Smoked - Mari Mancusi Page 0,8
nod, swallowing the bile that had risen to her throat. She didn’t want Connor’s worry for her to interfere with the mission. But as he turned away from her to concentrate on the door lock, she was forced to grab on to a nearby counter for support.
He was right, she tried to tell herself. This one death could lead to millions of lives saved. Millions of innocent lives. Emmy’s life.
And yet—her stomach roiled again—could there have been another way? From the very start, from that first day Emmy’s egg had arrived at the museum, there had been so much death. So much pain and suffering—so many on both sides lost. Was this scientist an evil man who deserved death? Or just an innocent researcher caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was he out to destroy the world? Or just put food on the table for his wife and kids?
She stifled a sob, remembering Connor’s repeated mantra from the very beginning. Sacrifice one to save the world. But how much more would have to be sacrificed—how much more blood would have to be spilled—before this world would actually be saved?
Connor rose from inspecting the man’s pockets. “No key,” he said.
“They use fingerprint locks down here,” Scarlet squeaked out in a terrified voice. She’d retreated to the corner of the room, and Trinity found she couldn’t meet her eyes. “You’ll have to cut off his thumb.”
The nausea rose to Trinity’s throat again. She tried to tell herself he was already dead—he didn’t need thumbs anymore anyway—but when Connor knelt down to work, she found she couldn’t watch the operation. Instead, she walked over to the door, peering through the window, trying to regulate her breathing.
The room inside was eerily familiar. Cages stacked from floor to ceiling, filled with mostly primates and pigs. Trinity couldn’t help but think back to the vision she’d been shown by Caleb long ago, before Emmy had hatched from her shell—of her dragon, locked in a government cage. This government cage, she realized, the revulsion rising again. The very same place as the first time around.
Had they managed to change any history at all?
She thought about mentioning this little déjà vu to Connor, then bit her tongue instead. He didn’t need any more reminders that this rescue mission was all too similar to the last one. Instead, she squinted into the room, focusing on the cage in the very back.
The giant cage. With a giant dragon inside of it.
She gasped. Was that really Emmy? The last time she’d seen her, Emmy had been the size of a Labrador retriever. Now she was the size of an elephant. In fact, the cage she was in could barely contain her massive girth.
“Emmy?” she whispered. “Is that really you?”
“There,” