A Crown of Dragons Read online

  And Harvey was alert to it. Oh, just when I was getting settled.

  He performed a minor reality shift and we materialized at the kitchen door.

  Josie had both hands clamped across her mouth. Mom was shaking her head in disbelief. Dennis knew right away that the Michael in the doorway was not the kid he’d talked bikes and soccer and aliens with, though something alien was staring at him now. In an instant, the tablet flew out of his hands and crashed against the kitchen wall, cracking the face of the clock that hung there.

  “Josie, Darcy, get out of the house!” he shouted.

  He set his hands for a fight, but how could he take on the might of dragons?

  Just as on the terraces at Churston Vale, Harvey performed another shift and threw Dennis backward, this time with enough force to send him through the kitchen window. Dennis landed on the lawn in a crumpled heap, glass all around him, a trail of blood running out of his mouth. Josie paddled her feet and screamed. Mom, equally terrified, just kept on saying, “Michael … ? Michael … ?”

  Harvey made me look at her.

  My hand went forward and gripped her throat.

  In my head, I was yelling at Harvey to stop, but his will was too strong, his control too great.

  “Sleep,” he said, and Mom collapsed where she stood.

  He turned on Josie. She was red-eyed and whimpering, effervescent with fear. She bolted for the front room, but Harvey slammed the door before she could get there. She tore a calendar off the wall and hurled it at me. Tried the same with a host of fridge magnets. Kicked a stool across my path. All pointless.

  “What have you done?” she sobbed. She pressed herself against the wall and looked down at Mom. “What are you? What have you done to Dad?”

  The doorbell rang again.

  Josie gasped, knowing this was her chance. She tried to call out, but Harvey had my hand across her mouth in a flash. A moment later, she was on the kitchen floor as well.

  Time to go, said Harvey.

  He marched me to the front door and made me open it.

  “You ready?”

  Will Reynard was on the step, dressed as though he was ready to go bowling: turned-up jeans, checked shirt, gray jacket. Blue loafer shoes. He glanced over my shoulder into the hall, saw that everything was calm and ordered.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He nodded at Dennis’s truck. “Company?”

  “The roofer. Here to finish some plastering. Mom’s taken the morning off work. She’s upstairs getting Josie ready for school.”

  Reynard nodded slowly. He glanced once more into the house. “Okay, let’s go.”

  I stepped out, shutting the door behind me.

  At the car, Harvey said, Take a good look, Michael.

  He meant at the house. My home for so long.

  “Why am I looking?”

  The answer was chilling.

  Last time you’ll ever see it, he said.

  Wherever we were going, it wasn’t to the UNICORNE facility. Their HQ was in a disused coal mine on the far side of Holton, but the car was turning away from there, heading south toward the sea, driving fast.

  Ask them, said Harvey, still with a stranglehold on my thoughts. I was constantly trying to fight him now. But if I thought about what he’d done in the kitchen, he just filled my head with a band of white noise. In some ways, that was worse than the pain. I had little choice but to obey him.

  He forced me to ungrit my teeth and say, “Where are we going?”

  In the absence of Mulrooney, Chantelle was at the wheel. Agent Reynard was sitting beside me. “UNICORNE has many sites,” he said. “We’re taking you to one that’s a little remote from the main facility. You’ll find it interesting, Michael. It’s an underground bunker, built just after the Second World War to shelter military command in the event of a nuclear attack.”

  “Why are we going there?”

  “When you’re dealing with something as precious as a piece of dragon scale, you want everything to be secure, don’t you?”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. I’m not familiar with UNICORNE’s neural acceleration program. I’m only an interested party, remember.”

  I looked at Chantelle. She had her gaze fixed firmly on the road.

  “All they did with Dad was regress him with hypnosis. Why do we need to be in a nuclear bunker for that?”

  Reynard opened his hands. “You’re asking the wrong guy, Michael. Like I said, I’m little more than a casual observer.”

  He’s lying, Harvey said. This feels like a setup. Ask him something else and read his eyes.

  “Where’s Klimt, anyway?”

