Flying toward the blast with Tasha against my back, I felt the adrenaline rush through my system. I wasn’t sure where we stood, exactly, but she was there with me and that, at least, had begun to quell the storm of my emotions.

We raced toward the rising black clouds that seemed to fan out and darken the sky overhead. The nearer we got, the more obvious it became that the main explosion had come from the same building which Tasha had shown us on our tour.

The blaze had spread to the buildings surrounding it, as well, and workers rushed out of the nearby structures. It was chaos. A fire on Vaxivia was a dangerous thing. Since the planet had such low levels of ground moisture, all fires had to be strictly controlled. Open flames essentially did not exist and this was a horrifying example of why.

As we pulled up, security vehicles were already dousing the fire with pyroretardant foam, but it raged in spite of their efforts. The building had been nondescript, with few windows, its plain beige exterior relaying nothing of the high-tech labs and construction facilities within its walls. Flames snaked out of every opening we could see, climbing rapidly toward the sky.

“The pods!” Tasha cried, her wavy black hair swirling in frenzied chaos in the drafts of heat pouring in all directions from the burning structure.

“Are you sure they are already here?”

“Yes, I had Li send them over in a container after we arrived at LCC,” she said, panic rising in her voice.

We landed quickly and ran toward the scene. Tasha’s face contorted into an expression of horror as she covered her mouth with her hand. The heat of the blaze flowed in waves over us as we were bathed in the awful orange glow of the climbing flames.

Screams echoed from inside as more emergency response and security vehicles continued to arrive.

“We have staff in there!” she shouted to the emergency personnel. “Use the hyrdoduct! Use anything we have!”

A detachment of workers ran to one of a series of small tanks with pipes connecting to the ground. Opening the tanks, they pulled out a thick rubber line that after several moments began spurting thick, muddy water. Once pressure began to increase, they hurriedly carried the line to the building and sprayed the blaze.

It was a mad flurry of activity as several other workers connected to more tanks, dousing the building in bursts of water. Still, no one seemed to be able to contain the flames. My brothers came to us and looked on with concern as the fire raged on.

Tasha turned to us, tears in her eyes. “My most trusted researchers were in there, studying the pods. They were my friends, my colleagues, my mentors… and they’re all trapped in there.”

Just then, a demonic cackle rose through the noise and chaos around us and underscored the human cries and screams of panic that followed.

“An Infernian,” Zaruv dolefully proclaimed to Tasha, who looked overcome by the horror before her. “This was a deliberate, hostile act.”

The heat radiated and forced us back for Tasha’s protection as something small near the building’s entrance burst from the flames. Exchanging looks with my brothers, I knew what had to be done.

I quickly grabbed Tasha’s arms and turned her to face me, “Tasha, look at me. Your workers will die in there if we don’t intervene. My brothers and I are immune to fire; we can get your people out, but I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

Tasha searched my eyes, unsure for a moment. Then, wordlessly, she nodded once with vigor. I knew it was probably a big step for her, for any Vaxivian, really. Trust and aliens were clearly not two concepts that aligned well here. The moment felt monumental, considering the fact that I had deceived her. In lieu of her direct forgiveness, this felt like a decent consolation and a step in the direction I hoped we could go.

I turned to my brothers. “Batri!” I called out to them, and they needed no further instruction.

The four of us shifted in tandem. The humans around us jumped back, startled, some of them dropping their equipment. A few ran from us, screaming, but most just stared in shock.

I looked back briefly to see Tasha watching me with a worried look. I knew we would face an Infernian within and they made for a wily foe, but I silently vowed that I would make it out of there and back to her.

There was no time for assurances as we flew into the flames, following the cries of the workers. We had only toured the facility once before with Tasha, but we knew the basic layout of the building.

Flying in unison, we navigated the large hallways of the office space near the front of the building, finding a small number of workers here and there. In turns, we stopped, shifted to free them, led them out, and then rejoined the group, following the sounds of more human screams.

