Page 32 of Riding My Dragons

And then, remembering what we’d all been so concerned about, my only thought for the rest of the ride back to campus was, Poor Cade.

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The transit floated to a hover at a stop just inside the campus grounds, and I stepped off.The guys who’d been so intrigued with me when I got on had gotten out themselves somewhere between Elliot’s place and the campus, and I’d hardly noticed.All I’d been thinking about during the ride was how much trouble Cade had gotten into when he could have been at Elliot’s with us, sharing in what we’d all been enjoying in Elliot’s bed.And all I could think about while stepping off the transit and onto the campus street was to wonder how we were going to get poor Cade out of this mess.

This was an outlying area of the University grounds, a short walk from the academic and residential buildings, where the support and service facilities were.Somewhere between this transit stop and my dorm, I knew, was that warehouse, where so much trouble had started.Walking along this street, with the plain and functional buildings, in the quiet of the mostly empty campus, I had a sudden urge to see the place where the trouble happened, a place to which I’d hardly given any kind of thought before now.I quickened my steps and headed along the walkway to where that place was.

I soon found the warehouse, looking just as I’d seen it so many times, never attaching any special importance to it.I had never seen it the way it was now, blocked off with little polesbetween which barriers of red tape were strung.Back home, these tape barriers would have been yellow, the sign of the police cordoning off a crime scene.Seeing the warehouse this way and knowing the reason why, I felt a cold dread wrapping around my heart, imagining Cade entering this place, taking something, and facing guards who tried to detain him and shot at him when he flew away.I hated the idea of someone that I’d been so intimate with, being in that situation, being caught and having to escape.

Oh, Cade, I wondered, how scared were you?How desperate?

As much as I’d wanted to see this place at first, now I didn’t want to be anywhere near it.A sudden urge to run took hold of me, thinking of how Cade had needed to fly away—of how he’d been shot as he took flight.Tears welled up in my eyes, thinking of shells of energy raking his scales as he bolted to escape; of the terror that he must have felt along with the pain.It was too awful to think about.Cade had given me so much pleasure, and he must have felt such pain.I turned and ran, holding a hand over my mouth to hold back not only my sobbing, but my sudden sickness.Coming here was a mistake!I had to get out of here!So, I just ran for the quad, where my dorm was.I’d go to my room and just lie down by myself, get my feelings under control.When I was calmer, I’d get a shower and try to eat something.What I needed now was whatever feeling of normalcy I could get.

Some school break this was turning out to be.

A short way from my dorm, I began to feel out of breath.I slowed down and found a little table and a bench under a tree, a good place to settle down for a moment before walking the rest of the way back to my room. This would be a good chance to have another look at the media for any further updates about Cade.I had an image of Constables showing up at that hotel, going up to his room, banging on his door.Wasthere some way that they could have tracked him, even if he’d stayed in his human body since escaping from those guards?I suddenly needed a little more reassurance that he was all right.And perhaps I’d send a message to Elliot and Byron while I was at it.I sat down at the table and took out my mirror.Taking a breath, I called up the media and hoped for no news, which would be good news.

Sure enough—and thankfully so—there were no updates about the University warehouse break-in and the “suspect” that the Constables were looking for.Good, Cade, I thought, just stay where you are and stay human.Elliot and Byron have probably gotten to you by now.

I closed out the media and went to the call function.Hitting Elliot’s calling code, I got his voice responder.“This is Elliot,” said his voice, making me picture his sexy face.“I’m busy right now, so please leave me a message and I’ll get you right back.”

“Elliot,” I said, with the thought of him “getting me right back” warming me up just a little, “it’s Jenna.I’m back at campus.I was just at the warehouse; something made me want to see it, I don’t know what.But I’m here and I hope you guys are with Cade and you’re figuring out some way to…”

Something stopped me in mid-sentence; a strange, sharp pain on my neck.It made me flinch and gasp, and I suddenly had a strange, fuzzy, fluttery feeling in my head.I felt at my neck where the sudden pain happened, and there was an object of some sort sticking out of my skin.I pulled it away and looked at it.The last clear thought that I had was that it looked like some kind of long thorn—or perhaps the long talon or claw of a dragon.Then, as my thoughts began to melt behind my clouding eyes, I had an awful idea of what had just happened.

