Freezing Wings

Chapter 4

When I woke up again, Lucas was back in his cage and fast asleep, his back to me.

I decided not to bother him and after staring at his back for a few minutes was about to go back to sleep. However, when I was about to get into proper sleeping position I heard a low rumble, barely enough to be audible. I thought it was maybe the air conditioning activating or Lucas snoring and was going back to sleep when it sounded again, louder this time.

It was someone speaking in draconic, one of the dragons at the other end of the hallway.

"Hey...new girl, are you awake?"

I debated for a moment whether or not to answer them, but in the end I gave in. We were all in the same boat after all, and if we were ever going to escape, actually knowing more than one person would help a lot.

"Yes...who are you?"

A slightly feminine voice answered, loud enough for me to hear them clearly, "I'm Sarah, you?"

"Nice to meet you Sarah, I'm Sasha. Call me Sherlock."

She giggled, amused. I peered down the hall and squinted, looking for her form. The lights were turned low so I couldn't really make out explicit details, but from what I could see she was on the same level as me, her dark green scales nestled in the corner closest to mine.

She moved into a similar position as me, "Where are you? I can't see you in the dark"

"....I'm right here"

My black scales made it near impossible to find me in the shadows when I wasn't moving so I lifted up my front foot, waving at her.

"Oh...Hi"

"Hey...How are you?"

"I'm as good as I can be, considering our situation," she waved one of her claws around, gesturing a the cages. "You?"

I shrugged, ignoring the slight churning feeling in my gut as I thought of what I had just eaten. "I'm okay, I guess. Just a bit bored."

She nodded along, agreeing. "Apparently they thought of everything to keep us contained, all but how to keep us entertained. Just twiddling our thumbs all day gets old fast and there isn't anything to make conversation about since nothing goes on here. Yeah, sometimes something exciting happens, a scientist will get scared or one of us will get out, but other than that, nothing."

I held up one claw to signal a pause, my eyes studying her figure, "Lucas said that if we got out we would die, they would make us inhale a chemical called Raisin or something."

"Ricin," Sarah's smile faltered as her voice sobered, "Lucas was here three years ago, one of the first of us that hatched. In reality, he's only about 20, but he saw what would happen when one of us got out. Back then...the people who are here to protect the scientists didn't care about how few...' specimens' the scientists had to work with." She grimaced, " They'd kill any dragon they saw outside of a cage, and Lucas saw that - he's still terrified of them, years later. Thankfully, they stopped, and now, even if we got out and killed half the staff, the most would happen might be solitary confinement for a few days and no stones at the end of the week."

"Really? He made it sound like it was a death sentence if I looked at one of them wrong.."

She grinned, her white fangs gleaming in the shadows, "He's a bit of a glacier and once you take in the fact that he hates this entire place to the bone, he isn't that bad."

"What's us being isolated from the rest? There doesn't seem to be another person on this end of the hallway.."

A dark chuckle erupted from her throat and she tapped her claws on the ground, seeming to revel in the memory, "Five of the others broke out one day, about six months ago, and they had the brilliant idea to break into one of the labs. Precisely where they held all the tech they got from Area 51, and ended up messing up three of the capsules, and almost all of the machines they used to analyze everything, along with all of the notes and research they had on it.

"The scientists had everything online, but still, it set them back quite a bit. Those five ended up getting solitary confinement for two full weeks from what we could tell, since there isn't any clocks or sunshine down here. They separated us out along the hall, making sure that we couldn't organize ourselves again. Apparently, they haven't considered the fact that we still have our intelligence and understand each other.

"It was one of the most glorious things I've ever seen, a bunch of military higher-ups having a conniption over some mangled metal, screaming until their faces were blue," Sarah snickered, a slightly smug satisfied look on her face.

I cracked a small smile as I thought of a cartoonish drawing of a military sergeant screaming till they exploded from anger.

We continued talking for a long time, gossiping about the various things that went on in the cages.

I learned that whenever the scientists let one of us out of our cage, they would pretty much herd us into an open area with oversized toys and just watch us. They would take blood samples and try to peel off some scales when we weren't paying attention, as well as documenting everything we did. They didn't inject us with anything, only watching. 'That's good, I thought I would be stuck in a reenactment of Frankenstein's Monster.'

I also learned that there were exactly 49 of us - 35 males and 14 females - along with 296 unhatched eggs. The guys were mostly down on the far end, with most of the females being on our end, Lucas being near me was only a coincidence.

We talked for a long time, her introducing me to some of the others when they woke up and telling me about everything that was anything here, how best to scare the scientists, the best way to get out, and what to do when outside.

The smile was still there but her eyes were dead serious as she spoke on this, and I could tell she wasn't messing around anymore."Whenever you happen to have some free time and decide to try your hand at it, break out and immediately start running. There will be machines following after you for the explicit purpose of knocking you out and dragging you back here, so get as far away from there as possible and look for a way out. We don't break out just for the fun of it, we're trying to escape. Although, having a bit of fun in the process isn't too bad either."

Later that night, right as I went to sleep, I knew exactly what I was going to do the next day, if it could be considered day in a place with no sun.