Alex could hardly wrap her head around what Brath had just said. She couldn’t imagine leaving home as a baby. Even now, it wasn’t like she had put a lot of thought into moving out. She wasn’t planning on living with her folks forever, but there just didn’t seem to be a rush to be gone.
That was probably why Alex was so surprised at becoming a dragonrider. In some ways, she had always assumed she was going to be at home. The outside world hadn’t seemed to be an adventure she was going to have. Turned out, though, she was dead wrong.
Brath’s voice broke over the grinding of gears. “Gill, you gotta pop the clutch!” he shouted. “Pop the damn thing!”
Gill took a moment to respond. “Popping the clutch is the opposite of how you are supposed to change gears. That’s why the ATV keeps surging. You have to be restrained, Brath.”
Alex wondered if Jim knew how she felt about Gill. Brath obviously did. And so did Jollies. In all honesty, Gill probably knew as well. It was an uncomfortable feeling, as if Alex’s emotions were on display for the entire team to see.
It didn’t really matter, though, not in the long run. All Alex had to do was keep it from getting in the way of the mission. Even if internally, she felt like she was in a very bad nineties sitcom, that didn’t mean she had to act like it. Sure, she was a teenager, but she knew she could behave maturely.
That was when Alex decided she wasn’t going to worry about choosing anyone. Nothing was ever that simple. In every book she’d ever read, the hero would work themselves into a frenzy, trying to choose the love of their life.
Things were always messy in love triangles, at least in stories. Alex had never been in a real one before. She’d never had a crush on anyone, even. But she felt like she could manage the situation without it devolving into meme-level stupidity. Whatever happened, happened. It was that simple.
Alex felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her chest, and she breathed easily for the first time since she’d been at the bottom of the ATV with one of the boys she liked. This was doable. Besides, there was the whole Dark One and end-of-the-world thing to focus on.
Jollies squealed and broke into Alex’s train of thought. The pixie was zooming back and forth in the ATV’s cockpit. “There they are, there they are!” she chirped, pointing toward the canyon’s edge. “We gotta check it out.”
Barth gave Jollies a confused look. “How do you know they’re down there?” he asked. “They’d be down over the ridge.”
Jollies flashed bright red for a second before mellowing out. “It’s kinda like a sixth sense,” she explained. “I can pick up on people’s emotions, especially strong ones. When a lot of people are feeling similar things, it’s like a light bulb going on in my head.”
Jollies pointed toward the canyon and said, “There’s a lot of anxiety making its way through the canyon. They’re heading for the battlefield.”
Gill stared out his window, trying to get a glance at what might be happening down in the canyon. When he couldn’t see anything, he pulled up his HUD visor and looked through the cameras he had placed there. “They’ve still got a ways to go.”
Alex shouted from the bottom of the ATV, “How long, do you think?”
“Another twenty minutes to get there. Ten to figure out what’s going on. Then another twenty for them to get back.”
“Sweet, so we’ve got like an hour?”
“Not sweet. It’s going to take us some time to get the dragons ready. An hour is pushing it. You’ve never done maintenance before, have you? It’s time-consuming.”
Alex pushed down hard on the accelerator. “Then we’re going to need as much time as we can get!”
The ATV sped along the canyon, the team finally starting to get a good flow among themselves of switching gears and maintaining speed. Everyone was silent, worrying about their time constraints.
Alex wasn’t worried, though. She was trying to figure out ways they could reduce wasted time. “Hey, Gill!” she shouted. “Can you hack into their equipment system?”
Gill pulled up his visor again and started scrolling. “Of course. What do you need to know?”
“Start prepping their dragon stables. Link everyone up so they can start going through their options. That way, we won’t be sitting around trying to figure out what equipment we want to use. We can just take care of the dragons and get the hell out.”
Gill flashed Alex a thumbs-up and got to work. It wasn’t long before he had patched everyone into the stable’s system. Now the team was quiet because they were going over their options, which was a better use of their time than worrying.
Alex kept a constant speed so the rest of the team didn’t have to stress about their roles. Brath was the only one who had to focus, but as he had said, he didn’t need to look at the equipment options. Furi hated just about everything and only used fire anyway.
Alex still wasn’t sure how far Chine’s telepathy stretched, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. She reached out to Chine, thinking, Hey, if you can hear me, could you meet us outside? We kinda did something stupid and need to get going as soon as possible.
Much to Alex’s surprise, Chine’s voice came through loud and clear. Oh, you did? Why am I not surprised to hear that?
Well, they left us alone for so long. What was I supposed to do?
I take it we will be leaving soon?
Yeah. As soon as we can.
Chine laughed softly and replied, Good. None of us dragons quite likes it here. It lacks the splendor of the Nest. We’ll meet you outside.
It took about fifteen minutes for the team to finally arrive back at the facility. They took the ATV around to the back,