I forced myself up from the table on legs that were suddenly wobbly.With an effort, I kept the mirror up to myears and said, “Elliot, something is…There’s someone, I don’t know…”I tried to look around, but could see only blurs of color, and it was getting harder to form thoughts, let alone talk.“Elliot,” I uttered in a droning voice, “someone just…I think I’ve been…Who?Elliot, I…don’t…”

My voice and any kind of conscious thoughts I might have had, simply dissolved.In some dim corner of my fading mind, I was aware of having taken a few steps from the table toward the tree.My last sensations were of tumbling, of the impact between my body and the ground, and grass against my face.

Then…nothing.

CHAPTER 15

Byron

Cade had only touched the thing with his dragon hands since he took it.After getting it here to his room at the Lacerta, he’d only handled it with his human fingers in handkerchiefs.I was using my own dragon hands to examine it now.Neither Cade nor Elliot nor I wanted to put any human fingerprints on it.I had seen pictures of things like this; and seen them on display in museums.The little box, small enough to hold in my palm, was an obsolete technology that Cade had taken from a case of weapon artifacts from the Old Wars.And that was our only clue to what this thing might be and what it might contain.

“It stands to reason,” I said, “that whatever is on here belonged to some soldier, or maybe to his commanding officer or someone higher up in command.There must be some information on it, either about whoever had it, or whoever gave it to them, or maybe wherever it was supposed to be given to.”Turning it around in my claws, I noticed an engraving on it, the picture of Tellus in a dragon’s taloned hand.“Whoever this belonged to, they were on the Scalers’ side of the war.This is a Scaler carving:old Scaler military.”

”Yeah,” said Cade, sitting on his unmade bed, wearing only his leather pants and boots.“I didn’t even notice that until I got it back here and started taking a closer look at it.This thing is one of ‘ours’.Or not ‘ours,’ but…”

”I know what you mean,” said Elliot, standing near me.“It was Scaler Legion property.There’s Scaler Legion data on there.”

”Which we don’t have a way to get at,” I said, rubbing the knuckle of my still-human hand on my chin while fixing my eyes on this object that our friend had gotten into so much trouble for.

“Don’t you know anyone, like a tech expert, who can get into that thing and find out what’s in there?” Elliot asked.

”If this were a modern data slide,” I said, “or even someone’s encoded mirror, I could call on family contacts to get into it and read what’s on it faster than you could flick your tail.But this, as you can see, guys—this thing is just plain old.The tech is so out of date, I don’t know where anyone could get their hands on it, or if it would still be workable even if someone were able to find it.This is like a fossil.”

”People can read fossils,” said Elliot, insistently.“People can…what’s the word…reconstruct things from fossils.”

Cade seized onto the idea, needing something to hope for.“Yeah, like he said.Reconstruct.”

I scratched my head at the thought.“The data on this could be corrupted from being so old.It depends on what this thing went through in the war before it was sealed away.We may be talking about finding someone who can reconstruct corrupted data and reconstruct the technology to make it work; and make that tech usable.That kind of project could be a real challenge.”

Frustrated and scared, Cade slapped his hands on the mattress.“Byron, I don’t want to hear about challenges!What do you think my damn future is right now?I can’t stay in here forever!The damn challenge is staying out from behind bars!”

Seeing how much Cade needed to stay calm, I asked him, “Look, you talked to your cousin Ross, right?He’s the one who got you into this mess.He’s the one you’re supposed to give this thing to, right?What about your family’s lawyers?They’vegot to have ways to work around situations like this, or half your relatives would probably be in cages, right?So, what does Ross say?”

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