Page 29 of Riding My Dragons

A little apprehension crept into Jenna’s voice.“What, Byron?What’s going on?”

”It’ll be better if you just look,” Byron insisted.“Elliot, turn on the monitor right now!”

Now feeling as worried as Byron sounded, I rolled across the bed to one of the nightstands and reached for the control of the monitor that took up most of the opposite wall.I turned it on and brought up the media feed channel.My jaw dropped open and Jenna gasped at what unfolded on the screen.

The newsgiver was a woman.Keyed in beside her was the image of a plain-looking building near trees and other, more distinctive-looking brick buildings.Jenna leaned forward, bending her legs, narrowing her eyes at the screen, finding the image familiar.“Is that…?” she began.

“At this hour,” the newsgiver announced, “there are no further details about last night’s break-in at the warehouse of Pendrake Technical University.A lone Scaler male somehowbypassed the warehouse’s security and entered the warehouse, where two University guards confronted him…”

Jenna gasped so loudly, I thought she would turn herself inside out.“Oh my God!” she cried.“A break-in?At the University?I’ve gone by that warehouse between classes; I know where that is!”

Starting to put things together, I looked from the monitor to Byron, who stood by with arms folded and an expression shadowed with worry.“Byron,” I asked, “did Cade tell you to look at this?”

Nodding his head slightly, looking more grim than I’d ever seen him, my friend quietly said simply, “Yes.”

Jenna, eyes widened and skin turning pale, faced Byron herself and asked, “Why would Cade want you to…?”She trailed off, suspecting the answer just as I did.

Nodding, still grim, not seeming to want to say anything else, Byron simply said, “Watch.”

We all returned our attention to the monitor.

While we’d been reacting, the newsgiver had continued her report and was still talking.“The intruder’s reasons for entering the warehouse aren’t known, and University security personnel and officials are now working to determine what he might have taken.The two guards stated that the intruder was not carrying anything that they could see.One of the guards has been treated at the University hospital for minor wounds and released.Here again is one guard’s recording of the intruder’s escape.It’s believed that the young male Scaler sustained minor wounds of his own during his getaway.”

The three of us watched, disbelieving, as the dragon figure who had just hurt one of the guards went flying quickly up and out of the open skylight with gunfire pursuing him.At the sight of one energy shot seeming to pierce the Scaler’s wing, Byron and I both flinched a little, and Jenna let out a frightened yelp,leaned over to me, and threw her arms around me.Reflexively, I put one arm around her.

Meanwhile, the newsgiver said, “It’s assumed that after escaping, the intruder morphed to human shape to knit any wounds that he received and fled from the campus in that form.The warehouse rooftop security camera recovered from whatever was done to disable it in time to record a Scaler figure flying unsteadily away from the warehouse as if wounded, heading in a northwesterly direction away into the city…”

In a chilled, hushed voice, Jenna said, “It couldn’t have been.”

Byron sounded as chilled as Jenna when he replied, “It was.”

”Oh no,” I muttered fearfully.

And the newsgiver finished her report with a still image of the Scaler suspect leaping up with wings spread inside the warehouse.“Constables are now concentrating on finding a young Scaler male in his early to mid-twenties with wings of this color pattern.They are also randomly stopping young Scaler males moving alone through the city for questioning and searching.In the meantime, anyone sighting this Scaler in dragon form is requested to contact…”

Pointing at the monitor, I said, “Those wing colors.The pattern and angle of the dark blue bands on the wings.That looks just like…”

Byron grimly said our friend’s name.“Cade.”

”This was the so-called ‘job’,” I said.“The job that his family gave him to do.Those ass-tails sent him out to steal something from the damn University!Damnit!”

Her voice cracking, Jenna wrapped her arms around my arm and buried her face against my shoulder.I heard her sob a little.“Oh, Cade…Oh, Cade, no.Why?”

Unable to look at the media any more, I turned off the control, silencing and blackening the monitor.Rubbing his chin with a knuckle, Byron thought aloud.“His family elders—or someone that they’re working for—wanted something out of that warehouse and sent Cade to do the dirty work of getting it.”

”So what were they after?” I asked.“You saw the recording; he didn’t look like he was carrying anything.”

”An antique data box,” said Byron.“The kind they used to use way back when they had tabletop dataplexes.”

I jerked my head back, disbelieving.“A data box?They sent Cade out as a thief, got him in trouble with the Constables, maybe ruined his life, over old data files from before anyone was born?What was on the damn thing?”

”Something important enough to ruin someone’s life for,” Byron said, frowning, disgusted.“I always knew that family of his would get him into trouble like this someday.”

Jenna had unwrapped her arms from me and sat up straight.Her face was wet with the tears that she’d cried onto my arm.She wasn’t crying any more.She was still scared, and disgusted as Byron and I were.And there was an angry edge in her voice.“Well, we can’t just let this happen to him and not do anything about it.Where is he now, Byron?”

”He got a room at the Pendrake Lacerta and hasn’t come out since he checked in,” Byron answered.

Scratching my head, I said, “The Pendrake Lacerta?He’s hiding out from the Constables at a resort hotel?”

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