Hello, and happy Friday! This chapter, Mercury demonstrates why Emerald does the burglaries, and a hatchling makes an appearance.
84. Too Little, Too Late
"Wait!" Rudder nosed at Jade's side. "Where are we going?"
"Anywhere but here," she growled.
His ears went back. "Why?"
Jade didn't answer, but she went taught with anger and Rudder didn't press her. They'd all been acting weird ever since Emerald had talked to Cinder. He still didn't understand what had happened, but it didn't really matter. Their riders' fear was impossible to miss.
Then, without warning, Emerald skidded to a halt. Mercury tugged on her arm. "Come on, what are you doing?!"
"We can't leave yet!"
"If you tell me you want to talk to her—" Mercury said, his face darkening.
"I don't. We need to—act natural!"
Tumbleweed ambled across their path. He only glanced at them, and Rudder suppressed a shudder at the sight. All the pit dragons seemed so empty, now.
By the time they were past him, they were almost back to the camp. The new riders were out with their dragonets getting in a little exercise before the sun finished setting, and they couldn't ask Emerald what she was doing. So they followed her around to the back of Watts' lab, where she gestured for them to wait.
"You two stay out here," she whispered. "Make noise if you see him. He should be with Cinder right now, talking about the hybrids."
"What the fuck are we doing?" demanded Mercury.
"Stealing information."
"Why?"
"We'll need something to bargain with, right?" Emerald glared at Mercury with her arms folded. "If we want to find the students, instead of hiding in the woods with all the pit dragons. And Crucible."
"You just don't want little Red to hate you!"
"Shut up and help me!" she demanded, and yanked on his arm. He stumbled forward, and she set to work picking the lock.
Rudder warbled in dismay. It was bad enough they were running off and he still didn't know why, but why couldn't they just leave? Why were they going in Watts' lab? He'd much rather sit outside the door to Cinder's cabin instead.
The inside of Watts' lab was dark and silent, and smelled like a hospital. Emerald scanned the main room with a thief's eye, but she couldn't see anything that looked damning. Just papers covered in his spidery writing, nearly impossible to read even when it wasn't full of confusing jargon. Useless.
"Over here."
Mercury pointed to a map on the wall. It looked like it was of the surrounding forest, with the compound marked in blue and various other markings scattered across its surface. Her eye was drawn to a cluster of red pins off to the northwest. Watts had written, 'Territorial?' and drawn a circle around them.
"Probably Crucible," she whispered. "We need to find something else."
"What do want, blueprints with big dumb weaknesses written all over them?"
Emerald didn't answer. Watts was such an arrogant prick—he had to have left something incriminating lying around. Something they could bring with them, to show that they hadn't... weren't...
"—latest incident at Atlas Dragonry."
She jumped and whirled around, to find Mercury frozen with his hand on an old-fashioned screen set into one wall. Lisa Lavender's face filled the screen, and she was talking much too loudly about an attack in Atlas.
Emerald glared at him. "What kind of genius pushes random buttons in a mad scientist's lab?!"
"I'm not the one who wanted to come in here!"
He went to turn the screen off again, then froze. Storm had appeared—covered from nose to tail in gleaming armor, and barreling towards a group of Council goons with rifles. They were shooting at her, but it didn't seem like it was doing very much. One wing was limp and tied up in a sling. And Ruby was there, bent close to her dragon's neck.
"Turn it off," Emerald blurted.
He did.
"Well," he said, trying for a grin. "I guess your dumb idea just saved us a lot of random flying around. But we should probably get back to spying or whatever."
Emerald left Mercury poking through the piles of papers more or less at random, and moved towards Watts' office. He had a terminal beside his desk, several filing cabinets, even more papers... She tried the terminal, but ran into a brick wall. Password protected.
Then she stepped back, and noticed for the first time that there was a rug under his desk.
Fifteen seconds later, she'd beckoned Mercury over and was about halfway through picking the lock hidden beneath the rug. Finally she heard a click and yanked open the safe. A draft of stale air struck her. The dark opening yawned wide, and a set of metal stairs led downwards and out of sight.
"Fuck me," Mercury breathed. "What do you bet Cinder doesn't know about this?"
Emerald bit her lip and whispered, "Not my life." He grinned. It was creepy, seeing an earnest expression like that on his face. She punched his arm to make him stop.
The hospital smell was stronger underground. Mercury made a gagging noise and pulled his shirt up over his nose, giving her a view of his stomach she neither needed nor wanted. The only light in the room was the pale blue glow of the terminal, and it made him look sickly and pale. Dark shadows clung to walls and ceiling alike, and she couldn't shake the paranoid sense that they were being watched... which they probably were. There was no way Watts didn't have cameras down here.
They needed to get what they came for and go, but that was easier said than done when neither of them really knew what they were looking for. Not sure where else to start, Emerald approached the terminal.
