Joshua McCune - Talker 25

I press a finger to her lips. Me?

“Follow the Silverback’s trail, yes, yes.” I shush her again. That’s what they call you. “Because of Arabelle.”

How could they follow my trail? Maybe they tracked the airplane or . . . It doesn’t matter. Rescue’s coming. It’s actually coming.

I kiss her forehead. Island secret.

She pantomimes locking her mouth and throwing away the key. We practice shooting vultures until she drifts to sleep.

After a breakfast that doesn’t taste quite so bad as normal, Evelyn and I meet up with the makeup artists at the rec center. While she changes into a spare outfit, a production assistant preps me for today’s shoot. I’m getting eyeliner applied, reading over the script, when Twenty-Six shows up.

He glowers at me, grabs his binder from a table, and slumps into a nearby chair. “What problems you going to cause today, Glowheart?”

I tap the script. “This is good stuff. While I’m off foraging for berries like your good little cavewoman, you get to show Frank the best way to skin a dragon. Doesn’t that make your blackheart extra happy?”

He frowns. “You’re in a good mood.”

Even Evelyn emerging from the locker room, bouncy and bubbly—far more suited for the tight jumpsuit than me—can’t ruin it. I suffer a momentary prick of envy, but it disappears fast when the barber informs her she needs a haircut.

“Did I not mention that?” I say. “Whoops.”

“But I’m blond already,” she whines.

The production assistant steps in. “It needs to look the same. We have an extra wig for you.”

Evelyn’s eyes go buggy as the barber gives her the sheep treatment. She catches me grinning at her reflection in the mirror. “I’m telling Twenty-One about the Kit Kat.”

“Does this mean we’re not friends?”

After Evelyn’s wigged and prepped to resemble me, and James is properly sultrified, Lester chauffeurs us to the slaughter slab. Hector’s got everything set up, including a live dragon to replace the one I slayed last night. Twenty-Six and I hug, gaze longingly at each other, then Evelyn steps in, and they kiss.

And kiss. Hector gives them a “Brilliant,” repositions his cameras, and has them go at it again. I grit my teeth. Only two more days. Maybe less. I glance up at the ceiling. Maybe the dragons are already on their way. While Twenty-Six and the strumpet continue their lovefest, I contemplate what I’m going to do once I’m free of this hellhole.

I won’t be able to return to the old world. No more high school. No college. At least not until my name and face are forgotten. I’ll probably have to be a crate-in-a-cave nomad for several years.

It’ll be a far different life than I ever imagined growing up, but it will be mine. No CENSIRs. No A-Bs, no Major Alderson. No call centers, ERs, or battle rooms.

“Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.”

No TV shows.

For episode two, we help the four A-Bs track a reclusive Green responsible for the destruction of a million acres of African flora. And, oh yeah, he’s also killed a bunch of people, but the show’s more focused on his ecological impact because, according to Hector, the environmentalists are another demographic they’re attempting to snare.

After filming the preexecution bullshit, we return to the ER to slay the Serengeti Savager. Twenty-Six hands me the sword, and we kill the dragon. Evelyn steps in, does her thing, and we’re done before dinner.

“Excellent job,” Hector says, though I know his praise is meant more for Twenty-Six. “I’d like to invite you all to dinner, if that’s all right, Sergeant?”

“The major shouldn’t have a problem with that,” Lester says.

I grab my script binder from a chair. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.”

Hector shrugs. “Don’t worry about those lines. We’re changing the script.”

“Why?” Twenty-Six asks.

“Major Alderson had a plot idea I found quite appealing. That man is brilliant.”

If brilliant equals evil, I’d agree. But I don’t care anymore. I can do anything that sick bastard can dream up, because rescue’s coming. And in a few days, if things go according to my imagination, Major Alderson will be dead. That would be brilliant.

I join Twenty-One at the cafeteria table. Hunched over my tray, I use my plastic knife to score out letters on the paper napkin. News?

She looks both ways and in a quick hush says, “No, no.”

“What are you two up to?” Lorena asks, sliding over.

“Nothing to see here, no, no.” Twenty-One ducks beneath the table.

“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” I say.

Lorena squints at the napkin. The letters have faded too much for her to decipher. She frowns at me. “Melissa, don’t do this to yourself.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lorena rolls her eyes, sticks her knife into my tray. Rescue. “Ring a bell?”

Despite her exasperated expression, I can’t contain my smile. “They’re coming.”

She shakes her head. “No, they’re not.”

“But Twenty-One said—”

“She comes up with this type of thing all the time. Sometimes it’s the dragons who are going to save the day, sometimes it’s her parents, who happen to be dead. You can quit it with all this cloak-and-dagger—”

She cuts off when she sees my new message: 21 talked to Baby . “She knew something I never told anybody.”

Lorena gives me a sympathetic look. “It doesn’t matter, Melissa. Ever since Allie was reconditioned, she’s been like that. They’re just jumbled voices in her head. She can’t make sense of what’s real and what’s not. Maybe it’s a good thing for her, these stories she fabricates, I don’t know, but you can’t trust what she says.” She grips me hard around the wrist. “It’s only asking for trouble. For her, for you, for all of us. You have to let go.”

I can’t. Rescue will come. Someday, somehow. I have to believe that. In nae. I bite at my lip, manage a weak smile. “Well, at least I’m finally over James. That’s something to be happy about, right?”

She releases my wrist. “We will have to celebrate properly when we get back to the barracks.”

“You sure you want to be seen with me? What was it Pam called me?”

She grins. “The rainbow whore. Kind of has a ring to it.”

I laugh. “Wait until you see Evelyn.”

On our way to the bus, Twenty-One tugs at my jacket. “Thursday.”

“Thursday?”

She nods with excitement. “Arabelle says Thursday, but she’s scared, yes, yes.”

“Why is she scared?” Lorena asks, as if she’s talking to a kindergartener. She shoots me a warning look.

Twenty-One waits until we’re past the guard at the front of the bus. “Because they’re moving her.”

“Tell her not to worry,” Lorena says. “Melissa’s doing everything she can to protect her.” Another pointed look. “And we trust Melissa, don’t we?”

“She’s one of the good ones, yes, yes,” she says, plopping into her seat. She pulls out her dragon brooch, waves it through the air, hums the Kissing Dragons theme song with a jovial “burn, burn, burn” thrown in here and there.

Watching her, I realize Lorena’s right. It’s one thing for me to hope and scheme, another to involve Twenty-One. I only risk endangering her.

When we enter the barracks, I pull Twenty-One aside. “So I was thinking we could discuss more decorations for our island tonight.”

“For the dragons?”

I shake my head. “If they come, fine, but right now it’s just you and me.”

She nods, shrugs out of her winter clothes, then races to the far corner.