Amy

Whatever they’d stuck me with made me drowsy but left me conscious. In the bubble, I flew over New Orleans and penetrated the pink habitat barrier. Inside the habitat, the bubble delivered me to the military compound. For my arrest, I thought. I’d broken laws, was a convicted felon on the run, and maybe had made the most-wanted list in the habitat. They made criminals into level-five cyborgs and apparently came after them even beyond the habitat’s walls.

The bubble penetrated the walls with me still inside it, carrying me off to wherever it wanted. I expected a room where they’d question me about the car and maybe even the littering. In the well-lit hallway, I hovered over the tile, even tried to step on it when a group of three level-five cyborgs emerged and took positions around me. You knew a level-five because their head was at least half-covered in metal with at least one eye implant. Two took up positions on either side of me and one behind. The bubble burst, and I landed on my feet. Unsteady, I grabbed the cyborg on my left so I didn’t fall. He grunted and started walking.

Like a good citizen, I followed.

Level-five cyborgs didn’t have a mind of their own. Being complete cyborg machines, their minds no longer processed reason or emotions. I thought they’d they take me to jail or a judge or something like that. They didn’t. They left me inside a room with two guys who looked like they’d seen better days. Strange. I thought they separated women from men. Not around here, apparently.

The guys sat on two high metal tables against one wall, two more empty tables across from them. A holding cell? Cyborgs helped me up onto an empty table opposite the two guys and then left. Someone gripped my arm again, and this time, I slapped the fingers away. I still couldn’t see who it was. I kicked out with my leg and hit something. A faint oomph sounded, and I knew I’d hit a person.

Something sharp stabbed my thigh, another shot of whatever had made me drowsy in the first place. My muscles relaxed, the drugs calming me down, and I spent hours sitting and staring, drool coming out of my mouth.

I watched them work because I couldn’t look away as invisible forces ripped the arms from one man, as they carried away his limbs like objects floating on thin air, as they attached his new mechatronic cyborg arms. I wanted to look away, but I didn’t.

Their work was almost finished, I realized, as a mechatronic helmet entered the room and as they lay the man on top of the table so they could work on his head. The sound of the saw in the room made me whimper, and my bile rose. I watched the…spinning machine breach the man’s shaved skull.

I was next.

I had to get out of here. I couldn’t take Cy parts. I would die. Hadn’t they looked at my records?

The drugs had to wear off!

A digital clock on the wall told me the procedure on the man had taken about two hours. It was morning already. By now, Nentres would be awake and looking for me. Wouldn’t he? He would. He would look for me, and he would find me. I depended on him for this when I’d never wanted to depend on anyone. I depended on him, and I hoped he’d find me. Nentres would find me. I had to believe this.

He’d found me the past two times I’d gotten into trouble, and he’d saved me.

He would do the same now, and I would make it up to him.

The man rose as a level-five cyborg with glowing red eyes that stared at me, his new mechanical screws squeaking in the room as he walked out. Everyone in the habitat believed cyborgs exported criminals up to Cy ships and the Cy worked on the level fives in their own domain. I didn’t believe that anymore, but I couldn’t see who’d made this man either.

Silence choked me, and I fisted my left hand, finally gaining control over my body. The drugs must’ve worn off. I stayed frozen, though, not wanting to show a sign of mobility to the fucking invisible people in the room. I stared at the wall. I should probably pray to the Virgin Mary to save my soul at the hour of my death, but the only prayer I could summon was a chant. I chanted for the red dragon, and words came to me as if I’d spoken them all my life. “Come to me,” I whispered and rocked back and forth. “Come to me.”

This time, while they worked on the second man, I chose not to watch. I chanted my come-to-me mantra over and over as if it would summon a dragon inside this room.

Abruptly, the work stopped. They set down the cutters and pokers on a surgical table next to the mutilated man. I waited a few minutes, unsure what this meant. Outside, something banged, then exploded. I gripped the edge of the table so I didn’t jump off and run. My sweaty palms slid right over it. They must’ve noticed my drugs had worn off since I’d chanted pretty loudly, so there was no sense in trying to fool them. Still, I stayed calm.

The door to the room clicked, just like our apartment’s door clicked when we locked it, and I knew they’d locked me in here, left me alone with a man who bled from severed limbs. They’d left him for dead. I tried to find my way out of the room. No windows, just bright lights and the cameras in the corners recording. Had someone stayed in the room with me? I needed to move, try to escape, but I feared they’d drug me again.

My feet started moving, swinging back and forth, and I finally couldn’t sit anymore. I hopped off the table then pinched the bridge of my nose as dark spots played over my eyes from the sudden movement. Fingers closed on my arm again. I jerked with all my might and ran to the door. Someone definitely stayed in the room with me. I felt my way around the door, trying to find a way to open it before “someone” jabbed me again and put me out. I couldn’t let them stab me.