A metal plate lay on the desk beside it, connected to the main terminal by so many cables and wires that it looked like a gigantic many-legged spider. It must have been a scroll, at some point, though the screen had been removed to expose the circuitry beneath.
She let out a long, shaky breath. Then she tried for a smirk. "This looks important."
"Grab it and let's go."
It wasn't obvious which cables went where, or how to disconnect it without damaging anything, so Emerald just grabbed it and yanked it free. Sparks popped. The terminal went dead. Complete and utter darkness descended over them, accompanied by a silence made deafening by the lack of alarms. Of course, Watts wouldn't want this room making noise if Cinder didn't know about it.
Then, light. Two points of flaming molten orange, with vicious slitted pupils.
Emerald lurched backwards, crashed into the desk, and sent papers and metal odds and ends skittering in every direction. Mercury swore. More lights came on—emergency lights, whose dull red glow revealed a dozen hatchlings sitting around the edges of the room. They were a whirl of unfamiliar shapes and colors, completely unrecognizable, definitely hybrids. All were eerily silent. All wore Watts' devices.
The slit-pupiled dragonet hurled itself at Emerald. It was barely the length of her forearm, and went flying when she pushed it away, but it left long gouges in her arm. They didn't bleed—its claws had seared the wounds shut.
Others were only instants behind. Mercury grunted as the biggest of them crashed into his chest and knocked him onto his back. Emerald kicked it hard in the side, but not before its teeth sank into his shoulder. He let out a muffled scream and rolled them both over, so that all its weight came down on one of its tiny wings. It didn't let go.
More were coming—but slowly, unsteadily. One dragonet dragged itself towards them using only its front legs, its hind ones too thin and weak to hold any of its weight. Another snapped sluggishly at her ankles, one eye gummed shut and the other distant and unfocused.
The slit-pupiled dragonet froze in mid-leap. Its breathing hitched, and it made a quiet, pathetic choking noise. Then there was a sound like a firecracker going off, and a flash of light so bright that she could see its teeth silhouetted against the scaly flesh of its muzzle. Gouts of acrid smoke curled from its mouth and nostrils.
The big one pressed its paws against Mercury's chest, the muscles in its neck straining. In a sudden panic, Emerald sprinted around the back of the desk and kicked out. It smashed into the dragonet and knocked it off of him with a sickening tearing sound. He was already struggling upright, his face gone milky white and his shirt slick with blood. She pulled him the rest of the way up and together they staggered towards the stairs.
A hiss. Emerald gave Mercury a shove that sent him sprawling across the foot of the stairs just before the slit-pupiled dragonet leaped for him. It landed in between them, its gaze fixed on the scroll in her hands.
"Rudder!" Mercury roared—but their dragons wouldn't be able to fit down here. Emerald backed up a pace, almost tripping over one of the other hatchlings. It had left a glittering trail from the place it had been sitting. It didn't even bite her, but only butted its head pathetically against her bare calf, trembling and weeping silver.
The slit-pupiled one shuddered. Another crack, another flash of light illuminating the creature from the inside. It whimpered from the strain of holding the stuff in. Probably programmed not to use its powers inside lab. Mercury had finally recovered from her shove, and was dragging himself back up the steps, one by one.
The door, the stairs, Mercury... they all felt so far away. The tips of her fingers and toes tingled.
Emerald stumbled into the wall, her vision blurring until she could barely make out individual dragonets as they sank tiny needle-claws into her legs. The stairway was empty, now, the slit-pupiled dragonet crouched and waiting in front of it. The big one was getting back to its feet.
Something came sailing down the stairwell and struck the slit-pupiled hatchling square on the back of its head. It hissed and reeled, its wings flaring. Emerald lurched forward. The ground pitched and swayed underneath her, and she crashed headfirst into the stairs.
"Emerald!"
Her hands must belong to someone else. Or maybe these were gloves, instead—thick and numb and useless.
She blinked. There was something in her hands. She'd forgotten about that. A dead spider, all its legs plucked off. Doctor Watts would be angry if they got it out of here.
Emerald hauled herself to her feet. Seven stairs. Then six—and then the slit-pupiled dragonet was there, clinging to the underside of the stairs, its mouth open to bite. But its scales melted right through, and within seconds it was on its back, shaking off drops of molten steel. She dragged herself over one step, and then the next, and finally tripped over the threshold. There she lay, sprawled on the cold floor of Watts' office, with the scroll still clutched in her unfeeling palm.
"Emerald! Emerald, get up!"
She groaned and rolled onto her side. Mercury gave her hand a tug, but he couldn't lift her with his right arm hanging uselessly at his side. Grimacing, he knelt down by her head.
"Em?"
Her eyes were open, but she seemed to be looking at something a few feet past him.
