Joshua McCune - Talker 25

“I’m fine.”

“It’s not getting better. What if she poisoned you?”

I pull free. “Then you won’t have to worry about me anymore, will you?”

“Sulk on your own time, Twenty-Five.”

“Fuck you, Two. I’m doing the best I can.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve got to stop being a weak link. They already hate you enough without this.”

“This?”

Lorena waves at the screen. “I didn’t tell anybody why you went off base. They thought you were in trouble. That made them happy. But now they see you were hanging with All-Blacks and killing dragons.”

“You think I enjoyed it?”

“You don’t get it. You could have gotten us days off, better food, anything. But all you cared about was that stupid baby dragon of yours.”

“Be careful unless you want to get hurt, too.”

She steps back, disgusted. “You need to do better.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll tell Allie who really took her chocolate. She won’t attack you like she would Evelyn, but she’ll hate you forever.”

Twenty-One had been sleeping in her corner. I didn’t want to steal from her stash, but I’d missed dinner again. “I’m going to replace it.”

“How you plan on doing that when you’re dragging your feet all the time?” She shakes her head. “You don’t have many friends, Melissa. Don’t throw us away over a boy who’s no longer here.”

As much as I hate her right now, I know she’s right. Tonight, as with every night since Twenty-Six showed up, I go to bed hoping that when I wake in the morning, James will be left behind in my dreams. I’m not sure he exists anywhere else, and I need to stop looking for him.

“Teams, please remain at your current stations. Team Three, please head to Electrics for dragon disposal.”

Terrific. Team Three is Twenty-Six’s death squad. And I’m at Electrics. “Shouldn’t we head for Station One?” I ask Patch.

“We’re supposed to wait here until this lightbulb’s taken care of,” he says as the ER door at the end of the facility retracts.

I glance at the flickering Red on the slab, praying he glows out before Team One arrives.

No such luck.

“We’ve got a live one, boys!” Twenty-Six says. The A-Bs split into two groups, dismemberment and collection, arming themselves with chain saws or large plastic bags. Twenty-Six struts toward the dragon, a hatchet in one hand, an ax in the other.

He climbs atop the slab, then raises the hatchet. “Should we go with the piranha?” He lifts the ax. “Or the shark?”

Most everybody shouts for the hatchet.

“Just kill the damn thing.”

James sets down the ax, covers his brow with his hand, like I’m not in plain view. “Is that you, Glowheart?” He points the hatchet at me. “You want to come do this? We don’t have a sword, but you seem capable.” He grins. “Or maybe you want to roar at it some more.”

As several soldiers tease me with howls that are more wolf than dragon, I look toward the slaughter station. Men are unloading crates from a cargo van onto the slab where a dragon normally goes. The disposal trucks are nowhere in sight, which means Twenty-Six can take his time torturing the flickering victim.

I step forward. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

“Keep one hand on her CENSIR,” an A-B says.

“Can you wear that outfit of yours?” another one calls.

“I bet she can’t even lift the shark.”

“Sounds like a wager to me,” Twenty-Six says. “What will it be?” He feigns deep thought, then raises his finger. “I’ve got it. If she can get through the lightbulb here in ten strikes”—he pats the dragon on the head with the butt of the hatchet—“she gets a reward.”

“What sort of reward?” someone asks.

“Does it matter?” another soldier says. “There’s no way she’s getting through that neck in twenty strikes, much less ten.”

“A day off for the barracks,” I say, glaring at Twenty-Six.

He nods to Lester. “What do you say, Sarge?”

Lester taps a message into his tablet. “I believe Major Alderson will find that acceptable.”

“Outstanding,” Twenty-Six says. “Now for the good part. What should her penalty be if she fails? Standard punishment would be the easy choice, but poor Twenty-Five’s been failing a lot recently, and that would be like adding a grain of sand to a mountain.”

The crowd laughs.

“No, we need a special prize,” Twenty-Six says with a smirk. He listens to several suggestions ranging from me wearing a necklace of dragon talons to doing something called a polar run. “Those would be outstanding, but how about something beneficial to us all?”

He waits for everybody to quiet. “If Twenty-Five is unsuccessful, she must become the official ER slayer.”

The crowd approves with rowdy enthusiasm.

Patch does not. “That will interfere with her examination duties.”

Twenty-Six snorts. “So what? The only monsters who ever talk to her with any consistency are the decrepit, and they’re information wastelands. She’ll be doing something useful for once, giving the rest of us more time to do the real work around here.”

He’s so damn sure I’ll lose. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“Surprise, surprise. Are—”

“I want a week off for the girls’ barracks when I win.”

Lester taps at his tablet, gets a notification a few seconds later. “The major will allow you five days, but no more than two in a row. If you fail to sever the head in ten strikes, you will become the headsman of the ER until the slaughter slab area is made available again. Are we in agreement, Twenty-Five?”

I nod, then climb onto the slab and pick up the ax to whistles and catcalls. It’s heavier than I expected, but once I get it propped on my shoulder, I find my balance and shamble to Twenty-Six’s side.

Twenty-Six grins at me. “You probably think you’re helping this monster by doing this. An ax ain’t a sword. You know how many blows it will take someone of your stature to hit something vital?”

The words hurt, not so much because they might be true, but for the delighted malice with which he delivers them.

“You’re the monster,” I whisper as I raise the ax. I push away my sorrow, gather my rage at Twenty-Six and the jeering soldiers, and throw it all into the swing.

The blade clanks off the dragon’s scales; shock waves reverberate up my arms and laughter plays loud in my head.

“She may have scratched it,” Twenty-Six says. “Perhaps we should have made the bet for a hundred. Come on, Glowheart, you can do better. Pretend it’s my neck on the block.”

I do. Every time. On the fifth blow, I break through the scales. On the eighth, the dragon stops glowing. On the tenth, I’m halfway through. My hands ache with the promise of future blisters, my arms burn, my scrubs are soaked through with sweat. Dragon gore covers my ankle-length coat from hem to neck.

“What are you waiting for, Glowheart? Back to work,” Twenty-Six says.

I drop the ax. “Give me a chain saw.”

Lester shakes his head. “Actions have consequences, Twenty-Five.”

Twenty-Six hands me the ax. “Chop chop, Glowheart.”

Over the next ten attempts, the soldiers go from heckling me to encouraging me to offering help.

Twenty-Six puts a hand on my shoulder. I flinch. “What do you say, Twenty-Five? Do you need someone to finish this monster for you?”

“Back off.” I squirm free of his touch and drag up the ax.

Six cuts later, my hands and shoulders aflame, my rage exhausted, I break through the other side. After an A-B uses a hoist to remove the head from the slab, the dismemberment crew swarms the carcass. As I totter from the carnage, Twenty-Six strides toward the wall of chain saws, eager to join in. A man in a hooded fur coat—not military issue—approaches him and strikes up a conversation.