The Dragon Factory

He had learned toolmaking by the time he was ten and had even assisted Otto in making surgical instruments for Alpha. It wasn’t something the boy enjoyed, but then again there was almost nothing he enjoyed. Toolmaking had been a thing to learn, and Eighty-two never passed up an opportunity to learn something. He believed that his willingness-perhaps his eagerness-to learn was one of the reasons Alpha hadn’t let Otto kill him.

Alpha had hopes for him. Eighty-two knew that much, although he didn’t know what those hopes were or why Alpha held on to them with such aggression. It wasn’t out of love; the boy knew that much from long experience. There were a lot of other boys at the Deck, and Eighty-two had seen Alpha’s mood change from approval to disapproval of many of them over the years. Alpha’s disapproval was terrifying. Six weeks ago, Alpha had made Eighty-two and a dozen other boys sit and watch as One Thirteen was fed to Isis and Osiris. One Thirteen had not been clever enough at numbers, and his hand sometimes trembled when he held a scalpel. Alpha had been very disappointed in him.

Eighty-two used a pair of metal probes to undo the lock to his bedroom door, slipped out, and relocked the door. Then like a ghost he drifted along the empty corridors of the main house and along an enclosed walkway that led to the guardhouse. Twice he passed crosswalks that had cameras mounted on the wall, but he kept to his memorized timing schedule and no one saw him. To get to the House of Screams he had to pass through the guardhouse or go outside-and that wasn’t likely with the dogs out there. From his window Eighty-two had seen four of the dogs-two big tiger hounds and a pair of some new breed he didn’t know and didn’t want to know. No thanks.

The guardhouse smelled of beer, sweat, sex, unwashed clothes, and testosterone. Eighty-two would love to have doused the place in gasoline and tossed in a match. Or thought he would. It was easy to think of doing that because the guards made him so mad.

But could he ever do that? Take lives?

He knew he was expected to. He knew that soon he’d be asked to. Told to. Made to.

God.

He slipped inside and hid in the shadows by the door, watching the rows of beds, listening to the snores.

There was a sound to his left-soft and weak-and he edged that way. It wasn’t a male sound, not a guard sound. He thought he knew what it might be.

She was there, lying on the floor in a puddle of moonlight.

The female.

She was naked, knees drawn up to her chest, head half-buried under her arms. Her red hair was sweat soaked and tangled; her hunched back was crisscrossed with welts. Belt marks, with cuts here and there from the buckle. Eighty-two recognized them.

Carteret.

The female shivered despite the heat. The boy could smell urine and saw the glint of light on a small puddle. The female had wet herself. Either too afraid to move or too hurt, she just had wet herself. Eighty-two felt his heart sink. He knew that when Carteret woke up and saw the mess he would hurt her some more.

There was an expression Eighty-two heard in a couple of movies: “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” That’s what the female must have felt. What she must feel now. There was no way to be right, to act right, to do right, in the eyes of the guards. Even obedience was sometimes punished. It was all about the punishment, about the breaking of the will. Eighty-two knew this, and he knew why it was important to Otto and Alpha, why they encouraged the guards to do whatever they wanted to the New Men. Especially when other New Men were watching.

The female opened her eyes and looked at him. The naked clarity of her gaze rooted Eighty-two to the spot. Her eyes searched his face and he could tell that she recognized him. Then her gaze shifted away toward the cot where Carteret slept, lingered for a moment, and shifted back to the boy. Slowly, being careful of her injuries and not to make a sound, she raised her hand, extended a finger, and touched it to her cheek. Then she drew the finger across as if wiping away a tear. Eighty-two instantly recognized the gesture-it was what the two male New Men had done after they’d seen him wipe away a tear after the female had been beaten.

Eighty-two’s mouth went dry. He reached into his pocket and removed the black piece of volcanic rock and held it in a shaft of moonlight so she could see it. Her eyes flared wide in horror and she cringed, but Eighty-two shook his head. He closed his hand around the rock and mimicked throwing the stone at the sleeping Carteret. Eighty-two then pretended to be struck with a stone and reeled back in a pantomime of cause and effect.

The female’s eyes followed his actions and he was sure she understood what he meant, but she slowly shook her head. Fresh tears filled her eyes and she closed her lids and would not look at him again.

Eighty-two watched the female shiver and he wanted to do something, but he made himself move away. He felt ashamed for scaring her and furious that she would not fight for herself, not even when Carteret was helpless. There was a sound like cloth tearing behind Eighty-two’s eyes and the shadows dissolved into a fiery red around him as rage drove him suddenly to his feet and he raised the rock high above his head, muscles tensed to hurl it at the guard’s unprotected head.

Eighty-two had never wanted to kill anyone or anything before. Not truly.

Until now.

But he didn’t. His whole body trembled with the effort of not killing this man. It took more strength than Eighty-two thought he possessed to lower his arm.

Not yet, he told himself. Not yet.

There was other work to be done.

He forced himself to move away, but as he did he saw the female watch him. She didn’t plead with her stare; there was no flicker of hope that he would rescue her. All Eighty-two saw was a bleak, bottomless resignation that came close to breaking his heart.

Anger was a burning coal in his mind. He cut a final glance at Carteret’s sleeping, drunken, naked body sprawled on the bed, and Eighty-two forced himself to put the stone back in his pocket.

Not yet, he told himself again. But soon.

He made it all the way to the end of the guardhouse and undid the lock and slipped into the House of Screams. Eighty-two had a plan, but it was a dreadful risk. He had tried once by sending the hunt video.

There was one more thing he could try. But if he got caught…

He did not worry as much about his own skin-he never expected to grow up anyway. Most of the other boys were already dead by the time they were his age. He had to be careful so that he could do something about Carteret.

Eighty-two made it to the House of Screams and slipped inside, evading all of the cameras, and found what he was looking for. A laptop sitting on a technician’s desk. Eighty-two had seen it yesterday and hoped it would still be here.

Eighty-two opened it and hit the power button. It seemed to take a thousand years for the thing to boot up, but when it did there was a clear Internet connection. He licked his dry lips and tried not to hear the deafening pounding of his beating heart. He pulled up a browser page, typed in the address of Yahoo, logged into the same e-mail account, and set to work. He was halfway finished composing his note when he saw that the laptop had a built-in webcam.

For the first time in weeks, Eighty-two smiled.

Chapter Fifty-One

In flight

Sunday, August 29, 12:44 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 83 hours, 16 minutes E.S.T.

I’m a damaged person. I know that about myself, and it’s part of the reason that my best friend was also a shrink. We met because of Helen.

Helen had been my girlfriend when I was in junior high. One September afternoon a bunch of older teenagers who were high on whiskey and black bombers cornered us in a field near where we lived. The boys stomped me