Dragon's Ark Read online

  “You will never do this to me again for as long as you live,” Mama choked out as their arms slowly moved down together.

  “I will never do this to you again for as long as I live,” Kim whispered as she put her hands in her lap. Suddenly the sun was blocked. Her family, standing shoulder to shoulder in a wide circle, all grinning like loons, surrounded them. Her mom stared over Kim’s shoulder with her mouth half open. Kim turned around.

  Switching to English she said, “Mama, this is Mike.”

  Her entire family bellowed out his name, and then dragged him in to the party. The look on his face would’ve made the trip worth it all by itself. He’d learned everything he could about Greek families, but texts, pictures, and movies never prepared strangers for the real thing.

  The rest of the day went by in a blur of shouted reunions and waving hands. The weather was pleasant at first, but the temperature spiked as the day wore on. It could get very hot in the back yard, even in the shade. An old chair was still parked under a tree. Kim sat down and closed her eyes. She’d done it. She was here. She hadn’t slept well the night before for a bunch of reasons, and the chair was very comfortable.

  “Aunt Malinda told us we couldn’t touch you,” a young voice said, startling her out of her brief nap. One of a seemingly endless supply of young cousins now stood beside her. “Is that why you need the funny chairs?”

  Wide and high-backed, they had custom armrests with shields on the sides. Her dad designed them for her when she was a child. He’d been gone for so long now. “Yes, what my mom told you is true. It hurts very much when people touch me.”

  He cocked his head. “Why?”

  She thought back to a black hand, her hand, traced with strange, dark patterns as it blasted lightning into a world that could not exist.

  “Aunt Kim?”

  She cleared her throat and turned back to the little boy. “Nobody knows why I can’t be touched.”

  “Will you get better?”

  Admitting the truth still hurt. “No, I won’t get better.”

  “Can you play darts?”

  The little stinker had a motive behind this chat. “Yes, I can play darts. Do you need a partner?” He nodded and ran toward the sign-up sheets mounted on a back wall of the house.

  They won three times. Kim taught her cousin how to high-five without touching, which he thought was the coolest thing in the world.

  She jumped and spun around when Uncle Kostas came stomping up, laughing. Mike was on his arm, wobbling just a little.

  “Kim!” he shouted in heavily accented English. “Your boyfriend is most amusing!”

  The reality of their situation crashed in again. He wasn’t hers and never would be. It had gone so wrong and she was so helpless. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Uncle Kostas bawled out gales of laughter. “No, Kim, that is not what I am talking about. You know English better than me. What does this mean, hybrid AI?”

  Mike could be such a screw up. “You said you wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “It got too hard to keep straight. It doesn’t matter, Kim.” He shrugged. “Nobody believes me.”

  Her uncle laughed more. “This trelos says he didn’t have a body six months ago. His stories, they are wonderful!”

  Mike really had just been an entity in the realms six months ago, hidden and unknown to all but a very few. It took weeks of careful exploring to find a lawyer that’d talk about his legal status now that he had a body. He owned a very valuable realm, but they hadn’t worked out how to prove that yet.

  Uncle Kostas expected a reply, but all she wanted to do was shout at Mike about the ridiculous risks he thought nothing of taking. The call to dinner rescued him.

  Spencer sat next to three baskets of vegetables, a victim of her mother’s eternal quest to give away the garden’s produce. Tonya sat at the table across from Kim. It was no surprise to see she’d settled with a particularly choice example of one of her older cousins.

  “He’s gorgeous,” she mouthed at Kim after he’d gotten up to refresh their drinks. “My God!”

  Kim winked and nodded.

  “So, Mike,” Uncle Kostas shouted, “when will you turn our Kim into the honest woman?”

  Her mother shook her head. “I don’t think I approve of this idea. I did not come to America just to see my daughter…lower her expectations.”

