“An anonymous email?” Tristan remarked, crossing his arms as he gazed at the laptop on the table. “Well, that’s not suspicious at all.”
Riley eyed him wearily, but was apparently too tired to argue. In the dim light of the tornado shelter, the soldiers of St. George stood uneasily around the table, watching the dragons on either side. Riley had gathered the leaders of both factions for this meeting; even Lieutenant Ward stood beside Lieutenant Martin, glowering at the rest of the room. There were nine of us altogether: me, Ember, Riley, Wes, Jade, Mist, Tristan and the two lieutenants of the Order. It was a tight fit, with five humans and four dragons trying not to bump elbows as we huddled around the table.
“What’s this about, dragon?” Martin asked calmly. Riley’s jaw tightened, but at least Martin called them dragon and not the more derogatory lizard. “If you’ve called all of us here at once, I assume it’s for something important.”
“Yeah.” Riley ran his fingers through his hair, gazing around at us. In the dim light, he looked pale and grim, almost shaken. Glancing at Wes, who was standing beside him with his laptop open on the table, he gave a solemn nod. “Wesley, why don’t you show them what you showed me this morning.”
The hacker nodded. “Right,” he said, and turned the laptop around to face us. “My email is locked down tight,” he began, “but I keep a couple channels open, for runaway hatchlings and those looking to get out of Talon. If they know anything about Cobalt, they can contact us, even if they don’t know where we are. This,” he went on, “is from an email I received early this morning. No name, no return sender, nothing. Not even a bloody message. What it did contain…was this video.”
He pressed a button on the keyboard, changing the view to full screen, and I leaned in as the video began playing. It was shaky and poorly lit, obviously taken from a phone or similar handheld device. At first, it showed only a pair of shoes walking across a concrete floor, indicating the camera was pointed straight down, perhaps hidden, when the video began. Voices murmured somewhere off-screen, snatches of conversation that were too garbled to make out. There was the creak and groan of a heavy door opening, and the shoes stepped through the frame onto a metal walkway. And stopped.
Slowly, the camera rose, shook, came into focus. I drew in a slow, horrified breath, feeling Ember stiffen beside me, feeling the shock and disbelief of everyone around me seep into the air.
“Mother of God,” Martin whispered.
The camera showed a room that stretched back farther than the eye could see, a dark, seemingly endless cavern that had been suffused with a subtle green glow. That glow came from hundreds upon hundreds of enormous vats, marching in rigid rows through the cavern. They were massive, towering. It was difficult to tell with the poor video feed, but it looked like they were at least fifty feet tall, maybe taller.
And each one contained a dragon.
Vessels. Not hatchlings or Juveniles, but enormous, fully grown Adults. Dragons who, had they been normal, would have been several hundred years old. They floated behind the glass, unmoving, an army of savage, unstoppable killing machines, awaiting the day Talon would wake them up and send them into the world.
The video froze, and the screen went dark. For a moment, no one said anything. I could feel Ember shaking against me, realizing, as we all did, what this meant. What Talon’s plan had been all along.
Finally, Tristan sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, composing himself as he did. “How long do you think we have before those things wake up?” he asked.
“Not long enough,” Riley answered grimly.
“We have to find it.” Ember raised her head, eyes glowing green in the shadows, her voice horrified and determined. “We can’t let Talon start a war,” she whispered. “Before that army wakes up, before Talon launches whatever they’re planning, we have to find this place and destroy it.”
“Destroy it?” This came from Mist, standing beside Jade at the far end of the table. “I think we have larger problems to worry about.” She stared at the dark computer screen, her lips pressed into a thin line. “This is obviously a trap. If we go storming that lab now, Talon will be expecting us.”
“Of course it’s a trap,” Riley growled. “Of course they’re going to be expecting us, that’s why that video found its way here. Because they know we can’t ignore it.” He sighed, stabbing his fingers through his hair again, raking it back. “And we can’t,” he muttered. “Not something like this. We can’t ignore what it means, for us and the rest of the world. Talon is everywhere—their reach expands the globe. If those vessels wake up, it really will be the dragon apocalypse. I don’t want to live in that kind of world, do you?” Mist dropped her gaze, her expression dark, and Riley’s voice softened. “We don’t have a choice, Mist. Believe me, I know it’s a trap. I am well aware that if we go looking for this place, we’ll be walking right into the jaws of death. I wish I could stick my head in the sand and pretend I never saw that video, but none of us can claim ignorance anymore. Once Talon takes control of that army, the entire world is going to erupt in war and dragonfire. There won’t be a place left for us to hide.” He narrowed his gaze, a muscle working in his jaw. “I’d rather die than live like that. I’d rather my entire underground be wiped out than have them exist in a world where Talon rules everything.”
Mist didn’t say anything, but the shadows on her face and the hard set of her jaw said she knew he was right.
