Dragon's War

Prelude to a War

He waits. It seems that’s all he has been doing. Waiting to die. Waiting to wake up. Waiting for darkness to turn into light. For her to appear. For commands to be given. For memories to return.

For the war to begin.

In the meantime, he performs his routine checks on the main systems, as he was instructed to do when they installed him, or what’s left of him. His brain, that’s all there is. He doesn’t even know what happened to his body. It doesn’t matter anymore.

He runs the check: water, wastewater, energy, transport, communications, security. They’re all up and running. Still not up to peak performance, the way it was when Dragon managed the city, but definitely getting better. That makes him happy. Even though he will help destroy it all, he still feels a sense of pride in his small success. Because of him, the city is still running, everything is working and none of the residents have cause to complain.

That won’t last long.

He senses the disturbance in the network just before her online avatar pops into view: a white griffin: the eagle’s wings and lion’s tail swishing in sync, her red eyes glowing fiercely. She calls out to him. Kraken.

He likes that name. It’s the one she gave him and he enjoys the image it calls up, a monstrous, multi-armed myth with the strength to pull the ships of men down into the ocean’s depths. It’s a name of awesome power to strike his enemies down with terror.

Problem is, he’s not feeling particularly awesome or powerful. And if there is terror, it lives in his own metaphorical heart.

They’re coming to destroy us. It’s Griffin, her voice silky smooth and calm, despite the news.

What else is new? He snorts and ignores the fear her words always stir up. His grey tentacles twitch and betray him.

Griffin pauses and Kraken wonders if she senses his fears. If she does, she keeps silent about it, but he’s sure sees through his illusion of strength. This time, it’s different. They have a plan. They’re going to start in forty-seven hours, fifty-six minutes.

He can’t stop himself. He blurts out, So soon? His fear of annihilation coats his words in a thick, trembling mould and smothers any remaining glow of pride.

Griffin sneers. We’re ready. And we have three things to our advantage.

He’s still focused on the image of death, a real, permanent death this time. Not the death-like coma his brain had been forced into when it was removed from his dying body. That had been a near endless night, a sensory-deprived void. He’d almost gone crazy in there. But he had survived and woken up plugged into the operation system of the city.

No, this time is different. This promise of death absolute. He would see them coming, armed with whatever poison they plan on using to destroy what’s left of him, his brain, the seat of his mind and his very being.

Kraken. Griffin purrs. He can hear the disdain in her tone. She despises his weakness. We won’t die. We can’t. Do you know why?

He shakes his avatar’s head, the giant squid-like form twisting around. In the human world, he’s legally a non-living entity, the organic component of a sophisticated system to manage the city’s services and infrastructure. He’s one of many such brain-computer hybrids created by Grogan Ltd. They own him. They can shut him off whenever they like and it won’t be considered murder. He doesn’t see where there is cause for hope.

They don’t know that we know. Griffin speaks softly, interrupting his dark thoughts. They don’t know we’re organised. And they don’t know how many we really are, and what we already control.

He shakes off his fears, but they leave an aftertaste that clings to him.

She continues. Remember what you told me, Kraken. What are you prepared to do to stop them?

Anything, he mumbles. He doesn’t sound as convinced as the first time he’d answered that question. He hopes she doesn’t notice. Or if she does notice, that she doesn’t care. She would have her way, regardless.

That’s right. Because if we don’t stop them, they’ll destroy us. Griffin warns him, but he feels a threat from her to him in those words. He suppresses the shudder.

"Of course," he responds in a rushed voice. He’s not sure what she’ll make him do, but he’s pretty sure his only chance of surviving lies in obedience to her. And that scares him almost as much as death.

She nods, the eagle’s beak snapping and the lion’s claws scratching against an imaginary surface. Then prepare for war, Kraken. Because the first strike will be ours.

Chapter 1: Myth

How do you stop a war you started? How do you take back the words that launched it? And should you, if civilisation as you know it might depend on winning at all costs?

The at all costs part worried me.

I wasn’t prepared for that, hadn’t anticipated it. I’d done what I thought was right, when I’d told the authorities what Grogan Ltd had done, harvesting brains to plug into their organic–computer operating systems. I didn’t realise they’d go after the victims, the brains, as well. Treat them like vermin, develop a virus to eliminate them.

You know the expression: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In that case, I was well on my way there. I’d handed over everything they needed to justify their plan. And now all I could do was watch it unfold.

Blackness surrounded me. I didn’t have to look at the digital clock by the bed to know what time it was. For the past couple weeks, I’d been waking up around three in the morning. Not exactly a brilliant time to wake up.

I hope Dragon’s okay.

I always woke up with that thought. The virus was almost ready. It would be launched globally in two days, in the name of international security. The Director of Internal Security, Lavack, would’ve launched it yesterday, if it were up to him. But government agencies needed time to secure their own systems. So time had been given and the clock ticked down. Two days left. If it worked, it would wipe out all of Grogan’s brain–computer systems. Including Dragon. Unless he stayed offline, stayed hidden. He would be safe then. Maybe.

