CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Shell Game
My plan for building a small army required going to work every day like everything was normal. It was harder than I imagined. At the best of times—in the middle of the domestication challenge, or just before my Condor’s field trials—I looked forward to work. Some days I even jogged from my car to Build-A-Dragon’s shining front door. Now, a heavy non-specific dread replaced the excitement when I passed through the lobby on my way to the elevators. Virginia took a leave of absence, and they replaced her with a matronly woman who glared at me like I was a trespasser every time I walked by. She glared at everyone that way but losing Virginia’s warm smile rubbed salt in my emotional wounds.
Build-A-Dragon’s design floor got busier than ever. We had some new ad campaign running, and the orders were rolling in. Hatchery staff bopped in and out constantly, moving eggs from the printer to the hatchery. Evelyn scurried across the design floor no less than a dozen times a day. There was an uptick in tours as well, and the tour guides loved our floor. Every time I turned around, there were twenty faces pressed to the glass, staring at me. Pint-sized kindergarteners, gangly high school students, even stooped elderly folks from the nearby senior centers. I felt like a museum exhibit. So did my fellow designers. We hid behind our workstations as much as we could.
The good news was that I had my printing privileges back. Evelyn was probably monitoring my activities, but she was far too swamped to pay close attention. The bad news was that we’d gotten a new accounting system to manage the workload. Every egg that came off the printer had to be linked to an order. One dragon requested, one delivered. I could have gotten into the systems code and spoofed some false orders, but that was risky. The company had various auditing systems and double-checks in place to prevent fraud. I couldn’t circumvent all of them, and any changes would leave an electronic trail pointing right back to me.
The Design group did have a company account that we used to print new prototypes. I could create an order with that, no problem. But the moment an egg rolled out and hit the scale, its weight would be compared to the expected value from DragonDraft3D. If they matched, the account would be charged, and Evelyn would get an invoice. That would raise a red flag no matter how busy she was. Everything in that system was pretty much locked down to me, except for one part: the scale that verified eggs as they came out of the God Machine. It had failed before—that’s how I ended up with Octavius.
Whenever no one was around, I started tampering with it.
O’Connell still had the new flying model assignment—which sounded to be shaping up like a Terribledactyl 2.0—so custom orders and support requests dominated my daily work. It amazed me how many customers wanted dragons that resembled very specific dog breeds. If I had to guess, they were filling a void that their departed dogs had left behind. In the space of three hours, I designed somewhat obvious reptilian versions of a golden retriever, a dachshund, and a labradoodle. All of those were too big for my needs. Even so, by the time I’d printed the eggs, my scale was off by half a kilogram. Then I came across a custom order for a light green Laptop model that was “extra clever.” Couldn’t have asked for a better subterfuge. Rather than starting with a Rover model, I imported the specs of the design used for Octavius. I balanced the traits a little more—moving some intelligence points to claws, teeth and agility—but kept the diminutive size. DragonDraft3D estimated the egg would weigh 0.48 kilograms. Bingo.
I checked over the design one last time, and then ran it through the simulator. The predicted dragon could have been Octavius’s older brother. Slightly stockier, perhaps, and a shade less clever. Probably how Connor considered me. I chuckled, though it sounded nervous to my ears. Now came the riskiest part: a shell game with my now-inaccurate egg scale. I went back to DragonDraft3D and hit the print button.
The God Machine’s hydraulics kicked in. The metallic printer-arm danced around for a couple of minutes, and then the thing beeped. I rolled my desk chair to put myself right between the output tray and the surveillance camera. I couldn’t keep it from hitting the scale entirely—that’s why I’d been tampering with it—and I had to make sure the egg didn’t show up on camera, either.
The God Machine fell silent. The egg rolled out. I didn’t make a grabbing motion or anything, just sort of let it tumble up into my palm. It was only a shade bigger than Octavius’s egg had been. I leaned forward to cover the motion of slipping it into the pocket I’d sewn into the inside of my lab coat. If anyone was watching the feed, I wanted to look confused. I peered up into the God Machine, like I was still waiting for the egg to come out.
Then I shrugged and went back to my workstation. I even glanced back over my shoulder a couple of times, like I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. DragonDraft3D had gotten the error message from the printer by that time and prompted me on whether I wanted to try re-printing the egg. I looked pointedly up at the clock and chose “No.” Then I started typing up a support ticket to the robotics group, the geeks that kept all our machinery running. I didn’t send the ticket but kept it up on my screen in case I had to explain it later.