A hand landed on my shoulder and another on my arm. I screamed and kicked at the invisible enemy. I hit something solid, then glanced at the tools left near the now-dead man. I ran for the tools and slipped on the blood collected on the floor. I landed on my ass so hard, I bounced three times, crashing into the tool table and toppling everything on top of me. The pain in my back nearly stopped me from moving, but the adrenaline and will to make it through this gave me strength.

Backside soaked in blood, I grabbed a three-foot-long stick and got up. Keeping the stick in front of me, I walked slowly, careful not to slip as I made my way to the door. I plastered my body against the door and kept swinging in front of me at the empty air.

If anyone could see me now, they’d think I was crazy. I could only imagine what I looked like, all ragged, bloody clothes, frantic expression on my face, batting a stick at the air. The only thing missing here was the padded room.

The lights blinked and went out. I couldn’t see an inch from my nose. I gripped the stick with both hands and listened. It was hard to hear inside the room because of all the noise coming from outside, so I listened to the commotion beyond the door. Men barked orders in the hallway. Men, not level-five cyborgs. Fives sounded like the refined taxi robots.

A current zapped my right shoulder. I yelped in pain. The smell of fried skin reached my nose. Blue lightning bolts at the end of a stick—same as the one I held—came at me. I swiped at the lights with my own stick, but whoever shot those blue sparks shot them fast. The sparks rained down on my skin, and I tried to protect my face while trying to fight the attacker off.

But I couldn’t. Hands gripped me. Fingers wrapped around my ankles, yanked. I fell on my ass again and “they” dragged me across the room, then lifted me in the air. They were carrying me somewhere. Screaming and kicking, I whipped my stick back and forth, trying to figure out how to make it shoot blue sparks. My thumb brushed over a tiny indentation on the stick, and I pressed it. Sparks flew. Yes! I kept my thumb on the indentation, swung, hit, swung again, and I knew I’d injured them because suddenly, they dropped me. The back of my head hit the ground hard, and I groaned, trying not to pass out, fairly certain I broke my tailbone or at least bruised it. I wanted to curl up in the corner and cry from the pain.

The door blew open, and a man with a flashlight stood over me. He asked me nothing, just picked me up and ran out of the room and into the hallway, where the red emergency lights lit his way. I couldn’t see his face for the black camouflage paint over it, but I recognized him by his beard and shaved head.

“Eddy?” I asked, because I was scared I was imagining shit and this was just another cyborg, maybe with mechatronic legs I couldn’t see from up here.

The man ignored me. He ran outside and into chaos.

We kept along the building’s wall to avoid the mayhem. Cyborgs battled men in hand-to-hand combat. Fists flew, knives glistened with blood, men screamed like babies. I didn’t want to watch, but I couldn’t look away. I’d never seen anything like it, thought I never would. We rounded the corner, and the man dropped me inside a dumpster. I screamed from the pain in my back, curled up in a ball, and finally started crying. The man—Eddy, because now I recognized his eyes—gripped my jaw and told me to stay put. I nodded and closed the iron lid above me, then stared at the darkness again.

A sniff.

I jerked and hit my head. “Who’s here?”

“Beatrice,” a small voice said. A child.

“Hi,” I said and felt around the dark place for her small frame. I found her shoulder and squeezed, and she threw her hands about my neck. Oh God, I could barely hold myself together. How was I supposed to take care of a child? I wiped my tears, because I was the adult here.

“I want my mommy,” she told me.

“Me too.” I’d never grow out of wanting my mom. I don’t think anyone grows out of it. But my mom wasn’t here, and she never would be again. “We have each other,” I added but it came out as a question. I rocked and tried distracting her and myself from thinking about the outside and hoping nobody found us in here.

A dragon shrieked.

The girl jumped away. My hands, as if I had no control over them, reached up and opened the dumpster lid, and I climbed outside. I closed the dumpster before I moved around the corner.

In the sky, hundreds of feet from the military platform where men and cyborgs battled for their lives, Nentres banged his tail against the plasma, an angry red barrier he couldn’t seem to breach. Down here, the men appeared outnumbered. A pack of dogs rushed past me and attacked the cyborgs, but the cyborgs were strong and many, landing their pods on the platform, using their tech. And those invisible people must be fighting too. How do you fight an enemy you can’t see?

The dragon shrieked again.

The red plasma opened, then trapped him. He struggled as the plasma crackled all around him. Though his mouth was open, I didn’t hear him. It lasted only a few seconds before he went still.

My breath caught.

The dragon fell through the air and thumped onto the platform, crushing the people under him. The platform shook as if an earthquake had struck. Men stopped fighting; cyborgs ceased their fire.

My feet pounded the concrete, and I reached the creature. His eyes were closed, but shallow breaths like wind on my body told me he was alive. I patted his wet nose, tears streaming down my face. “Hi there, handsome,” I said. It was nonsense because I didn’t know what else to say.

One dragon eye peeled open, showing me his slit pupil.

“You came for me.”