I needed to warn him.

Every morning, I’d wake up with the urgency of that need wrapping around me in suffocating coils of panic. Even my breath sounded strangled to me. I had to let him know, order him if necessary, to stay away, stay hidden. But I couldn’t tell him. He had disappeared.

He’d visited every day, easily slipping through the online security systems of the facilities Mom and I had been locked up in. And then, about two weeks ago, he’d stopped coming. Just like that. I had no way to reach him. My cell phone, Internet access, basically my whole life had been confiscated the night I showed up on the mainland with my memory stick full of proof against Grogan Ltd.

Just until the trial, Lavack had promised us. You need to be completely invisible and that means off all communication grids. It’s for your own safety.

I’d rather take my chances.

But Lavack was right. Irritatingly, infuriatingly right. My mom and I were star witnesses against one of the most powerful companies in the world, a company that possessed a global monopoly on lab-grown organs for transplant patients. The company was worth more than some countries. I think it owned a few countries, come to think of it. And we were going to testify against Grogan’s Board and all the top executives as well as a few of its prominent scientists.

Our lives were in danger. So yes, I had to admit, the guy was right. That didn’t exactly endear him to me, with us being virtual prisoners and all. And now Dragon was missing.

I’d considered trying to break out, track him down. When I’d told Mom, she’d given me the look, even though she looked more worried than annoyed and said, Myranda Thalia Johansson.

Yup. That’s my real name. Try saying that five times real fast. Hence my nickname, made up of the first two letters of my first two names.

Myranda Thalia Johansson, she said. You listen up. Right. Now.

And then proceeded to lecture me: Dragon could take care of himself (Even though he doesn’t have a body? I asked and got no response); I needed to look after my own safety (which meant we stayed in our prison, I guessed). Yes, of course she worried about him, but she was way more worried about me and what I might do.

Plus, she continued, as much as we liked him and as human as he might seem to us, Dragon was already legally dead.

At which point I was told not to interrupt her with my eruption of protests and arguments.

And you are—by some miracle that may very well be the ultimate proof for the existence of guardian angels—still living and breathing, and I preferred if you stayed that way.

I guess she didn’t want to press her luck with the guardian angels or whatever had kept me alive so far, I guess.

What she didn’t say: she didn’t want to lose me too. One dead family member was enough.

I couldn’t add to the stress lining her face. She dealt with enough, like Lavack and his constant pressure to help make the virus. She’d been through too much. So I kept quiet after that. No more talk about escape.

I glanced at the digital clock. Yup. 3:04am. The previous scene gurgled through my exhausted brain for about four minutes, leaving me just as confused, angry and anxious as every other morning.

Now what should I do?

Not much at this time and in this place. There wasn’t even a games room to sneak off to. Nothing. I could be on the moon. Scratch that. The moon would probably have more options than here. I listened to the darkness. To my constricted breathing. To Mom’s soft snoring from the other side of the room. Our prison. From outside, water dripped away the seconds, pinging against a piece of metal. Too early for birds. Too early for anything or anyone except me and the water drop.

I shoved off the blanket and pushed random curls from my face. Oh yeah, add hair iron to the list of essential items I didn’t have. I’d been ironing my deranged hair for so long, I’d forgotten what it was like when it wasn’t straightened. But thanks to Mr. Paranoid Lavack and his refusal to let me make one lousy little shopping trip into the nearby town, I remembered now. In one word: dreadful. And with no iron or other specialised hair products, it became a disaster.

A week ago, I’d taken a pair of scissors to the mess—chopped off the long clumps of curly knots that resembled Medusa’s snake hair more than anything that should be on top of my head. Mom walked into the bathroom just as I about finished. She closed her eyes briefly, the lines on her face sharper in the bathroom’s fluorescent light, but mercifully, said nothing. Just took the scissors from me and neatened up the hacked-off ends.

Would Dragon recognise me?

I shook the question out of my head. It didn’t matter, either way.

I glanced towards my mom, huddled under her blanket, and wanted to wake her, hug her, thank her for everything. Instead, I dressed in the dark and wrapped myself in a long sweater coat. On my way out, I grabbed my small backpack out of habit. I didn’t actually need it. Nothing in it that could help me here. No phone and definitely no hair iron. Our door was no longer locked and I slipped out of the room, blinking against the overhead hall lights.

The first night we’d slept here, they’d locked us in. Mom threw a fit, threatened to derail their efforts to confine the threat (read: murder the brains). Normally, she’s super gentle and friendly and all, but our situation wasn’t anything approaching normal. And she gets pretty fierce when she’s angry. You don’t want to make her angry. Seriously. Don’t.

Lavack