Every day, every minute, I felt like I was missing something vital that’d bring everything crashing down on us.
I never wanted to be right.
We exited the building. The other Hazels and I leaped over the closed security gate while the dragon barged right through it, bowling over the port and gate and practically stampeding out into the night. Its wings snapped open, stretching to their full length, all gnarly brown-gray spines and leathery membrane between. The dragon tossed its head back. It breathed in deeply, its mouth half open.
“That cell,” it said upon catching our stares, “was very uncomfortable.”
“How long were you . . .?” I asked.
“Every second in a cell is a second too long.”
The dragon stretched its legs and extended and flexed its neck. Its scales caught the light of the moon and the surrounding fire. Emerald shimmered across its dry skin, like oil flecks only seen from the right angle and in the right light; a moment later, the scales were back to dull brown.
The dragon stamped its feet on the grass, shaking its muscles loose. “Very well. We should leave.”
“Leave for where? Can you take us home?” Rainbow asked.
“And what about those answers?” Red added. “We could really use them.” Her voice went higher in those final few words, and she swallowed the same way she and Rainbow had both been doing before, as though trying to force back the fear that’d crept in.
The grounds were busier than when I’d gone into the building. Agents and researchers were everywhere I turned. Flecks of light buzzed in the air, looking at first like burnt debris, then like bugs. In the distance, a group of agents surrounded a deep crater, while others were taking aim at a trio of small bipedal forms scampering over the grass.
“It’s out!” the nearest agent screamed. He scrambled away from us. His voice belled across the lawn: “Forget the trolls! The dragon’s out!”
The grounds exploded into action—some people fleeing, others bolting toward us without hesitation, already reaching for their weapons.
“Yes, yes, answers, just climb on, will you?” The dragon flattened itself to the ground. “We’re leaving.”
“On . . . your back?” Red asked, even as Rainbow stepped closer.
I didn’t move. “Leaving for where?” I said, echoing Rainbow’s words from before. “The rift is going wild. I can’t leave. I’d make it worse.”
The rift barn was only a few seconds’ run away. I could still find help and try to get it back under control.
The dragon narrowed its pitch-black eyes. “It won’t matter, Hazel.”
“I have to try. Director Facet—”
“It won’t matter,” the dragon said, “because the rift is no longer on the grounds.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“What?”
“That barn is empty. The rift leaped away.”
“Leaped away?” I repeated.
“It shook loose shortly before you arrived.”
I caught myself swallowing the way Rainbow and Red had been doing. “What do you mean, shook loose? Leaped? It never moved before!”
“Has any of this ever happened before?” the dragon inquired.
“How can you know—”
“Your world has birds that can sense electromagnetic fields, snakes that can detect infrared light, insects that can see in the ultraviolet, shrimp with twelve color receptors rather than humans’ paltry three—and you wonder whether a dragon could pick up on something as spectacularly unsubtle as a nearby interdimensional rift?”
“The dragon makes a compelling point,” Rainbow said.
Agents were approaching from multiple directions. I recognized Sanghani, Emerson, Washington. They were cautious and steady, looking more like extras from an action movie than the professionally patient agents I’d grown up with.
“Hazel Stanczak!” a voice shouted through a loudspeaker. “Um, all three of you! Move away from that dragon!”
Things clicked together. “Maybe that’s why the rift went out of control,” I told the dragon. “It moved out of my radius. I need to find it.”
The dragon shook its head. Its long neck made the movement strange and coiling. “The other way around. It did not go out of control because it moved; it moved because it went out of control. Your proximity stopped mattering for that same reason. The cause is complicated, but it comes down to this: Your sixteenth birthday arrived, which means you’re ready.”
“I’m ready?” I glanced sideways. The agents were creeping closer.
“Hazel, there are seven weapons currently trained on me. I have been shot before. It’s unpleasant.” The dragon stared me down. “Let’s take this conversation elsewhere.”
Rainbow made up her mind. Despite the agents’ protests, she climbed onto the dragon’s back. Her sneakers slid off thick, wrinkled skin as she tried to get a foothold.
“They locked me up.” Rainbow nodded at the agents. Next, she nodded at the dragon. “This one got me out. That’s enough for me.”
Red climbed on behind her.
“Hazel! Careful! That thing is dangerous!”
Agent Sanghani shouted. “Agent Sanghani?” I stepped forward, closer to the dragon and agent both. “The dragon hasn’t hurt us. It says it has answers. Can you put down the weapons? Maybe we can talk, all of us?”
“We can’t risk it. Go inside the barn. We’ll take care of this.”
I took another step. “Is it true what it told me? Is the rift gone?”
“I’m a she, if you don’t mind,” the dragon interjected. “Carry on.”
“Agent Sanghani?”
“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Hazel. We promise.”
My fists clenched, more from frustration than anger. I’d heard that for sixteen years straight. The MGA probably meant it, they were probably trying—but now, for the first time, I was offered an alternative.
“We have new data now, Hazel. We can make progress. But we need your help.”
“So the rift is gone.”
Sanghani’s hesitation said enough.
Sixteen years of safety and rules and smiles and careful experimentation. Sterile rooms on my lawn. Windowless vans in the school parking lot.
I wanted to stay. The MGA had the equipment and experience to deal with this. Mom would arrive any moment—she had to hear the commotion—and Dad had to be close. We’d put out the fires and clean up the grounds, and the brightest minds in the country would put their heads together. I’d follow their instructions; I’d know I was making the responsible choice. I’d help solve one of the world’s greatest mysteries.
But wasn’t that the point? Perhaps the rift no longer needed to be a mystery. This dragon had already hinted at more than I’d learned my entire life.
And if the rift was no longer here, did I still need to be?
I took another step closer. Rainbow extended a hand to pull me onto the dragon’s back. A strand of violet hair flopped into her eyes.
“I—I’m sorry,” I called at Sanghani, “but it says it has answers—”
“She,” the dragon said.