Joshua McCune - Talker 25

“Today was not one of our finest, ladies,” Alderson says. “Unfortunately, until Nine recovers, shifts will be lengthened by two hours. Good night.”

The moment he’s out the door, the hateful whispers begin.

“Thanks a lot, Twenty-Five.”

“Should have reconditioned your ass.”

“Who you gonna murder next?”

I want to shrink into the corner and disappear, but before I’ve gone two steps, Evelyn raises her hands. “Now, now, everyone, let’s calm down. In fact, I think we owe Twenty-Five a round of applause.”

“What?” Five says.

“Yeah, that stupid bitch could have killed us,” Seven adds.

Evelyn raises her hand, but Seven waves her off. “No, she needs to get a goddamn—”

“Do not profane the—” Pam starts.

“Shut it, Thirteen,” Seven says. “Twenty-Five, maybe you don’t like us, but you better start caring about us, because we’re the only ones who have your back. We’re your family now. Even Fifteen. You should have seen her flopping on the floor. They say she choked on her own tongue.”

I bite into my cheeks, clench my stomach, desperate to keep from crying.

“Submit yourself to God, Melissa,” Pam says. “And the devil will flee from you.”

“Leave her alone,” Lorena says, grabbing my hand. I squeeze it like a lifeline.

Evelyn nods. “I’m sure Twenty-Five has learned her lesson. Let’s not dwell on the loss of our sister or the punishment she’s inflicted on us with this unfortunate occurrence. Let’s find the silver lining, girls.”

“Silver lining?” Seven hisses.

“Yes, think about it. We won’t have to worry about Fifteen bothering us with her incessant pounding, getting the screen bloody, or sitting all retarded in the restroom.”

“And I’ll get more chocolate now!” Twenty-One says from the corner.

It’s too much. I race into the bathroom and collapse against the wall.

Lorena enters soon after, an Almond Joy in hand.

“I can’t . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill . . .” It hurts too much to say her name. “I’m sorry.”

“You did her a favor.”

I shake my head, unable to speak.

“You know how many times I considered interfering?” Lorena says. “I couldn’t, though. I was scared. Terrified. We all are. I know it feels like they’re against you now—”

“The entire world.”

She laughs. “Yeah, them, too. They’ll hate you for a while, but deep in that buried part of them, from the time when they were names, not numbers, they know what you did was right. That goodness you showed today will give them something to hold on to.”

“Bullshit.”

“Know the difference between fairy-tale heroes and real heroes?”

I think of Mom. “In fairy tales they don’t die. Why did she have to die? Why did she leave me alone?”

She hugs me. I sob into her shoulder.

I compose myself, push away. “For the record, you suck at pep talks.”

She laughs. “I can only be so perfect. Now eat up. . . . Take it, Melissa. Allie will be annoyed with both of us if she finds out you rejected her donation to the Make Melissa Feel Better Fund.”

I bite into the candy bar. Close my eyes, pretend I’m on Twenty-One’s tropical island . . . no All-Blacks, no dragons, no battle rooms or CENSIRs—

A beep sounds. I stop chewing. It’s not a news clip this time, but the premiere of Kissing Dragons: The Other Side .

I watch in numb silence as they transform me from an all-American girl to a delusional insurgent suffering from what a famous psychiatrist calls “dragon exposure.” Watch farmboys lie and smile and lie some more. Watch Sam go from confused to enraged to repulsed all over again.

“This is what becomes of traitors,” Simon says. “They don’t just ruin their own lives, they ruin the lives of those closest to them. But is Melissa truly the one to blame? Maybe her transformation didn’t begin after her mother’s death. Maybe it began much earlier. . . .”

Unveil Mom’s treachery.

Starts with a montage of her on various salvage missions.

Fast forward to protest rallies.

End with the photo taken at Shadow Mountain Lookout, where she’s standing beside Oren White, the Diocletian leader responsible for the recent terrorist attacks on day-care centers.

Simon interviews a stern-faced general who looks familiar, though I don’t know why until they show a picture of him handing Dad a folded-up American flag at Mom’s funeral.

“What do you know about the relationship between Olivia Callahan and Oren White, General?” Simon asks.

“Major Callahan and Sergeant White worked together at several points in their careers,” the general says. “After the sergeant’s wife died, he snapped and joined the other side. We believe he recruited Major Callahan. It’s unclear when exactly this occurred, but we do know it was well before the attack on Arlington.”

“Why does that matter?” Simon prompts.

“We believe she and Sergeant White used their specialized background in military intelligence to hijack the national defense system.”

“So you’re saying that Olivia Callahan, a decorated war hero, instigated the attack on Arlington, an attack that killed more than twelve hundred people?” Simon says.

Play cell-phone video of the Green roasting victims on the Wilson Bridge.

“We believe their actual intent was an attack on Congress or the president.”

“With a dragon? There was nobody flying it. It couldn’t know where it was going.”

“It knew exactly where it was going. When we examined the creature’s corpse, we found a high-resolution camera attached to a high-tech collar.”

Switch to a “live” shot of Simon, brow pinched. “General Sparks allowed me to see some of the footage recovered from the camera. Though much of it remains classified, he has given us permission to share a sample. Please be warned . . . what you are about to see is not for the faint of heart.”

Show Wilson Bridge massacre from the dragon’s perspective.

Back to the general. “Originally we thought they wanted to record their efforts for propaganda, but when we investigated the collar, we discovered a remote sonic communicator—an advanced dog whistle for dragons. With video and acoustics, they could tell the dragon where to go.”

“It went the wrong way,” Simon notes.

“Either it got confused, or, as we believe, it decided not to listen.”

“But if they initiated this murderous strike, why would Major Callahan have sacrificed herself to divert the creature she was supposedly in league with?”

Run clips of Mom steering the Green away from the suburbs toward the river, first from a drone’s perspective, then from the dragon’s.

“Her family lived two blocks from the dragon’s fire path,” the general says. Show snapshot of burning suburbs, highlight our house in neon green. “You do the math.”

“What do you think of the general’s claims, Ms. Callahan?” Simon asks.

“My mother was a hero.” He never asked me that question, but those are my words, spoken with absolute certainty.

“In some ways, she was,” Simon says. Back to the Shadow Mountain Lookout photo. Flames appear at the edges and slowly consume it. “A hero for the dragons. Now she’s dead and her daughter’s in a mental institution. This is what happens when you join the other side.”

The credits roll.

“I didn’t realize your mother knew my father,” Lorena says, the first words either of us have spoken since the episode started.

“Honestly, I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

She squeezes my hand. “Your mom was a good person, Melissa. Nobody will believe that stuff about her attacking Arlington. That’s crazy.”