The dragon grunted, blinked, eyelids sliding sideways.

“I need you to get us out of here.”

Another grunt.

“Rise,” I said. I sounded ridiculous. He was dying, and I was telling him to rise but the words I wanted to say weren’t coming, another set of words overtaking my mind, as if someone had taken over my brain. “Rise!”

The dragon grunted but didn’t get up. With his eyes on me, I clearly saw fire dancing around his pupils. The smoke started rising from his body, and he glowed bright red, the heat making me sweat. I patted him, just now thinking to turn around and see what the hell the cyborgs waited for. Outlaws and dogs surrounded us, keeping the cyborgs on their perimeter. The outlaws had made a circle around the dragon, but he was large, and I was sure they couldn’t hold the cyborgs off.

The noise drew my gaze up. The plasma above the habitat cracked, shooting sparks down its length, and men shouted, “The Cy, the motherfucking Cy are here!”

Beyond the cyborgs, tall, willowy creatures flashed in and out of existence. They seemed to be running away, thousands of thin, silvery bodies loading up into round transport pods. I’d never seen the Cy before. They weren’t even supposed to be inside the habitats with the cyborgs, but the silver creatures swarmed the place.

The plasma collapsed as the Cy frantically tried to escape to their pods. The plasma didn’t serve only for the protection of the habitat and the people living here but also for hiding the visiting aliens, a giant version of their invisible bubble that had carried me here.

Not all the Cy ran away. Some stayed and moved toward the dragon. They appeared curious. I put my hands up in the air. “Don’t come near him,”

The dragon thumped his tail. The ground shook, and I spun around to see the Cy all over him, climbing his body, shaking their heads, opening their mouths and—talking. I didn’t understand them, but I could tell they were communicating with one another.

They must have agreed on something, because several black food transport pods came and hovered over the dragon. They dropped some sort of a shield around him. A transparent but visible disturbance in the air. I found myself on the outside, separated from the dragon. I pounded on the shield. The outlaws started firing on it, while the cyborgs fired on the outlaws. Bullets flew everywhere, and an explosion shook the buildings behind me. But I didn’t care. The Cy were trying to lift the injured dragon and take him away.

“Get up!” I shouted. “Get up. I command you to rise!”

Fire burst out of the windows from the explosions inside the building. The flames didn’t go up with the wind, they traveled down the building, over the platform, reminding me of lava. I wanted to run, but my feet stayed glued to the ground. I stood there with the dragon as the fire circled us. The Cy grew frantic, their language sounding more high-pitched, more urgent now, as another pod joined the one already trying to lift him.

The fire won’t burn me. I gritted my teeth and extended my hand. The raging flames, as if a living thing, spun and faced me. A tall one bent and licked my hand. It tickled. “Rise higher,” I told the flame to see if I was crazy or not. The flame left my hand and rose to about eight feet, then spread out and made a fence around the dragon. The plasma shield around the dragon disappeared, and the two Cy pods took off.

“Rise, my dragon, and burn.”

First, Nentres shook his head, then he vaulted upright as if uninjured, but the blood on his belly told me otherwise. The Cy fell off him like ticks. His tail slammed the ground next to me, and I climbed up his body to stand between his horns, where his scales rose up and shielded me. I gripped a scale with each hand as he let out a shriek and spread his wings. The Cy who’d stayed behind squealed. The pods rose and flew, trying to get away.

But we were out for blood now.

“Burn them,” I commanded the dragon. “Burn them all.”

We lifted off the platform, and the dragon opened his mouth. Under my feet, his skin moved as the heat traveled from his body and out of his mouth. It exploded in the air like a hot wind of fire. The pods melted, and the Cy died, their willowy bodies fried to ashes. The dragon didn’t stop, and somehow, I knew what he intended to do. “Take cover!” I shouted at the humans below.

We flew high above the habitat. From my vantage point, I saw the green dumpster where Eddy was reaching inside and grabbing the small girl. The outlaws followed the pack of wolves that ran down from the habitat to try to reach the parts with the highest human population. The level-five cyborg army regrouped and followed the outlaws to the ground. They pounded their strong feet after the humans, who ran, their screams reaching my ears.

Nentres lifted his tail and, with his head down, plunged to the ground level, mouth open, fire incinerating every cyborg in his path. My hair flew back from my face, my clothes nearly torn away from the wind and his speed. But I paid attention to the force of the fire. “To me,” I whispered. I couldn’t let the fire burn his people. The flames died down, and we flew over the cyborgs, then back down to block the exit. The dragon spread his wings, making an even bigger target for them.

Cyborg laser fire marred his body, blood spurted all over us, but the dragon wouldn’t stop, not until we’d leveled the habitat. I felt his urgency to burn it all down deep in my bones. He would turn this place into ashes if it was the last thing he did, because I’d asked him to burn it all. And I didn’t want it to be the last thing he did, because I didn’t want to live in a world where he didn’t exist.

So I told my dragon to take us home.