"There's no way Cinder knows about this. If we find her..." He grimaced. If she'd been on a hair-trigger before, she'd turn downright nuclear now. Unless she did know what Watts was keeping in his basement lab, in which case she'd definitely kill them.
But... "I can't pick you up. So either I have to go find her, or—"
"No."
Mercury let out a shaky breath. "Okay. Then you've gotta get up."
He had to help—whatever the dragonets had done to her, her balance was completely shot. Mercury caught himself feeling glad that he'd had the biggest of them try and rip his arm off. But together they got her upright, and from there he could sling her over his good shoulder and stumble towards the door.
The dragonets didn't follow. It was eerily silent outside the basement lab, like nothing had ever happened. They passed through the outer lab with its maelstrom of papers. Halfway through, the butchered scroll slipped between Emerald's fingers. Mercury managed to catch it between two fingers and shove it in his pocket. Emerald leaned over his shoulder and threw up on the pristine white floor.
"Awesome," Mercury grumbled. "You owe me a new shirt."
She mumbled something he didn't understand, then poked his injured shoulder.
"Fuck, that hurts!"
"Already ruined it," she slurred.
"Nah, it would've looked badass. Puke stains don't have the same—"
And they were out the door, and Jade and Rudder were fretting over them, their frantic whimpers getting louder and louder until Mercury shushed them. The sun had set while they were inside, and the valley was thick with suspicious shadows.
"Jade!" He held Emerald out to her, and she took her rider gently by the back of her shirt and lifted her onto her back. "Okay. Emerald, the straps—"
"On it." She leaned down and fumbled with the first of them for several agonizing seconds.
"...Fuck."
Mercury reached up one-handed to help, but between the two of them they'd still only managed to fasten four of them when he heard twigs snapping in the forest up ahead. Paprika's nose emerged from between the trees, her teeth bared.
He flung himself at Rudder and shouted, "Go!"
Jade bolted just in time to dodge a swipe of the pit dragon's claws. Rudder had to sprint in the opposite direction before he finally got to the slope that led out of the valley. Already lights were coming on, and Cinder's loyal riders were poking their heads out of the cabins.
Mercury just managed to haul himself into the saddle before Rudder reached the top of the valley and took off. Jade was already circling overhead, calling out in alarm. Malevolent shadows detached themselves from the trees. Glory slashed at Jade, who only barely managed to duck under her outstretched claws.
"That way!" he shouted, pointing northwest. Both their dragons put on desperate bursts of speed, eating away the miles, but they still had two pit dragons on their tail and more were rising from the woods to join them.
The valley was long gone, now. Mercury tried to estimate the miles in his head. Were they angling too far north?
And then, finally, he saw it—a column of smoke trickling out of the mouth of a massive cave set into a distant mountain.
At any other time, Jade would have balked at the prospect of flying over that mountain. But she could feel Emerald swaying back and forth in the saddle, and they had to get rid of the pit dragons chasing them. So she flapped towards it with all her strength and bellowed, "Crucible!"
Ruddy light spilled from the cave's entrance. Then his head snaked out of the opening, visible even from miles away. His shriek of rage echoed off the mountainside and made the trees below them shiver.
Jade flew straight at him. Closer now, and closer, until she could see his eyes glowing. "They're after us!" she called out. "Please—"
Fire.
She squawked and folded her wings against her body, dropping like a stone to evade the blast. The world tilted, and she could hear leather straps creaking ominously. Then, as she spun back upright, one snapped. Then another. The last two were too loose, she could feel Emerald slipping free, and then she was clinging to Jade's neck with both arms to stay in the saddle.
"Hate you!" Crucible shrieked. Another jet of fire. Jade banked right.
She could feel it happen. Weight sliding sideways, as inevitable as gravity, the order of the world going askew. Emerald's arms slackened, and she slipped into open air.
Jade dove for her. For an instant they were suspended together in the air, and she could see Emerald's face, her eyes wide and unblinking despite the howling wind and the hair whipping across her face. Then she snatched her up in her claws and clutched her safe against her chest.
Crucible kept screaming. "No more! Go away! No—"
Glory darted past him. His eyes caught the glint of the metal plate and narrowed to slits. Then he threw himself at her, howling, a terrible red light building in his open maw as she struggled—Jade looked away. With a burst of speed and dove under cover of the trees, out of sight of their pursuers.
Emerald wasn't moving. Jade laid her gently on the ground and nuzzled at her side. Her rider smelled different, like something essential had been lost in the fall. She was being too loud, she knew, but she didn't care.
Mercury slid off Rudder's back and stumbled over to them. He made shushing gestures with his good hand, then gave up and wrapped it around her neck—it was warm, and not at all what she wanted. She pushed him away.
He knelt down. Placed two fingers under Emerald's jaw and held them there for a long time.
"Hey—" His voice broke. "We gotta keep flying, okay? So we can get her some help."
Jade gathered up her rider and launched herself into the sky.