My head pounds as sap and blood press against my ears. My legs shudder under me and threaten to buckle.
From the corner of my vision, I see a flame ignite from one of the monster’s mechanical nostrils. Then a dozen beasts are beating at creeping flames! They wail, plaintively, pathetically we are you, we are you, do not destroy us.
I sense Armonk’s momentary hesitation. Don’t listen I command my friends. Don’t listen!
We renew our chant. An entire row of monstrous wings light up like dry kindling, and then another three rows.
Armonk and I dash over to Blane and help him stagger back to our circle. We agree not to remove the projectile in his thigh until we’re safely in the glider, if we make it back. The danger of him bleeding out is too acute.
The warehouse rings out with monstrous eeps and snarls, the great thrashing of wings and teeth. With this, it’s all we can do to keep our concentration on the message at hand: The stroma is divided, contaminated by warmongers. Immolate!
We hold to our circle, vibrating, sweating and coughing from the smoke until the whole army of vicious Reds detonates into flames. Our lungs scald with smoldering chemical particles as we struggle back through the hall, plunging right through the holos who still stalk us as they bark out their warlike wares. Our own Reds blanket us, providing a protective layer as we go.
Making our way out of the window, wounded but triumphant, we ride on our own devoted Reds to our glider before the warehouse can explode.
In the vehicle, it takes all three of us to yank the monstrous tooth from Blane’s leg. He moans in pain as I slather on my healing elixir, bind the raw flesh with my jacket and dose him with numbing salve so he’ll sleep through the worst of it.
The Reds are sad, telling us silently that they hated to kill spawn sprung in part from their own genes, no matter how horrifying the beings were.
But we know that we did the right thing, because a harmonious, relieved thrumming stirs in our hearts.
Thank you, beauties, thank you sing the Fireseed from a thousand miles away.
You’re welcome, we sing back.
Chapter 31
George Axiom’s secretary serves us iced sea-grape mead in goblets, and it flows down our parched throats faster than she can sneak in her next furtive peek at us. We look a fright, with our clothes torn and bloodied and purple bruises galore. Not to mention the four Reds clucking and eeping on Thorn’s shoulders. Thorn insisted on taking these with him if he had to leave most of them in the cargo hold. I don’t argue with my brother. Surely he’s got a good reason for it.
The secretary, in a breezy shell-buttoned dress, looks up from her holo tablet and says, “He’ll see you now.”
As she escorts us to his penthouse office I think about our earlier escape from NanoPearl. We slithered out of the narrow window just as the first guard shook himself from his stupor, and from a mile away we could see the flames engulf the orb, like some mad planet in its death throes. We raced down in the glider to the hovercraft piers and stretched out, exhausted, on a sliver of beach behind the Skye Ride lounge.
We soaked in as much solar food as we dared before it fried our skin. Then we bathed in the brackish surf and combed our hands through our tangled hair until we looked half presentable. I let Blane sleep until the elixir started to heal his flesh. Truth be told, I could’ve slept on that beach too, for hours. But we’re here to take care of unfinished business.
As we enter George’s suite, he rises to greet us, shaking all of our hands and even stretching out a friendly finger to one of the Reds blinking at him in midair with curious eyes. “What brings you Greening students back to our city?” George asks, as he looks us up and down. I sense him almost remark that we’re looking fine but then deciding that between my horribly swollen chin and Blane’s ripped burnsuit and homemade leg bandage we aren’t looking anything of the sort.
We hesitate in front of his plush sofas until he gestures for us to grab a seat. Armonk starts. “We need to report a crime, well actually a slew of criminal activity.” Armonk levels his famously dark, intense look at George.
“A crime at The Greening?” George clears his throat. “That’s not quite my jurisdiction.”
“Then who’s in charge over there?” Blane sends George an equally stony stare to rival Armonk’s.
“I suppose we could stretch to include Skull’s Wrath, since there’s not much of a government over there aside from Marney at the Depot,” George answers with an arch of his brows. So Marney’s larger-than-life persona has filtered all the way to Vegas-by-the-Sea. “Tell me what the problem is.”
I say, “It seems that Stazzi, your judge from the Axiom Contest has not only stolen a student contest creation, but has illegally implanted a phishing device in this student’s head to suck out that concept.” Blane wraps an arm around Thorn, who nods at George.