Mist nodded. “I assume you’re going after the pregnant breeders.”
“Yeah. So you have about fifteen minutes to make sure everyone here is ready to move. Once we give the order, it’s go time. Wes…” I spoke quickly into the throat com. “I’m heading into the medical facility next door. It’s where they’re keeping the pregnant dragons. I need to know what I’m up against.”
“Hang on” came the voice on the other end. “I’ll see if they have any cameras inside.”
The hatchling hovered at the edge of the corridor, watching me. She was trembling slightly, worrying her bottom lip. I put a hand on her arm.
“Take Mist with you,” I told her. “You can trust her, and the soldiers in the building. They’re here to help. Once I get the breeders, we’re all leaving together. But I need you to keep calm and make sure everyone understands what’s happening. Can you do that?”
Sera took a deep breath, and nodded.
“All right.” I took a step back, glancing at Mist. “I’m counting on you. If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, keep with the plan. I’ll let Martin know what’s going on.”
“Cobalt.” Sera met my gaze. “Be careful of Director Vance,” she said, a current of fear underlying her voice. “He’s the one in charge of everything, and he spends a lot of time in the medical bay. If he sees you…”
I nodded. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll be careful.”
I crept back down the stairs, found Martin guarding the front doors with the soldiers and explained the situation. He nodded.
“Do you need us to cover you?”
“No,” I said. “Better that I talk to the breeders alone. A half-dozen pregnant dragons aren’t going to take an invasion of St. George soldiers very well. Stay here, watch the building and be ready to move. Once I give the go-ahead, things are going to get crazy.”
“Understood.” The officer gave a grim smile. “We’ll be ready.”
I slipped out the door and back into the yard, easily avoiding the spotlights as they swept the perimeter. Ducking into the shadows between the buildings, I gazed up at the brick-and-mortar walls. “Wes? Anything?”
“Bugger all,” Wes muttered. “Yeah, I’m in. This place is locked down tight, Riley. At least three guards, and they’re all carrying these massive bloody elephant rifles. The dragons are in individual cells—two hatchlings, two Juveniles and one Adult. Also, there’s some bloke in a suit walking around—looks like he could be straight from Talon.”
“Got it.” I slipped up to a window on the ground floor and peered in. A darkened room with white counters and medical equipment lay beyond the glass, part of the hospital bay attached to the building if I had to guess. Fishing a glass cutter out of my belt, I made a tiny circle in the window, just enough to reach my hand through and unlock the pane. Pushing up the window, I glanced around warily before slipping inside.
“I’m in the medical bay, Wes. Looks like some sort of exam room.”
“Right. You shouldn’t have any problems until you get to the main enclosure. Let me know when you’re close, and I’ll take care of the cameras.”
I crept through a series of hallways that for all the world looked like part of a normal clinic. White tile floors, individual rooms with counters and shelves of equipment, a couple wheelchairs sitting against the wall. Until I reached a single door that was outlined in yellow and black stripes and read Danger! Authorized Personnel Only.
I snorted in quiet contempt. That’s a bit dramatic. It’s not like we’re dangerous wild animals that will bite someone in half for no reason. Then again, if I were an imprisoned, pregnant dragon that couldn’t Shift into human form, I might be a bit cranky and inclined to take it out on my human captors, too.
The door was locked, but the key card I’d taken from the guard opened it easily. As the door hissed back, I slipped into a vast, cavernous room, the roof soaring up to about sixty feet overhead. Metal walkways lined the walls, passing over rows of large enclosures about fifty feet high, with steel walls that were probably a foot thick. The temperature had skyrocketed; the air was hot and damp, and I felt like I’d stepped into a sauna. The room smelled of wet vegetation, and beneath my heavy combat jacket, the Viper suit felt uncomfortably slick.
“Wes,” I muttered into the com, “I’m in the main room by the medical bay door. Can you tell me which cells are holding the breeders?”
“Hang on.” There was a short pause, and I slipped between a pair of standing shelves that held things like shovels, hoses and bags of fertilizer. “Okay,” Wes told me, “looks like they’re in cells three, eight, thirteen, sixteen and twenty-two.”
I peered at the walkways between two five-gallon buckets. “Where are the guards?”
“One patrolling the walkway, two guarding the doors on opposite ends of the room.”
“And the Adult? Where is she?”
“In the last cell, mate. Twenty-two.”
On the other side of the room. Of course. “Right,” I muttered. “Looks like I’m headed to cell twenty-two.”
As I scoured the walkway and open floor beneath, searching for the best route across the room, voices and approaching footsteps caught my attention. I ducked behind the shelves, hunkering down behind several bags of topsoil, as two figures appeared, walking toward the door I’d just come through.
I swallowed a growl. One was a dragon, a tall man in a business suit, with short brown hair and a perfectly groomed goatee. He was also an Adult, given the way my instincts shrank back, wanting me to crawl beneath the shelves to hide. This must be the famous Director Vance, the one in charge of this island of atrocities. He was speaking to a balding human doctor–type with glasses and a white lab coat, the smaller man nervously tapping a pencil against his clipboard as they walked.
“Scarlett should be ready to lay any day now,” the human was saying as they got closer. “She just started nesting behavior this morning, so I stopped her food and ordered her habitat be put in isolation mode until the egg arrives. Which should be sometime tomorrow or the next day, if I had to guess.”
“Good,” the dragon said. “I’ve just received word from Talon. This is to be Scarlett’s final hatching. Once the egg has been sent to the organization, terminate her name from the schedule.”
The human chewed his lip. “Forgive me, Director,” he ventured, and those cold dark eyes fixed on him, unblinking. “I understand Talon’s desire to scale back production,” the human went on as the pencil resumed its anxious tapping against the clipboard. “But Scarlett has always produced healthy, fertile eggs. Now that we’ve reduced the number of resident females by nearly half, she is one of the only breeders left who is a known quantity. I’m not one to question the organization’s motives, but—”
“Then don’t.” Director Vance narrowed his eyes, seeming to loom over the smaller human, who cringed away from him. “You are not paid to question Talon, Dr. Miles. You are here to keep our breeders healthy and happy, and to make certain the eggs arrive safely and on time, a task that you are paid exceptionally well to do. What Talon does with the members of our organization is not your concern. I suggest you put it from your mind and follow orders before you find yourself out of work, on a small raft, in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle.”
His voice raised the hair on the back of my neck. I’d heard his kind speak many times before, but that cold, clinical detachment never ceased to infuriate me. As if he were discussing the inner workings of a car, rather than a living, breathing, sentient creature. I remembered the fear in Sera’s voice when she spoke of Director Vance, and my resolve hardened even further.