Page 32 of Inferno

“Understood.” The officer gave a grim smile. “We’ll be ready.”

I slipped out the door and back into the yard, easily avoiding the spotlights as they swept the perimeter. Ducking into the shadows between the buildings, I gazed up at the brick-and-mortar walls. “Wes? Anything?”

“Bugger all,” Wes muttered. “Yeah, I’m in. This place is locked down tight, Riley. At least three guards, and they’re all carrying these massive bloody elephant rifles. The dragons are in individual cells—two hatchlings, two Juveniles and one Adult. Also, there’s some bloke in a suit walking around—looks like he could be straight from Talon.”

“Got it.” I slipped up to a window on the ground floor and peered in. A darkened room with white counters and medical equipment lay beyond the glass, part of the hospital bay attached to the building if I had to guess. Fishing a glass cutter out of my belt, I made a tiny circle in the window, just enough to reach my hand through and unlock the pane. Pushing up the window, I glanced around warily before slipping inside.

“I’m in the medical bay, Wes. Looks like some sort of exam room.”

“Right. You shouldn’t have any problems until you get to the main enclosure. Let me know when you’re close, and I’ll take care of the cameras.”

I crept through a series of hallways that for all the world looked like part of a normal clinic. White tile floors, individual rooms with counters and shelves of equipment, a couple wheelchairs sitting against the wall. Until I reached a single door that was outlined in yellow and black stripes and read Danger! Authorized Personnel Only.

I snorted in quiet contempt.That’s a bit dramatic. It’s not like we’re dangerous wild animals that will bite someone in half for no reason.Then again, if I were an imprisoned, pregnant dragon that couldn’t Shift into human form, I might be a bit cranky and inclined to take it out on my human captors, too.

The door was locked, but the key card I’d taken from the guard opened it easily. As the door hissed back, I slipped into a vast, cavernous room, the roof soaring up to about sixty feet overhead. Metal walkways lined the walls, passing over rows of large enclosures about fifty feet high, with steel walls that were probably a foot thick. The temperature had skyrocketed; the air was hot and damp, and I felt like I’d stepped into a sauna. The room smelled of wet vegetation, and beneath my heavy combat jacket, the Viper suit felt uncomfortably slick.

“Wes,” I muttered into the com, “I’m in the main room by the medical bay door. Can you tell me which cells are holding the breeders?”

“Hang on.” There was a short pause, and I slipped between a pair of standing shelves that held things like shovels, hoses and bags of fertilizer. “Okay,” Wes told me, “looks like they’re in cells three, eight, thirteen, sixteen and twenty-two.”

I peered at the walkways between two five-gallon buckets. “Where are the guards?”

“One patrolling the walkway, two guarding the doors on opposite ends of the room.”

“And the Adult? Where is she?”

“In the last cell, mate. Twenty-two.”

On the other side of the room. Of course. “Right,” I muttered. “Looks like I’m headed to cell twenty-two.”

As I scoured the walkway and open floor beneath, searching for the best route across the room, voices and approaching footsteps caught my attention. I ducked behind the shelves, hunkering down behind several bags of topsoil, as two figures appeared, walking toward the door I’d just come through.

I swallowed a growl. One was a dragon, a tall man in a business suit, with short brown hair and a perfectly groomed goatee. He was also an Adult, given the way my instincts shrank back, wanting me to crawl beneath the shelves to hide. This must be the famous Director Vance, the one in charge of this island of atrocities. He was speaking to a balding human doctor–type with glasses and a white lab coat, the smaller man nervously tapping a pencil against his clipboard as they walked.

“Scarlett should be ready to lay any day now,” the human was saying as they got closer. “She just started nesting behavior this morning, so I stopped her food and ordered her habitat be put in isolation mode until the egg arrives. Which should be sometime tomorrow or the next day, if I had to guess.”

“Good,” the dragon said. “I’ve just received word from Talon. This is to be Scarlett’s final hatching. Once the egg has been sent to the organization, terminate her name from the schedule.”

The human chewed his lip. “Forgive me, Director,” he ventured, and those cold dark eyes fixed on him, unblinking. “I understand Talon’s desire to scale back production,” the human went on as the pencil resumed its anxious tapping against the clipboard. “But Scarlett has always produced healthy, fertile eggs. Now that we’ve reduced the number of resident females by nearly half, she is one of the only breeders left who is a known quantity. I’m not one to question the organization’s motives, but—”

“Then don’t.” Director Vance narrowed his eyes, seeming to loom over the smaller human, who cringed away from him. “You are not paid to question Talon, Dr. Miles. You are here to keep our breeders healthy and happy, and to make certain the eggs arrive safely and on time, a task that you are paid exceptionally well to do. What Talon does with the members of our organization is not your concern. I suggest you put it from your mind and follow orders before you find yourself out of work, on a small raft, in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle.”

His voice raised the hair on the back of my neck. I’d heard his kind speak many times before, but that cold, clinical detachment never ceased to infuriate me. As if he were discussing the inner workings of a car, rather than a living, breathing, sentient creature. I remembered the fear in Sera’s voice when she spoke of Director Vance, and my resolve hardened even further.

“Yes, Director.” The human’s voice trembled, but there was a hint of sullenness there, too. “As you say. I’ll remove Scarlett from the list and prepare her for deportation.” The medical bay door opened with a hiss, and the pair vanished from sight as it closed behind them.

As soon as they were gone, I hurried across the room, careful to locate the three guards and time my approach so that I passed out of sight of each of them. Thankfully, the room was dim, with heavy shadows making stealth a bit easier. As I reached the cell labeled twenty-two, I saw that a single large window had been set into the front of the otherwise solid steel walls. Through the glass, a junglelike habitat greeted me, heavy vegetation and indoor trees growing along the inner wall. Beside the window sat a pair of huge, dragon-size doors that looked thick enough to hold up to a tank, but a normal-size door was also set into the wall to the left of the window. A single lightbulb glowed a warning red beside it, probably to indicate the cell was occupied.

“Wes?” I crouched in the shadows under the walkway, ready to make that final dash. “I’m about to break into cell twenty-two. Where are the cameras?”

“Give me a second” came the terse reply, followed by a moment of silence. “Okay, the one in twenty-two shouldn’t be a problem now. But…” And a slow whistle came through the earpiece. “Bloody hell. I’d be careful if I were you, mate.”

That sounds ominous.A familiar key card slot blinked at me as I eased up to the human-size door, and I grimaced as I pulled out my stolen card.Let’s hope this thing works here, too, I thought, and swiped it through the reader.

The light beeped green, and I slipped into the habitat of a pregnant Adult dragon.

It was even warmer in here, and humid, reminding me again of the jungle where Ouroboros had staked his territory. I felt sweat form on my brow and run down my neck. My boots squelched in soft dirt as I turned carefully, searching the vegetation.Okay, so where is this dragon Wes is so worried about—?

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