The Other Side (7 page)

Flying
a dragon without a saddle is about as fun as riding a roller coaster without a harness. A little bit exhilarating, and a whole lot terrifying. It doesn't help that Baby's pissed at me and makes random dips or climbs, brightening at my shouts.

In the moments when I'm not focused on clinging to her neck, I find myself watching Colin. Bent over Randon like a jockey aboard a racehorse, he guides us between frosted mountains, above snow-gilded treetops, across frozen lakes. It often looks like he's smiling, though maybe it's my imagination. But what if he's thinking about that kiss, too?

Baby plunges. Wind stings my face, blisters my lips. My hands slip from her neck. As I reach out, shouting for her to settle, she swoops up at a steep angle and coils into a helix, laughing as I struggle to keep my stomach from inverting.

I tighten my grip. “Knock it off.”

She arcs into a glide, spins her head around, and fires a cone of ice over my shoulder.

“Finished?”

I get another blast of ice.

After we follow Colin and Randon past more mountains and emerge over an expansive lake, Baby's wing-flaps ease to their natural beat. I take the chance to rest my eyes, my thoughts drifting back to the kiss. Did that count as my first real one? James kissed me in Georgetown, but that was for the cameras. No, this didn't count either. It was just a way to calm me down. Stupid, but why else would he do that after I'd confessed about Claire—

Baby dives hard, then lurches to a near standstill. I smash into her. Pain explodes in my nose, and a warm geyser of blood pours down my lips. My scream gets swallowed by the wind. With a smirky little laugh, Baby levels out and resumes her rhythm.

I pinch my nose. “I don't know what's gotten into you, but you have to stop it.”

Why don't you complain to your boyfriend?

“Is that what this is about? Do I have to block my thoughts from you?”

Baby darkens, losing the small amount of heat radiated by her glow.
He's a scale chaser!

“Not anymore. He's here to help us. He saved my life.”

She bucks again, almost throwing me off. I smack her as hard as I can. A vibrating sting runs up my arm, and she yowls loud enough to draw Randon's and Colin's attention. They circle back and pull up alongside us.

“Everything okay?” Colin shouts over the wind.

“We're fine. Baby just forgot how to fly for a few seconds.”

“We'll land shortly.”

As the first rays of dawn stretch across the darkness, we take shelter in a low mountain cave. Instead of bending down to let me dismount, Baby dips her head forward and bucks her rump, pitching me off. I land hard on my flank. The wind rushes from my lungs. Slivers of ice drip from her nostrils as she stalks to the back of the cave and curls into a ball next to Randon.

Colin rushes over, but I wave him off. “I'm fine.”

“The Diocletians made camp about an hour ago.” He shoulders out of his pack and unzips it. “They're in some destroyed city I didn't recognize. Canada, maybe. I think it's a stopover. Allie's in a good mood, and she told Randon to tell you hi.”

“Randon's kept me in the loop,” I say.

He rummages through his pack and pulls out a pair of MREs. He sits on an outcropping of rock, removes a towelette from one, and hands it to me.

I wipe crusted blood from beneath my nose. “Thanks.”

He holds up the MREs. “Meals Rejected by Everyone. We have beef ravioli and cheese tortellini. Pick your poison.”

“Tortellini.”

“Excellent choice.” After opening the MRE, he removes the tortellini bag and the flameless ration heater. He tears the top off the FRH and pours some water into it. He seals the FRH, wraps it around the tortellini, and sticks it in a container sleeve.

After repeating the process with the ravioli, he tosses me a pouch of crackers. “Seriously, might be the most edible thing in the cave.”

We eat crackers and move on to cobbler while we wait for the main courses to heat up. In between mouthfuls, Colin jokes about the various MRE acronyms (Meals Rejected by the Enemy, Meals Rarely Enjoyed, Meals Refusing to Exit), wonders if cavemen lived here long ago, admires the sunrise and panorama of snow-covered mountains. I've never heard him talk so much. Not once does he look at me.

Mumbling about “three lies for the price of one,” he sets my tortellini in front of me and offers me a plastic fork. “Guess it beats canned beans.”

I grab his wrist and wait until he lifts his eyes from the fork. “I'm sorry I sprang Claire on you like that.”

He shakes his head and shrugs. “It doesn't matter. Eat up
now. We got to get some chow in us and some shut-eye—”

“I'm sorry, Colin. I should have told you earlier.”

