the other A-B from our research team, bound onto the slab. From a tool chest, Lester retrieves a device that resembles a trowel. He uses it to peel back the dragon’s eyelid. Tim draws his combat knife. Modern-day executioners. With the filtration masks, tinted goggles, and floor-length jackets—everything black—we look quite the part.

I shut my eyes.

My CENSIR shocks me.

“We talked about this, Twenty-Five,” Patch says.

“But she can’t even see me.”

“She can sense it,” he says.

“Stop being the weak link, Twenty-Five,” Lester snaps.

I force myself to think of Sam waving at the drone. I will be strong for him. I have to be. I open my eyes.

One quick thrust. One gigantic scream. I fall to my knees, clutching my head. Breakfast fills my mask. Ryla dims.

Patch jerks me to my feet, hands me a splatter rag. “Get it together. Ask it again.”

After cleaning my mask, I repeat the question.

“Kill me,” she mumbles between soft mewls.

I think of Sam. “Answer the question.”

“Please, human.”

“We’ve almost broken her.” Patch points at her other eye. A vicious thrust later, Ryla’s blind and screaming again. I tremble, but keep my balance. Thankfully my stomach’s empty. Empty enough.

“What are the names of your friends?”

“Kill me.”

“Tell her that if she continues to resist, we will prolong the suffering of every dragon in here.”

I do.

Patch gets in my face. “Do it with conviction, Twenty-Five. Don’t be a glowheart.”

I pretend I’m talking to him, put violence into my words.

Ryla brightens momentarily; her nostrils flare. “Kill me.”

We crush her tail, then a wing, cut off two of her feet with a hatchet, pausing after each blow for me to ask my question. Her glow fades, but she’s done screaming. Her responses turn to groans. Two-syllable groans.

A buzzer goes off. The flamethrower car wash shuts down. That dragon still glows a semihealthy red.

The overhead loudspeaker activates.

“Teams, please proceed to your next station. Team One, return to Intake. Team Four, take over at chemics.”

My CENSIR warms and tightens. Patch snatches the radio from his belt. “Why are we being swapped?” Something from the other end.

Patch frowns. “The colonel?” He glances at me. “You’re sure?” Another glance as he shoves the radio back in his belt. “Let’s go.”

The intake bay opens. A red is towed in, pulsing brightly, lips drawn back in a snarl as far as the muzzle will allow.

“A rager,” Patch says. “Your lucky day, Twenty-Five. Even you can’t screw that up.”

Evelyn saunters from the opposite direction with Team Four. Blood stains her jacket.

I hug myself against the cold. With the flamethrowers off and Ryla’s warmth dwindling with her glow, the cold draft that blows through the ER has become noticeable.

“Still don’t have your Antarctic skin, Twenty-Five?”
Evelyn says.

“What’s the scenario?” Team Four’s Mengele asks Patch.

“It’s stubborn. Probably in shock. Give it some adrenaline and some hallucinogens.”

“You think it’s crackable?”

“In the right hands.” He shakes his head at me. “My talker’s a little too much of a glowheart, though.”

Four’s Mengele laughs. “Taste of a rager will work that right out of her.”

“One can hope.”

Evelyn pulls a half-eaten Baby Ruth from her pocket, unhooks her filtration mask, and takes a bite. She offers the rest to me. “You look hungry, Twenty-Five.”

My stomach knots up. “I’m fine.”

She shoves the rest into her mouth. I force myself to watch until she’s finished. She gives this phony embarrassed smile, straps her mask back into place. “Don’t worry, Twenty-Five, I’ll pick up your slack.”

Our team returns to the beginning of the torture line, where our newest victim awaits, shiny and whole. Patch lowers the cylindrical sheath over the dragon’s body. It hovers there, emitting a low hum for a couple of seconds before rising back to the ceiling.

His tablet beeps. Two 3D scans of the dragon appear.
Subject 249-R (): Luminal Map/Thermal Map
. He beams.
“Haven’t seen a Red this bright in a while. Approach, Twenty-Five.”

As I enter the dragon’s line of sight, its glow dims. I mount the slab and take my mark on the X, a dozen feet from its snout. Though it shouldn’t be able to see me, its green eyes track me the entire way. Its snarl fades. Warm puffs of breath wash over me in gentle waves.

