Hellbender - Dana Cameron Page 0,66

the rest of the living quarters.

“They’re angry, huh? I don’t blame them.” If I’d heard voices blaring in my head all of a sudden, I’d be pissed off, too. Actually, it reminded me of the dragons and their sudden appearances, which had been incredibly disruptive.

“Some are. Some think it was some kind of hoax, maybe set up by the Order. Some think you’re showing off, pulling a stunt.” She hesitated.

“Yeah? Go ahead. It gets worse, so tell me.” I closed my eyes against the news like I was about to be hit.

“Yes. Some of the Family think they’ve just had a religious experience, with you at the focus of it.”

My eyes opened as my shoulders slumped. “Ah, shit.”

Claudia and I discussed some radical solutions to my sudden PR problem, but really, until we knew what had happened and how bad the fallout was, we had to just wait and see.

You can only get so much done pacing in a twenty-by-twenty room. I hadn’t left my room after the broadcast to the oracles—which I had to assume was the Administrator’s work.

The night was eaten up by putting together a basic fact sheet on what I knew—little as it was—about the Makers and the Administrator. I held a faint hope that someone else would be able to take that store of knowledge—observations and guesses, really—and find us a way to work with it.

So now, the Powers That Be—Senator Knight, Representative Nichols, Heck, and a few others—wanted some kind of proof about the Makers.

“Proof? More than what the oracles just heard?” I asked. “Well, if I can get Quarrel to show up, maybe he can tell you more. All I know is that the dragons seem to think the Makers made the Fangborn, and from what I can tell, they’re vastly powerful.”

“It would help. This is all a little . . .” Heck trailed off, shaking his head.

“Yeah.”

“Could they be allies?” Edward Knight asked. “So far they’re not offering war? You are still in the early stages of understanding each other, is that true?”

“Yes. But the fact that they can manipulate the most powerful creatures on earth is worrying to me,” I said.

I caught Representative Nichols glance and felt fear a mile deep. She’s wondering, “Will we have to destroy the Fangborn to protect us from the Makers?” I thought. I answered out loud. “Let me continue to talk with them. So far there’s been no impact on I-Day. The Administrator is only doing what he said. I can ask him to tone it down.”

Even I didn’t sound convincing to myself, I thought, as we adjourned.

The last thing I did before I went to sleep was hit the lab.

“Geoffrey?” I took my chair by the computer, the familiar smell of cardboard, dirt, and linoleum filling my nose.

“Yeah, Zoe?” He didn’t look up from the screen on the center workbench. He was still engaged in looking at the artifacts and analyzing them.

“I need to blow something up.”

That got his attention. Dr. Osborne’s head snapped up, his eyes locking on mine. He reached for his tea and found it, unerringly. “Oh yes?”

“I need to do it on command.”

“It seems you are already capable of that.”

“No, it’s always been . . . in self-defense,” I said. “Or in a state of high emotion. And it was never . . . against an inanimate object, a target. I need the ability to be available to me, all the time. Any ideas how I can do that?” I nodded to the screen. “Any way to make it permanent?”

“Do you want a detonation or a deflagration?”

When I said nothing, he asked, “Do you know what an explosion is?”

“Um, let’s say I don’t know anything apart from the boom.”

“Right.” He clapped his hands together, getting into lecturing mode. “An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner.” His eyes lit up with the words extreme manner. “What it looks like you’re doing when you blast something is moving energy from one place and transferring it rapidly to another. Where it doesn’t belong.”

“Okay. I need powerful and I need showy this time. Does that help?” There was a buzzing in my ears and a kind of static rolling before my eyes. I was really tired . . .

He nodded. “Sure, got it. So what you seem to be doing now . . .” He gestured to the screens, which brought up a configuration of artifacts I’d never seen before. “This is like software. You