He rubs at the fork tines and stares out the cave opening. “You know, at first, I thought you were making it up so I'd leave you alone. Then I realized you weren't.” He looks at me. “I know you blame yourself for a lot of things. Don't blame yourself for Claire.”

“You don't even know what happened,” I whisper.

“In A-B boot camp, they load you up with this hundred-pound pack and run you up hills and through sand and swamp. You want to up and die with every step. After dinner, it was an effort to get outta your seat and crawl into bed. Hit the pillow and the next thing you know, reveille's ringing in your head and it's hump time again.”

He traces a line down my cheek, following the path of a wayward tear. “The first time you see one of your friends die, you learn the difference between a hard day and a bad day. You can't look back on bad days, because you can't get over that question. What could I have done? 'Cause there's gotta be something. And while you're thinking about how you should have saved him, your next friend goes down.”

He thumbs away another tear. “You have to learn to look forward.”

“You don't even know what happened.”

He cups my face and kisses my eyes. “Claire was already
dead in spirit. Whatever happened doesn't matter.”

But it does to me. So I tell him. First about Claire, but once I start, more pours out. He's seen some of Preston's videos, so he knows what they did to us in Georgetown, but I need him to know how it felt.

The hopelessness inspired by CENSIRs and an endless world of frozen tundra interspersed with scientists and soldiers who'd shock you as soon as look at you. The terror of not knowing your day's assignment, whether or not you'd have to participate in dragon torture or battle-room operations that killed innocent people, knowing if you failed to comply, they might hurt your family.

The oppressive guilt. No matter what you did, somebody got hurt.

He holds my hand as I recount slaying half-dead dragons for TV and an audience of soldiers. How their catcalls and jeers faded into the background because James was there, a victim of reconditioning.

Colin slips his fingers from mine. “I didn't know you two were . . . involved. He never mentioned you.”

His words sting, and I hate that they do. “We weren't. But there was a time when we were friends, I guess. Then we both were reconditioned. Rescue came before they were finished with me. I got lucky. I'm only half crazy.”

“I wasn't with the group long enough to know James.
He always struck me as distant, but his heart seemed in the right place.”

I snort. “You're defending him?”

“I don't want to step on any toes.”

Heat rises in my cheeks. “What are you talking about? He's a Diocletian now. I don't even know who he is anymore.” Did I ever know?

Colin stands. “After I . . . in the ambulance . . . I saw something in your eyes.” He stares at the ceiling for a good minute. “Why did you run?”

I burst to my feet, livid. “Not because of him.”

“When you talk about him, I hear something in your voice. . . .” He shrugs. “I don't know what I'm saying. I'm tired. We need to sleep.”

Colin tries to step past me, but I don't let him. I take his face between my hands, stand on my tiptoes, and kiss him. His lips linger on mine for a moment before he retreats. “It's okay, Melissa, you don't have to convince—”

I kiss him harder. And this time he kisses me back.

Perhaps
it's the fact I slept without nightmares, but when Colin wakes me, I feel light of body and mind.

“I've never seen you smile in your sleep before,” Colin says as I sit up and stretch.

I ignore the kicking urgency in my bladder and lean back onto my elbows. “I didn't know you watched me sleep. That's a bit creepy.”

He laughs. “You should smile more. You're beautiful.”

“When was the last time you saw an optometrist?”

“Got a physical every six months.”

“Drop your socks and grab your . . .” I arch my eyebrows.

“Your dad teach you that?”

“Among other things. Like not trusting All-Blacks. Especially when they tell you you're beautiful.”

“Fine then, you're hideous. So hideous I can't stop looking at you.”

Smiling through a yawn, I push myself to my feet. “Be right back, Romeo.”

After relieving myself in a dark corner of the cave, I decide to confront Baby. She's coiled against the side wall, facing away from me. Her glow goes dim at my approach. The last time I saw her so dark, she was on the Georgetown slaughter slab, awaiting execution.

“I know you're upset.” I glide my hand along the scales of her rump. She used to brighten at my touch. I take in her faint smell and think of Allie. “We'll get her back.”

No response.

“If you need to yell at me, that's fine. Don't hold it in.”

No response.