“Do you know who sent this?” Lieutenant Martin asked, glancing at Wes. “Were you able to trace it?”
“Yeah.” The hacker sounded weary as he turned the laptop around, tapping something on his keyboard. “It was pretty bloody easy actually. Whoever sent the video didn’t do a damn thing to cover their trail, which makes it even more likely that this is some giant trap, lovingly prepared to destroy us all. But…here.” He turned the laptop around to face us. A satellite image showed a swath of mountains and wilderness, with a pulsing red dot in the very center.
“The email was sent from a computer pretty much smack dab in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains,” Wes said.
Beside me, Ember straightened, as if that had triggered a memory. Riley noticed, as well, and nodded.
“Yeah, Firebrand. The lab. I remember.”
“Remember what?” I asked.
“There’s a rumor in Talon,” the rogue explained, his expression darkening with anger. “Of a laboratory where Talon sent the nonfemale dragons whom the organization had deemed ‘unworthy.’ Either they were sickly or crippled or weak in some other way. No one knew what happened to them, but if you were sent to that lab, you were never seen again.” His brow furrowed, a shadow of pain crossing his face. “As one of my rogues once put it, the laboratory was a place they sent dragons ‘to be sliced and diced and turned into something new.’”
“Something new?” Tristan shook his head. “Something new is a dragon that can also Shift into a motorcycle. Not an army of mindless dragon clones. Sorry, mindless Adult dragon clones.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Shit, we barely held off a swarm of hatchlings…can you imagine a few hundred thousand Adults raining fire down on everything?”
“Like I said—dragon apocalypse.” Crossing his arms, Riley stared at the rest of us. “So the question becomes, how are we going to storm another massive, heavily guarded Talon compound—one that is expecting us, by the way—and what are we going to need to have half a chance in hell of pulling this off?”
“A fucking miracle?” Tristan muttered.
Riley arched a brow at him. “Not terribly helpful, St. George, but I’ll take it under consideration.”
“We need more people,” I said.
All eyes turned to me. “We don’t have enough bodies,” I went on. “Not for something like this. We barely had enough people for the assault on the facility. I’d expect this to be much larger and well guarded. Even if they weren’t expecting us, we need a far bigger force to have any hope of success.”
“I’m afraid Sebastian is right,” Lieutenant Ward added, surprising us. His voice was grim as he gazed around the room. “This is their army, the dragons they’ve grown and bred to launch an attack, to declare war on their enemies and the entire human race. There will be more security in that spot than any other Talon facility in the world. We don’t have the numbers for this.” His voice grew even darker. “I don’t think anyone has the numbers for this.”
“Then we get more.”
Ember stepped forward, raising her head as she faced the table of men and dragons. “We get more,” she repeated firmly. “We put out the call to oppose Talon, once and for all. Lieutenant Martin, Lieutenant Ward, there have to be other survivors from the Order, other soldiers that are scattered or in hiding. Call them here. Make them understand what must be done, that allying with us is the only way to stop Talon. Jade…” She looked at the Asian woman, silently watching from the corner. “Rally the Eastern dragons and all their followers. I know there are more of them out there—they called a council a few weeks back. Convince them to fight with us. I know the Eastern dragons are reclusive and would rather not get involved, but the time for hiding is past. If we lose this battle, Talon will come for them, too.”
Jade offered a slight, solemn bow to the other dragon. “I will try, Ember,” she stated, raising her head. “I do not know how many of my people I can persuade—as you say, they have spent thousands of years in isolation, remaining neutral to the troubles of the outside world. But, in this, you are correct. We cannot hide any longer. This must become our fight, as well.”
Ember nodded. “Mist,” she went on, and the silver-haired girl raised an eyebrow at her.
“You’re going to ask me if I can convince Basilisks who are still in Talon to join us,” she said dryly. “To go rogue and fight the organization.”
“Not just the Basilisks,” Ember replied. “Any dragon or human who is unhappy with Talon, who hates what they’ve done but has been afraid to oppose the Elder Wyrm. I’m not saying we should alert the Vipers to our presence, but I trust your judgment, Mist. You must know of a few who would be willing to go rogue, to fight Talon with us.”
Mist offered a grim, mysterious smile. “I think I might know a few.”
“Good. You handle that, then.” Ember paused, then took a deep breath and turned to the front of the table. Her voice, once firm and confident, went a little bit softer. “Riley…”
He held up a hand. “I know, Firebrand,” he said before she could say anything. “You don’t have to convince me this time. We’re going to have to fight. All of us, everyone who can hold a gun or breathe fire. So don’t worry.” He shook his head, a rueful smile crossing his face. “It’s either make our final stand here, or burn with the rest of the world when Talon wakes those things up.”
He took a deep breath, then let it out and grinned savagely around the room. “All right,” he said in an overly grand voice. “There’s not much time left, and we have work to do. The dragon apocalypse is coming.”