“Count on it,” Riley almost whispered. He watched the dozing dragon a moment longer, then turned and jerked his head at us.
We tiptoed out of the barn and pulled the door shut behind us. Riley was smiling in a way I’d never seen before—with happiness, relief and pride, but also fierce determination. “So it’s happened,” he murmured, gazing at the barn door as if he could sense the dragons beyond. “The first egg laid outside of Talon in a long, long time. We have to make sure it has a chance to hatch, that it grows up knowing its mother, and that it doesn’t have to worry about the organization forcing it into the role they want. No matter what the cost.” He seemed to be talking to himself now, bracing himself for what needed to be done. Garret and I exchanged a glance, right before Riley straightened and turned to us.
“You two need to see something, right now.”
GARRET
“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.