Finally, in the center of the building, from the glass viewing windows of the clean lab, we saw a group of ten workers. They were shackled to a series of pipes that rose to a workstation in the center of the room.

They coughed from the fumes of the fire and screamed out for help. I broke the glass walls with a heavy blow from my tail, spraying shards everywhere.

Shifting, we all ran forward and struggled with their restraints, attempting to free them. The blaze was getting stronger, and, though our bodies could withstand the flight through them, the number of possible exits that wouldn’t lead us through a path of fire was narrowing rapidly.

Feeling the metal of the restraints bite into my palms, I threw all my might into unlatching them. I failed and saw that my brothers struggled, too, to use brute strength alone. I stopped and examined the bindings. The latches were held together using massively charged magnetic hinges. Even with Dragselian strength, we could not break them.

Thinking quickly, I grabbed a blunt tool from a counter and shouted over the roar of the inferno at a slender middle-aged woman in clean room gear. “I need you to look away and angle your body as far from me as possible! Got it?”

She looked back at me and, though there was terror etched into the lines of her face, she nodded.

Putting my mouth to the bindings, I breathed a small stream of fire on them, heating them, and then struck down at the bindings with all my might.

Though I had done my best to focus the heat on the metal latches, the whole of the restraints had turned scorching hot and had burned her wrists slightly. As a Dragselian, I had no concept of the pain one felt from a burn, but, based on the physical appearance, it looked excruciating.

Fortunately, her injury was not in vain, as the effort had been successful. The heat and impact had displaced the magnet’s dipoles and the metal latches clicked free with a small amount of additional force. Her hands broke free of the restraints and she jumped up feverishly, like an animal freed from a trap.

She clutched at the red, raw marks of her injured wrists but looked at me with gratitude and a mixture of fear and wonder in her eyes.

My brothers and I worked furiously to free as many as we could. At one point, the flames began to encroach into the lab. The heat passed over our bodies with no effect, but the workers’ panic was clearly rising. Pavar shifted again into his vibrant red dragon form, fanned out his wings and beat them, generating a wind to repel the flames.

Still, the fire had cut off our exits, and there was no way to get the humans out without them being scorched in the process.

Zaruv, bronze in his dragon form, suddenly burst into the air and flew straight up at the roof of the hangar-like lab. He didn’t slow as he collided with it and burst through the sheet of metal, creating a gaping hole.

Taking quick advantage, the rest of us scooped up hostages, one or two at a time, and shuttled them out, barely landing to drop them off before rushing back in. In two trips, we had them all out of the building.

They were singed, but they were alive.

Tasha embraced the woman I had freed first as I set her down, and she immediately summoned a medical worker to check her out.

Before I could go, the woman grabbed for me. “It was a woman—or she was a woman. She came in, demanding to know where the pods were. We were showing them to her when she started to shake and shriek. Her back ripped open, and wings burst out, her skin became iridescent, and her hair… it was almost alive, like serpents. She detonated the bomb, and we would have died, except the glass from the clean room is heat proof.”

I nodded, unable to speak in my dragon form, and followed my brothers back in to the burning building to search for the Infernian, leaving Tasha to comfort the woman.

With the exception of the metal skeleton of the building, everything within was largely destroyed. We worked efficiently, scanning every chamber, searching, hunting as the flames licked at the scales of our dragon bodies.

Our search ultimately proved fruitless. The Infernian, like all Infernians, was a coward, and it appeared the monster had already fled.

The remnants of the explosive were still visible. The device had been detonated directly beside the two recovered pods. For their part, the pods looked to have sustained some minor damage but were still intact.

I suddenly felt a jolt, like an electrical shock, and one thought came to mind—Tasha. Somehow, I sensed she was in danger.

I rushed out of the building, bursting free of the rippling currents of heat, and looked to where I had seen her moments before. She wasn’t there.

The female researcher that Tasha had been comforting was getting up off the ground, fresh cuts on her arms and forehead. Everyone around her was looking on in renewed fear. Andie and several other responders had pulsors aimed at the sky, but it was empty.

Tasha was gone.