I stood, stretched, and walked to the break room. Build-A-Dragon stocked a full refrigerator with drinks and had plenty of snacks. Another little perk of working here. I’d stashed my insulated lunch box behind the refrigerator, right where the hot air coming off the coils would hit it. I tested the temperature with my palm. Still toasty warm. Perfect.
I slipped the egg inside it, carried it back to my desk, and set it down by my backpack. My workstation beeped with a message: a new order had come in.
I decided to roll with it, and act like the new order suddenly became my top priority. I minimized the window with the robotics ticket, switched to DragonDraft3D, and got to work. The customer wanted a courier dragon, a fleet little flying model that could see in the dark. Oh, and it had to spout flame, too. Most customers could never resist checking that little box on the form. I worked on the design for a couple of hours, while the design floor cleared out and Build-A-Dragon’s windows darkened. I’d print the egg first thing Monday morning. I loaded my lunch bag into my backpack as if everything was normal.
Out of sheer paranoia, I took the stairs instead of the elevator. You never knew who might pop on, and I couldn’t count on a good poker face when I was smuggling a dragon egg out of the building. When I entered the stairwell, the odor of fresh paint hit me like a wall. Uh-oh.
I only got two floors down before I ran into the paint crew. They had a scaffold up so they could paint the ceiling. Seriously, who paints the ceiling? I couldn’t get around it without squishing my bag, so I had to cut over through the main part of the second floor.
This took me through the customer service department, a sea of grey-walled cubicles that buzzed with the sound of a dozen telephone conversations. It was after seven, Arizona time, but a lot of our customers in East Asia were just waking up. And they demanded perfection from their dragons. It must have been a cultural thing. I caught snippets of conversation as I passed.
“I’m sorry to hear about your trouble.”
“And how many hamsters do you think he ate?”
“ . . . made it clear that custom-made dragons can’t be modified once they’ve hatched.”
Yet another unwanted dragon in the world. Perfect.
Octavius knew I was up to something the moment I walked into the condo. He’d been waiting for me just inside the door, which he did sometimes when he didn’t feel like playing hide-and-seek. Maybe he noticed the unusual weight of my lunch bag, or just read the expression on my face. He hopped over and started nuzzling around my legs. His version of a body search.
“What’s got you so excited?” I asked.
He took to the air and began zooming around me, bumping my backpack with his nose.
“Hey, stop that!” I swatted at him but missed. Damn, he’s getting quick. “All right, settle down and I’ll show it to you.”
I drew the curtains first and made sure the door was locked. Put my phone and laptop in another room, just in case. I sat down at the table and eased the egg out of my lunch bag. It was the color of limestone and dappled with gray and ochre.
I eased it to the center of the table and held it there so that Octavius could have a look. His claws clicked on the wood as he approached it, hunched low, pink tongue flicking out every few seconds. He circled it a few times, then settled down on his belly. He looped his tail almost all the way around it and made a new sound: a soft, undulating buzz from deep in his throat.
“Are you purring?” I didn’t know dragons could even do that. Yet another quirk of biology that our simulations didn’t predict.
I carried over the old-school desk lamp and set it up. Octavius slapped it almost lazily with the end of his tail to turn it on. He stretched out then, enjoying the heat. You couldn’t ask for a better egg-sitter.
Just like that, I had the first of my little dragon army. Over the next four days, I smuggled out four more the exact same way. They incubated in the warmth of my old lamp while I tried not to think about my next utility bill. In the meantime, I surveyed the target using every terrain and satellite map I could find. The current satellite images might be restricted, but I was able to pull up older imagery from the archive. Taking the direct road into the facility wouldn’t work. I’d gotten away with it once, thanks to Summer’s quick thinking—just remembering it brought tandem flashes of excitement and dismay—but now Greaves would probably have his security people on high alert. The archived maps revealed an old highway that wandered in from the northwest, maybe a mile and a half from the field itself. It might be close enough. Of course, a mile and a half of raw desert country might take hours to cross. I didn’t like the idea of trying it alone. I had a couple of weeks before my reptilian strike team would be ready. That might be enough time for me to win back the best geocacher in Phoenix.