  Even knowing it would happen eventually, the comment still surprised her. “Mother, I am not lowering my expectations.” They didn’t understand what was going on. Admitting they had broken up nearly choked her. “We’re not together like that.”

  Anymore.

  “For now,” her uncle scoffed, and then laughed at her. “Oh, I have seen the way you two look at each other. You watch out, Malinda. I think you will need to be bringing that wedding dress of yours out of storage before too long.”

  Mama switched to Greek. “Over my dead body will my daughter settle for the first unworthy—”

  “Mother, could you be a bigger stereotype? I am a grown woman, and who I choose—”

  Her uncle stood up. “Choose? Choose? I can’t believe either of you! This one,” he waved an arm at Mama, “flies away with an American, and now this one—”

  “Flies away?” Mama’s chair crashed backward as she stood. “The economy was in ashes, and the love of my life offers to bring us all here, and the way you remember him is—”

  “That is enough!”

  Yiayiá always knew how to make an entrance.

  The entire party zipped silent as grandma Maria stood. She switched to English. “Our Kim has returned to us, returned to us when we thought she was lost. Dead, even. For years I have been unable to speak to my granddaughter. Our own flesh and blood, our own family, vanished. She has returned. We will celebrate this. She has wonderful friends. We will celebrate them.” She lifted her wine glass high. “We will celebrate them!” The toast echoed through the back yard.

  Kim even missed the way her family could go from nearly pulling knives on each other to laughing until they cried. It was home. This was home, and she was here without fear, without a need to hide. She smiled at Mike, but he looked away again.

  Fix one part, ruin another. Par for the course.

  The party rolled on into the night. Kim dozed off in a corner of the yard, surrounded by a dozen old timers grousing about the Greece of twenty years ago.

  A familiar voice made her sit up and look around. Tonya repeated whatever it was she said, but Kim could only shake her head.

  Tonya snapped her fingers. “English, dear. You with me?”

  Right. It took a bit to switch language gears after listening to a different one for the past hour.

  “I have to go. Are you gonna be okay tonight?”

  “Pretty sure.” Kim groaned and stood up. “Have you seen Mike?”

  “He was with your uncle last time I saw him, but it’s been awhile.”

  Kim found him sitting alone, swirling his finger in a drink under a porch light on the back deck.

  He was leaving her.

  She wanted to talk but was desperately afraid of what he might say, that he might be glad to go.

  He should be glad to go.

  He’d stayed by her side in the hospital after she’d lost the fight against what Watchtell had done. He’d held off her mom, somehow knowing that she was the absolute last thing Kim needed. And he’d been right. It must’ve been like standing against a hurricane. No wonder Mama didn’t like him.

  Being here, surrounded by all this, finally allowed her to admit the truth. Kim sat down across from him and the words came out in a rush. “I’ve been a really nasty bitch to you these past six months, haven’t I?”

  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes too, Kim—”

  “No, Mike. You’ve tried too hard. You’ve tried too hard and I’ve taken advantage of it, every single time. I have been heartless and nasty to you, and I want to stop.” He’d left her, and she deserved it, but he was still here and that mea
nt there might be another chance. “I want to stop.”

  The edge of his sleeve brushed against her hand. “I want to help.”

  It was time to ask a question she didn’t want answered. “You didn’t rent an apartment, did you?”

  He shook his head and turned away. “No. It’s a hotel room.”

  It was what she deserved. “You’re going to leave. Not down the block, but far away.” Away from me.

  “Orlando, after Spencer goes home. Disney wants me to lead their realm division. I was going to tell you after he’d left.”

  “If I try…”

  No. Trying wouldn’t work. He was moving to Orlando, for God’s sake.

  “If I stop, will you stay?”

  Mike was still for a very long time. And he could be so very still, fading in a way that let him hide in plain sight. It was a no that she deserved.

  He nodded.

  It was such a fragile moment. Saying anything might be saying the wrong thing, but silence was just as bad. Kim settled on a simple truth. She had to start somewhere.