“We'll get her back. I promise. I know you don't like Colin, but—”

She leaps to her feet and whirls on me, baring her teeth, her glow going supernova. Squinting, I see a ball of frost pulsating at the back of her throat, in rhythm with her breaths.

He's a scale chaser!

I step forward, inches from her lower lip. Ice crystals sprinkle my sweatshirt and face. Footsteps sound behind me, and I raise my hand as Baby's eyes narrow to black slits and the ball pulses bigger, colder.

“Make us breakfast,” I say without looking back.

Always sneaking around,
Baby says as Colin retreats.
He tried to needle me.

“He should have asked you. It was a mistake, but he wanted to make sure you were safe. He's not a bad person, Baby.”

He's the same as the rest of them. And you are blind to it. The joy leaks from you when you are near him. He is a scale chaser!

The ball of ice slips from her throat into her mouth. I don't know if she's losing control or threatening me, but I don't budge.

“He didn't join the army to kill dragons. He did it to protect his family. He knows he made a mistake.”

She gives a frantic shake of her head.
I saved your life first.

“What are you talking about?”

In the mountains with the metal monsters where men like him killed that Red.

“I know you did, but I don't understand what that has to do—”

Everything!
The ball rolls to the spot behind her teeth. If she opens a few inches wider, it will tumble out and crush me.

“Whatever I did to upset you, it wasn't intentional. I could never hurt you, Baby. You know that, don't you?”

She turns aside, spits out her anger, then slumps down,
her brilliance fading to nothing. She ducks her head into her tail. Soon, I hear an odd sound, something between a snort and wheeze. She's crying.

I clamber atop her and wiggle my way headlong into the tight gap between her tail and body until I reach her snout. If not for her tears, bright and warm, my head would be locked inside a dark freezer.

“You know what got me through Georgetown?” I pause to compose myself. “You. Knowing that you still glowed kept me going. The day I discovered I was supposed to kill you, that was the worst day of my life. When rescue came, and I learned you were alive . . . that was the best. Hands down.”

She opens an eye, as large as my head. The tears stop, and her glow intensifies enough that I don't crystallize.
You never remember me. You're always thinking of the scale chaser.

“Look into my heart, listen to my thoughts, do whatever you must, but know that you are my family. I would give my life for you.”

And him?

“Him? Maybe a finger. He is a distraction that keeps my thoughts off Allie.”

She brightens.
He kisses well?

I laugh. “Not as well as you, but a good deal warmer.”

I want you to be warm, Melissa.

“Not too warm.” I wriggle forward and kiss her frosty muzzle.

She goes blinding again, but in a good way.
Sisters?

“You, me, and Allie. Forever.”

We fly east over the ruins of a city Colin tells me is Calgary, then turn south into Montana as the sun sets. To avoid radar and the automated anti-dragon artillery hidden across the countryside, we change altitude every half hour.

Besides the fierce accelerations when she dives to near ground level or climbs toward the clouds, Baby maintains a steady gait. Randon refuses to relay any “noncritical” messages to Colin, and Baby's following strict no-talk orders to conserve energy, which leaves me with nothing to do but mull over the train wreck of my life.

My thoughts keep circling back to my conversation with Evelyn. She would have betrayed me in an instant. But she didn't. Connecting those dots is easy. James must have convinced her not to divulge our location, must have played dumb for Oren.

So what? He could have warned me about Oren's plans. If he still cared in any way, he would have. Unless he didn't know. He wasn't in Dillingham. Of course he knew. He must have. Then why was Evelyn so angry?

We encounter our first drone as the moon is cresting.
Following Colin's instructions, Baby loops in and ices it from above. Colin and Randon dive after the falling drone.

By the time Baby and I land, Colin's on his knees, digging through fragments of black metal cast in a crimson glow. Broken clumps of trees and puddles of water surround him. Randon carries a frozen part of drone in his mouth, sets it down, and blows out short bursts of fire to melt the ice casement.

Stepping around branches and a pair of iced missiles, I work my way to a mound of discards: twisted fragments of plane, a shattered camera, the tip of a propeller.

“What exactly are you doing?” I ask. “DJs could be here any second.”

“No, this is one of their perimeter drones. They're not equipped with zenith cams. No way it saw us.”

“I still don't see why we're here.”

“Every drone is equipped with instrumentation,” Colin says, not looking up. “Blade tachometers, thermocouples, transceivers, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, sure. You know I have no idea what you're talking about, right?”