  He replied calmly, “Klimt is at the bunker, preparing everything with Preeve.”

  Gold flecks sprang up around his pupils. He was telling the truth.

  “You sound wary, Michael. Are you having second thoughts about the procedure?”

  The way he said procedure chilled me. It didn’t help that his stare had turned so intense. He wasn’t trying to glamour me, I was sure of that, but I got the impression he was reading me somehow. It made me wonder if he could see flecks as well.

  A light flashed on the leather armrest between us. He unhooked a phone and spoke into it quietly. “Yes, we’re in the car now.” He glanced at me again. “Edgy, but ready, I think. Yes, that would be an affirmative.” He put the phone down. “The director is pleased that you’re —”

  “Why did you come after Hartland?” The suddenness of this question surprised me. Harvey was getting a little sloppy, making my voice tone fluctuate. But if Reynard had noticed, he was showing no sign of it.

  He held his hands at a modest surrender position. The same hands that had melted the bars of Freya’s cage. I instinctively leaned back. For the moment, at least, Harvey was allowing me freedom of movement. “Hartland was a dangerous fugitive. He left a trail of destruction all across New Mexico. He had to be stopped.”

  “Captured, you mean. You wanted your guinea pig back in its cage.”

  “I mean stopped,” Reynard said, with no inflection in his voice. “He was out of control.”

  “Zone 16’s control.”

  Reynard smiled and steepled his fingers. “Some genies are safer in their bottles, don’t you think?” He chose his next words with care. “I realize this is a sensitive issue, you being of similar … composition to Hartland, but we’re the good guys, Michael. I’m kinda surprised we’re having a semantic debate on the subject.”

  Look dumb, said Harvey. He won’t expect a kid of your age to know what semantic means. Screw up your face or he’ll know something’s wrong.

  He immediately played with my facial muscles. I saw myself reflected in the glass behind Reynard’s head. I looked like Quasimodo chewing a wasp. Reynard merely smiled and glanced at the road ahead.

  Chantelle wasn’t slowing down. She was either a very confident driver or wasn’t expecting to meet other traffic. We were driving through an area of low-lying marshland, thinning out on both sides into wispy sand dunes and patchy vegetation. Every now and then, the car’s nose dipped and showed me a glimpse of flat, gray water. We were crossing the Kinver Ness Nature Reserve, a designated wildlife and seabird sanctuary. Dad had brought me and Josie here once to fly kites on the rolling pebbled beach that bridged the gap between the land and the sea. I looked up, half hoping I might see a dragon shape fluttering against the monochrome clouds. To my horror, I saw not a dragon but a crow.

  “Freya,” I whispered, before Harvey could stop me.

  “What?” said Reynard, turning his head.

  Harvey was quickly frying me again. Do that once more and you’ll suffer.

  Live with it; she’s coming for you, Hartland.

  She thinks I’m dead, you idiot. It’s you she’s following.

  No, her senses are better than ours. She’ll know you’re around me. She won’t rest until she has her claws in you. She’s looking for payback for Raik.

 
Agh.

  Pain and white noise.

  My head jerked as he brought me under control.

  “Michael?” Reynard said. His hand drifted inside his jacket, as if he might be reaching for a weapon.

  “I’m okay. Headache.”

  “I thought I heard you mention Freya.”

  “I was wondering what had happened to her, that’s all.”

  “She up there?”

  Harvey shook my head for me. “No.”

  The car rolled to a stop. “We are here,” said Chantelle, tapping a touch screen data display.

  Here? Where? We were in the middle of a wilderness. Acres of pebble beach all around us, an immense playground of sea up ahead.

  Chantelle backed the car a few feet, straightened up, and pulled forward again, following directional beeps on her screen. “In position,” she said.

  “Okay,” said Reynard, “take us down.”

  The door locks clunked.