“Ah,” Patch says. He runs the scan again. He looks from me to the dragon, then back to me. He taps his tablet. My CENSIR loosens slightly. “Initiate communication, Twenty-Five.”

“What’s the dragon’s name?” I ask him.

“It’s a battlefield recovery. We don’t know . . .” If he says more, I don’t hear it.

“Hello, Melissa Callahan.”

I gasp. I recognize the voice.

My CENSIR tightens. Patch looks smug. “Tell me its name, Twenty-Five.”

“Vestia.”

“One of your friends.”

Not a question, but I answer anyway. “Yes.”

“Proceed.” He puts me back in transmit mode.

Painted on the wall behind her are three columns of questions. I recite the words printed above the red column. “Vestia, answer our questions truthfully and we will limit
your suffering. Do not, and you will beg us to die.”

“It hurts?”

Her question catches me off guard. “Yes. They will hurt you very much if you do not cooperate.”

“No, that is not what I mean, human. It is strange. I cannot sense your thoughts, but I can . . . smell them. Do not hurt for me, Melissa Callahan. I am tired of this world. The next tomorrow awaits. I go to it with joy.”

I try to think of something happy, something to somehow alter my scent, but every memory that pops up—Mom teaching me the piano, Dad pulling me out of school early to go see a movie, Sam hiding with me in the attic during a thunderstorm—is fleeting and bittersweet.

“Hurry it up, Twenty-Five,” Patch says.

I look down the wall, focus on the questions. “Vestia, how old are you?”

“I do not know.” The same answer Ryla gave. And Blaklik before her.

“Where do you come from?”

Sadness creeps into her voice. “I do not know.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Two hundred three cycles of your moon.” Two moons longer than Ryla and Blaklik.

“How did you get to our world?”

“I do not know.”

“Where did you arrive?”

“I woke here.” She sends me an image of a forest. Ryla and Blaklik came from the mountains.

“What was your role in your clan?”

“Warrior.” The sadness deepens. “Paladin.”

“What is the status of your clan?”

“I do not know.”

“How many dragon holes are there?”

“There were five. They are gone.”

We continue like this. I ask, she answers. Not once does she ask me anything. Nothing about James, nothing about Baby. At first I figure she’s trying to spare her own emotions, but at some point I realize she’s probably trying to spare mine. This gives me no joy, but it does give me courage, which I desperately need as I ask the final question on the list.

“What are the names of your friends?” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lester grab a hatchet from the wall. The opening salvo. Didn’t work on Ryla or Blaklik, but that’s not the point.

Vestia does not hesitate in her answer. “I have none.”

I brace for her pain, but Patch waggles a finger at the soldier. “Tell your dragon friend that if it wishes to fly into the next tomorrow with the glory of flame, that we need to go no further.”

“I do not understand,” she says after I tell her.

“Fight for us, and you will get to die in battle,” Patch says.

As I relay his message, Lester runs the edge of his hatchet along Vestia’s snout.

Her lips peel back in what I believe to be a smile. “Tell the invisible men that they are not worthy of death in battle. They are not even worthy of a funeral by worms. How many of their brethren have passed through my belly?”

An instant after the robotic voice speaks the words from Patch’s tablet, the hatchet is embedded halfway into her snout. I flinch, but she does not. Tim rushes her with his knife.

“Halt, you fools.” Patch orders. “It’s baiting you.” He looks to me. “It’s sure?”

“She’s sure,” I say.

My CENSIR shocks me. “I didn’t ask for your interpretation, Twenty-Five.”

I repeat the offer.

“Tell the invisible men that they reek of cowardice. In the next tomorrow, I will pray that their god grants them courage.”

“Ground it,” Patch says to the A-Bs.

“Gladly.”

They use the serrated portion of their knives and start
sawing into her wings. I try to shut my eyes, but Patch shocks me. When I take a step back from my mark on the slab, he shocks me harder.

He doesn’t have me interrogate her any further. We just watch.

It’s slow going. The membrane slices apart with relative ease, but the bone’s tough. Vestia flares here and there, sometimes I hear the slightest grunt, but her smile remains as they treat her like poultry.

They switch out their knives halfway through for fresh ones. Vestia’s wings flicker on and off. By the time they’ve winked out, the various experiments have shut down. The chain saws have gone quiet.