“This.” He wrenches loose an apple-sized black box from the wreckage. “Soon enough, the military will realize the drone is down. They'll see the temperature readings and discover why it went down. And they'll come looking for it.”

“So why are we here?” I say.

“The wonderful thing about today's unmanned aerial vehicles is that they're all operated through the DoD mainframe.” He taps a jagged piece of metal with his foot. “In a couple minutes, the mother system will relay this bad boy's zero-output parameters to DOCOM, and a task force will be sent to investigate.”

“You have to speak human for a little bit, Colin. Pretend you're talking to someone who wasn't in military intelligence.”

“We're going to play a little trick.” He explains his idea on the way back to the dragons. “Drones sometimes relay faulty information due to weather, dropped signals, minor malfunctions. You can't deploy a response unit every time there's a blip on the radar, so there's a built-in delay to ensure it's not a false signal. Why are you smiling at me like that?”

“You don't look like a nerd on the outside.” I laugh at his pained expression and kiss him on his scruffy cheek.

“Thanks,” he grumbles.

“You were saying. Delays and false signals and all that fun stuff.”

“The critical parameter the mother system relies on is drone speed.” He interlocks his hands. I step onto them, and he boosts me onto Baby. “The other sensors are secondary. As long as we're flying, we're in good shape.”

“So we're going to pretend to be a drone,” I say. “Why is this a good idea?”

He grins. “Best part. The mother system knows where all the children are. She tells them where to fly. Due to recent resource redirects, the herd's been thinned in the evac territories, so there's only one drone per sector. We'll be free and clear. . . .” He notices my amusement. “Hey, I'm not a complete nerd.”

“You're cute like this. Now you're blushing. Very cute.”

“Could you shut up now? We need to fly.”

Baby stomps in agreement.

“Won't this mother system know there's something wrong when we don't follow its orders?” I ask as I shimmy into position around Baby's neck.

“Eventually. It'll recall the drone for a maintenance check, but we'll have ditched our cover by then. By the time they realize anything's wrong, we'll be safe and secure in Denver.”

“And if it doesn't work?”

“Perhaps I should get another kiss. Just in case.”

Baby nudges him to the ground with her tail and lifts off.

“I'll kiss you, too!” he shouts after us. Baby blasts a bolt of ice that explodes between his legs.

I laugh. “Good shot.”

I missed.

We skim across an abyss of darkness broken only by Randon and Baby's reflections over rivers and lakes. I keep my head on a swivel, certain every new star on the horizon is a searchlight from a drone or dragon jet that's discovered our ploy. Every couple minutes, I remind Baby to remain vigilant and annoy Randon with update requests about Allie.

He always gives the same answer.
She still sleeps.

Which means she's been asleep for more than twelve hours now.

Near dawn—no signs of enemies, no word from Allie—we reach the outskirts of Denver. The white mountain-shaped roofs of the airport stand out in sharp contrast against the backdrop of charred fields. The scorched and splintered husks of skyscrapers protrude like spears from the horizon.

I remember the exact date Denver went from city to graveyard. I remember every day Mom was called away to war.

I begged her not to go; she smiled and kissed me and said everything would be okay. Told me to be strong for Sam and Dad. Hiccupping back tears, I stood on the curb outside Groveton Elementary with Principal Markinson and watched her drive away. That night, it was all over the news.

I'd never seen so many dragons, so much fire.

To save Mom, I made promises to God. I don't recall them all—they changed each time—but I'm sure I've broken
most of them. When Mom returned home, I cried and urged her to quit the army. The next day she signed me up for tae kwon do. Said it was because I skipped school and needed to learn discipline. But a few months before her death, I think she revealed her real reason, written on the back of a picture she'd sent from her final salvage mission.

Congratulations on the black belt, Mel, Mel. I'm prouder than you'll ever know. In a world filled with darkness, you have found your inner light. Hold on to it, no matter what. I love you. Always. Mom
.

With her customary heart and smiley face.

I can't help but think she was also saying good-bye.

She couldn't have realized my inner light would die with her.

It's rekindled in fits and spurts, but never for long. Dad broken. Sam, who knows? Allie lost. James . . .

As we glide toward the airport, I look away from the sorrow of past ruin and banish the dread of future heartache.
Baekjul boolgool.

I am my mother's daughter. I am strong.