  Chantelle saw me jump. “A precaution,” she said. “Do not panic, Michael.” She tapped an ID code into her screen. Right away, I heard a grinding noise and felt a jolt as the car began to sink. She had parked on some kind of access plate, hidden just under the beach. Pebbles clattered aside as we were drawn down into a man-made shaft. I thought I heard a pebble hit the roof of the car. Either that or … I lost track of the thought as a string of neon blue lights came on. The hole we’d created closed above us, shutting out the sky.

  We continued to descend for another thirty feet or so. Then I felt a second jolt, and the neon lights dimmed. A pneumatic door seal opened in front of us. I thought Chantelle would start the engine and drive straight through. Instead, she opened her door and clicked the locks on mine.

  We all got out of the car.

  I followed Chantelle onto a steel mezzanine that overlooked a large rectangular room, an underground chamber, in effect, lit by an even, mauve-colored light. On the left-hand side was a glass control room. Preeve was inside it, his concentration fixed on a sloping console that looked like a studio mixing desk. He dipped his head toward a microphone. “They’re here.”

  Klimt was sitting with his back to us, in a large black chair in the middle of the floor. He swung it around to face the mezzanine wall. The chair looked like standard office issue, padded leather on a swivel base. But as we came down the stairs and Klimt rose to greet us, I saw it was fitted with electrical contacts and a cradle of electrodes at the upper wings.

  Nothing like that had been on the chair I’d seen on the DVD.

  “Hello, Michael. I trust you had an … uneventful journey?”

  Klimt and Reynard exchanged a glance. I tried to look back at the mezzanine level, wondering if that clonk I’d heard had been Freya on the roof of the car, but Harvey got ahold of me and made me ask, “What’s this?”

  He rested my hand on what looked from the back like a rowboat standing on its end. There were eight in total, all about head height, spaced around the chair like a ring of standing stones.

  Klimt said, “They are what we call wave posts. When you are ready to proceed, you will sit in the chair and Preeve will initiate all eight posts. They are designed to emit oscillating pulses of microwave energy at wavelengths consistent with the background radiation of the universe. The random interchange of waves will create an infinite web of quantum angles, inducing a gravitational effect that will enable us to —”

  “Where’s the scale?” Harvey made me butt in. He couldn’t have been more blunt if he’d come out and said, Cut the Doctor Who crap.

  Klimt did that rare thing for him: He smiled. “Preeve, would you light the floor area, please?”

  “We’re not ready,” the scientist muttered, his voice echoing over the sound system.

  “Doctor, do as I say,” Klimt said, not taking his eyes off me for a moment.

  I looked for Reynard. He had gone into the control room to stand by Preeve. Chantelle was with him. It reminded me of the way dentists and their nurses stand away from the chair whenever they take an X-ray of teeth. “Show it,” I heard Reynard say quietly to Preeve.

  Preeve sighed and threw a few switches. The entire floor area under the chair quickly lit up. My father’s body was floating horizontally in a glass tank approximately three feet deep, filled with pale blue fluid. Anyone unfamiliar with UNICORNE technology might have thought he was dead or drowning. But I’d been in a similar fluid myself and knew that it was warm and breathable. Liam Nolan had described it to me once as water supersaturated with an isotope of oxygen and life-supporting nutrients. In this light, it looked strangely like the stuff I’d seen Klimt drink from time to time, but there was no room in my head to think about that now. All I could focus on was Dad. He was naked, apart from a cloth around his waist. A tangle of fine brown fibers were growing out of his fingertips and toes, weaving around him like wicker. In the center of his chest was the dragon scale I’d seen in the artifact room, surgically grafted onto his skin.

  Interesting, said Harvey.

  What have they done? I mouthed in panic. To get the scale now, Harvey would have to rip Dad’s chest apart.

  Klimt said, “Ah, the Mleptra are active. That is good.”

  In the tank with Dad were dozens of the strange octopus creatures. They weren’t busy around him as I’d seen them be before but were static in the way that stars in space appear to be motionless. As I drew close, they started to twinkle and a few changed color. Tiny pulses of light began to shoot around the network of fibers.

  “They have detected the implant inside you,” said Klimt. “Congratulations, Michael. You have made a small but important connection. Phase one of the experiment is therefore successful.”