  “Mike? Tomorrow, when we leave here? I want you to come home. I want you to stay.”

  *

  Mama thought curtains turned rooms into caves, and Kim had been too tired to check them before she went to bed. Now the dawn light was so intense she could probably get asunburn. Kim checked the time. Late five in the morning was still five in the morning.

  She quietly padded her way toward the kitchen. The faint hiss of the air conditioner vents masked the sound of soft conversation until she was just a few feet from the doorway. She recognized Mike’s voice, and then her mother’s. Kim’s zombie-like need for coffee vanished.

  “No, I’m not telepathic,” he said, “and I can’t manipulate people. It’s strange how much my mind works like yours. You’d think I’d be different, but I’m not. Well, not in the ways you’d expect.”

  “And you have been walking among us for only four months?”

  “Six. It’s a heck of a story.”

  Kim smirked as he retold it. How he ended up in the body of a dead assassin, one who was literally moments away from killing her, sounded a lot neater now. Living it, especially the bit with the fire extinguisher, had been a different story.

  “But this is remarkable. A miracle! Why aren’t you in the newspapers?”

  “People don’t believe me. Especially now that I have this body. They either think it’s a joke or don’t understand what I’m saying. Last night was no different. Uncle Kostas took me around to everyone and they just kept shouting gia sas at me.”

  “It means to your health.” There was a long pause, and then Mama chuckled. “It’s just as well you’ve taken my advice, then.”

  Oh no. Whenever her mom advised anyone, it never went well.

  He blew out a breath. “I know, you’re right. She’s just too good for me. I’ll pack my things and—”

  They’d just started to patch things up. “Mother, how dare you!” Kim spun around the corner only to be met with two grins.

  They’d coordinated a trap. Kim thought by now she knew all of her mother’s moves. Wrong again. So much for Mama not liking him, which wasn’t a surprise either. Mike had never really met a stranger the entire time she’d known him. A smile, some funny conversation, and whoever it was had always been his friend. He was her exact opposite that way.

  Mama laughed as she slapped the table. Mike mouthed “buttons,” gesturing at his chest. Great. Of all the times to button a pajama top wrong.

  “Very funny.” She headed for the coffee pot. After some furious re-buttoning she sat down with them and assembled her coffee.

  “You never told me he was from China,” Mama said.

  Kim looked up at him. How much had he told her?

  He winked.

  After what that man did to her, and then Kim’s… transformation…and that final attack, the only way to escape from the agony was to die. And so in that moment she did. He’d somehow caught her as she fell. He said he’d learned how to do that from…

  “You told her about Taranathi?”

  “Remarkable,” Mama said. “Such a miraculous man, and raised by a Buddhist!”

  Mike shrugged. “It’s more complicated than that, Malinda. Taranathi was a mentor. He rescued me, taught me how to live, but he wasn’t my father. The monks were just good friends.”

  “Nonsense. And you haven’t seen them in how long?”

  “More than a decade. The Chinese government put up some sort of new firewall back then, and I haven’t seen them since.”

  Kim thought she already knew the rules. “You mean there is a place in realmspace you can’t reach?”

  “It’s called the Great Firewall for a reason. It’s not like any other sort of security I’ve ever found. I’ve split myself as far as I can, but I can’t push through it.”

  “Split yourself?” Malinda asked.

  This part Kim understood. Sort of. “That really is where he’s different. He can be in more than one place at once in the realms.” Early on, after she’d gotten out of the hospital, he had trouble keeping conversations straight. Sometimes he’d say funny things, nice things, smiling and laughing, and then she’d realize he wasn’t talking to her. It led to some epic fights.

  She boiled just thinking about it, but then Kim stopped and put her anger aside. It was a revelation, probably the very first time ever she didn’t let her temper roll over the whole conversation. Kim smiled at Mike, and this time he didn’t turn away.

