She Who Sees Through Darkness

Part Fourteen

The creatures before her eyes belonged in children's fairytales. Here they flew in the flesh. How? Dr. Harper must have made them in her lab, cobbling them together from a hundred different species of reptile. Indigo will lose its shit. If the world knew these creatures existed, interest in legends and the supernatural would surge to an all-time high. People would start asking dangerous questions, and the answers would lead straight to the Seal.

"They're amazing," Kyle whispered.

"Can they breathe fire?" Katrina asked, pressing her fingers against the window glass, unable to look away.

"Unfortunately, no," O'Brien said. "But the older wyverns can carry light artillery. We believe they might be very effective in pacifying crowds, although they were designed with air to air combat in mind."

They could get out of range before a pyromancer could break their guns. "The older ones? You called them wyverns, right?"

O'Brien grunted in assent.

Another wyvern circled around the cluster of three. This one had a body the size of the Hummer they'd rode in on and wings that could have cast a football field in shade. One flap of his wings sent the small ones scattering back towards the mountain's peak.

"That would be Veick," O'Brien said. "The Alpha. He's in charge."

Veick's round yellow eyes pierced through the Eyrie, locking on her and Kyle. A steep, boiling rage radiated from those glowing orbs. She knew well the powerlessness that inspired such feelings.

These creatures are intelligent.

"I don't think he likes us," Kyle muttered, voice still awed.

"He'll probably send you an angry email before the day's out," O'Brien replied.

"Captain? Are these the new recruits?" The speaker was a younger man who'd just climbed up the stairs, dressed in the same uniform as the other security officers. "Loyal soldiers for the cause!" His smile might have been light and friendly, but his words were designed to trigger certain thoughts to spring to the center of the mind, thoughts that would show where their loyalties lay. The aeromancer.

He extended his bare hand for a shake. Katrina brought up her defenses and clasped it eagerly. Skin met skin, forming a conduit for the magic. Shawn's burning finger sank into her thigh. Pain rushed up her leg, hot and intimate and shameful. A picture of his Indigo I.D. flashed through her mind.

"Pleased to meet you," the aeromancer said, and moved on to Kyle.

It was an old trick, and one aeromancers had few tools to fend off. Indigo taught it to all agents. New recruits were ambushed on their walk home and beaten. Some they burned, some they waterboarded. Her throat swelled at the memory of her own time strapped to the 'drinking chair'. Memories of trauma unsettled aeromancers; made them feel like they too were living the horror. Agents specializing in telepathic intelligence gathering a high risk for PTSD. Their training told them to avoid exploring traumatic memories unless absolutely necessary. She'd shown him just enough to make him think an agent had abused her, and that seemed to convince him she was truly on their side.

And yet, she didn't feel victorious, even though she'd gone toe to toe with the enemy and won. Criminal Descendants, miles of wilderness, and creatures that shouldn't exist surrounded her. In the city, Indigo had organization and numbers on their side. Some part of her had assumed the same was true of everywhere.

The security officers sent them downstairs to change into exercise clothing, Kyle to the second floor and Katrina to the third. She found the floor had been divided into twenty smaller rooms, like a big, empty dormitory. Or a barracks.

Her belongings—Shawn's butterfly knife and a bag of candy from the plane—had been placed in the largest suite, which boosted a kitchenette, dining area, and its own bathroom. Someone had even ordered her fridge fully stocked. New clothing hung neatly in the closet. As far as apartments went, it was the largest amount of space she'd ever had to herself.

They're trying to recruit me. She'd heard stories like this from her more successful colleagues, twisted as it was. Dr. Harper wasn't joking. They really do want me to work for them. The other rooms on the floor were empty and small. All occupants of those would end up sharing a communal shower. Me, in management. Hell, Indigo doesn't need a spy here. Their terrible hiring practice will do the Valve's uprising in long before it starts.

A group of men and women in lab coats had gathered on the top floor by the time Katrina returned. The scientists strapped heart rate monitors around their chests and set them to running laps on the track, which looked so fresh she'd bet the surface had only been laid weeks ago. She worked up a glorious sweat by the time they called 'stop', but the calm that usually followed her runs had been replaced by paranoia in the presence of so many watching eyes.

They pulled barbells out of the crates, and the scientists scribbled down how much they could lift. They stretched in a dozen different poses, and the scientists noted down their flexibility. One woman whipped a tape measure around Katrina's leg without saying a word. Her cool fingertips left Katrina's skin tingling. Measuring muscle-mass density. What exactly is this procedure of Harper's supposed to do?

When the tests ended, the doctors gave them fifteen minutes to shower and the security officers escorted them back to the elevators. Kyle and the captain were talking amicably about deer hunting. One woman, Dorcas, asked how Katrina was doing, but she couldn't find words to respond. The weight of the mountain felt like it was crushing her.

The hospital building protruded from the mountain slope. Just the light coming through the windows told Katrina it hadn't been build as a hospital originally—no military building would leave their most vulnerable facility exposed.

She and Kyle were separated and stripped. Blood samples were drawn. Every inch of her body was photographed. They'd gotten hold of her medical records from New York, and they ran past each item with her. Childhood bee-sting allergy? Check. Right leg broken in three places after a 'car accident'? Check. History of alcohol abuse? Teeth-gritted check. Gloved hands moved over her body. She focused on humming a Taylor Swift medley, in case one happened to be a telepath.

They slid her into an MRI machine and flashed dozens of pictures on the screen above her: abstract symbols, kittens playing in a field, wyverns flying. Many photos of wyverns—of their long faces and longer legs, their brown-veined yellow eyes, pointing forward like a hawk's, the way flat, shimmering scales swirled across their brows, the patterns of veining in their wings, each as unique as a fingerprint.

The pictures made her suspicious. What do they care about what we think of their first generation experiment? You couldn't have air-to-air combat without missiles to launch, or a competent gunner, at the least. Goddamn it. They want us to ride them, don't they?

She muttered as much to Kyle when the security officers came to escort them back to the Eyrie. "Cool," he said. "Always wanted a dragon."

Captain O'Brien frowned. "They're called wyverns. I warn you, don't go slipping up around Dr. Harper. Or worse, a wyvern. Tends to offend the big ones, and when they're angry, they go for your limbs." He rolled up his sleeve. Arcs of tooth marks—long, like crocodile bites—dotted his upper arm. Katrina noticed the edge of a tattoo in his armpit, shaped like a red flame. A witch, indeed. She couldn't fault him for wanting a permanent heat spell, working here.

"I thought they had human brains," Kyle said, confused.

Katrina sighed. "They might. But it's not like they've got human vocal cords to say 'get lost.'" She glanced at O'Brien. "They don't, right?"

He shook his head.

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