  “Then let’s move on to phase two,” I almost growled.

  And Harvey forced me past Klimt and into the chair.

  “Power it up. I’m ready.”

  “Very well,” said Klimt. “First, you will need to be restrained.”

  “What?” I instinctively clenched a fist.

  He stepped forward regardless. “You saw on the DVD of your father that the procedure can cause the subject to become animated. No matter what happens, you need to stay in the chair at all times.”

  He picked up my unclenched hand and put it, palm down, on a pad at the end of the armrest. It lit up green around my fingers. I felt my fingers sink into it slightly as if I’d pressed my hand into modeling wax.

  Don’t worry about the restraints, said Harvey. Once they activate the system, nothing will hold us.

  What about Dad? How are you going to get the scale without —?

  More white noise.

  Just play their game and I’ll give you your dad.

  Klimt put my other hand in place. Two clamps then came over each arm, one at the wrist, one above the elbow. He put his fingers on my temples and eased me right back into the chair. As soon as the back of my head touched the rest, the cradle of electrodes came together like spider legs. I flinched as I felt them “walking” on my skin.

  “Do not be concerned,” he said. “The electrodes are detecting your cranial nerves. It will only take moments. Once they are in place and Preeve opens the channels, you will be directly connected to the scale. I will then guide you through the rest of the process.”

  I looked down at the fluid-filled tank. Harvey allowed me to ask, “Why have you fused the scale to Dad’s skin?”

  Klimt stepped outside the circle of posts. I swiveled the chair so I could follow him. “I have some information I must share with you, Michael. It concerns your father’s condition and will explain what I am about to show you. Do not be afraid. Your life is about to change for the better.” He tapped a small keypad on the wall, and two huge panels drew back. It was dark behind the panels, but I could make out the shape of one of the weird pods they’d put me in once when I’d been in their lab. The pods looked like those sarcophagus things you see in the Egyptian rooms of museums, but this one had a curved glass lid, and pipework and cables springing out of the sides. I
f I was expecting to see a mummified pharaoh, I was way off track. Klimt ordered Preeve to bring up the lights. There was a figure inside the pod. It was still, but it looked a long way from dead.

  A boy, with pale pink skin and soft brown hair.

  A perfect clone of me.

  What in creation is this? said Harvey.

  I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  My heartbeat doubled its rhythm. It was all I could do to keep breathing.

  “Preeve,” said Klimt.

  With a zing, the wave posts lit. The chair shifted its position a fraction and locked itself in line with the clone. The lighting in the room changed from mauve to dark green. Harvey was really buzzing now, wondering what the heck was going on. There had been nothing like this on the film of Dad.

  From the posts came streams of thin blue rays. They lit the chair in a strobing matrix, making it appear to float in midair. Bizarrely, I remembered my physics teacher, Mr. Churston-Ferrers, showing us a tightly wound ball of string and asking the class to imagine that the crisscrossing lines of string were the pathways made by a single electron whizzing around a nucleus at the speed of light. What would it feel like, he’d asked, to be at the center of the ball, following that electron with your eyes? Sitting here, I thought I could answer his question: It would feel like floating at the core of a small but perpetually changing universe, as if you were everywhere and nowhere at once, as if you could touch infinity with your mind, as if all creation was yours to control …

  Klimt turned to face me, moving like a specter beyond the blur of lines. “The boy in the pod is an android, Michael. He is semi-organic with a nervous system built on a graphene interface. He has your precise genetic makeup, but his DNA has been modified in two important ways. First, the defective gene that gave rise to your leukemia has been repaired by the Mleptra. Second, he possesses a fusion of the four chemical bases that make up human DNA with the two extra ones found in the material we were able to extract from the scale. Human DNA consists of two helical strands of these paired chemical bases. The material from the scale has three. If the scale is indeed a dragon relic, then this enhanced genetic configuration is our clearest pointer yet to the source of their powers, chiefly their ability to manipulate the fabric of the universe — to alter reality, as you have done.”