  Mama had asked a question. “He can get into any realm, no matter how secure. Well, I thought it was any realm. What’s so different?”

  “It’s hard to explain. Maybe if I got behind it in China it would be different.”

  “There.” Malinda slapped the table again. “That’s what you should do next.” She looked at them both. “Oh, I know what’s going on with you two.”

  For the first time, Kim allowed herself the slightest hope people might be right, that she and Mike really might have a future.

  Mama got up to refresh her mug. “Your family lives in a monastery in China? Yes? You must go to the monastery in China. Nothing is more important than family. Nothing.”

  He glanced at Kim, but it had to be his call.

  “Well, I have been negotiating with some big Chinese realmspace companies. They’ve wanted to license Warhawk for a while now. I hadn’t thought about it much until recently.”

  His unique perspective on realmspace made him one of the most skilled realm designers in the world. Warhawk, a combat realm he’d designed in his spare time, was the gold standard for realism. Discreet inquiries to lawyers—always hypothetical—all said the same thing: the more deals he made as a real person, the firmer his legal position as owner would become.

  He nodded once. “I guess after the tournament we can start planning a trip.”

  Kim almost dropped her mug. “Oh my God, I completely forgot.” She leaped up and headed back to her bedroom. She had to report to the team’s access hall by ten.

  Her mother called back, “What tournament?”

  Kim skidded to a stop. “The next step of my rehabilitation, Mama. I’m competing in a realm tournament. The Cup is over but the World Championships are here. I don’t have to hide this time. I’m going to win.”

  To Mike she said, “And after I do, I think we’re going to China.”

  Chapter 3: Fang Hua

  Chengdu, China

  She waited in realmspace for Sergeant Pei to introduce her. It was only the second time Father had trusted her to organize an entire police operation, so it was important that this was more successful than all of her previous assignments. Fang Hua had proper holo projectors delivered directly from Beijing to make sure of it. That was a good call, because the precinct had none. They needed to think of her as a professional cop remoting in from a distant location, and that meant a high-quality projected image.

  “Officers,” Sergeant Pei began. “The terrorist mob Strength of Nin
e is going to attack again. Tonight.” A map of the city was projected next to the sergeant. Red spots marking earlier public defacements popped to life, each an affront to order. “Detective Zhang Fang Hua has found conclusive evidence of the next series of targets. Ms. Zhang, if you would?”

  Fang Hua manifested her hologram on the opposite side of the map, then straightened her uniform. “The troublemakers plan on striking in nine places, simultaneously.” Blue dots appeared over the targets. “There will be tactical teams deployed to each site.”

  “Why do we need some incompetent bitch to tell us what to do?” Detective Chen whispered to the man sitting next to him.

  The problem with having ears everywhere was hearing everything, especially the way the laughter rippled away from Detective Chen. There could be no questioning of her authority on this mission. Fang Hua continued the briefing and split some of her threads away.

  “You think I’m a bitch?” she asked him on a private channel.

  To the room she said, “Our units will start here, here, and here.” She set green markers for their starting positions.

  “You don’t know bitch.” Other threads of her consciousness raced through his private identity records. “Because now you’re my bitch.”

  To the room, “Strength of Nine hasn’t been known to be violent, not yet anyway.”

  “And when Big Circles finds out you’ve been feeding information to the Pony Triad? Well, look at that, they already have!”

  Her briefing crashed to a stop when Detective Chen jumped to his feet. Fang Hua asked out loud, “Is there anything wrong, detective?”

  He made a few strangled noises. Cowards always lost their ability to speak in times like this. On his private channel she said, “Your family will be wards of the state, you arrogant idiot. I’ll shit on your name.”

  It was sad, really, but required. The records showed he was a political flunky, more interested in advancing his career than catching troublemakers.

  The useless excuse for a detective gasped, clutched at his chest frantically, then collapsed. The men around him, the ones who’d laughed, needed to take her seriously. They looked at her hologram, and then at the detective.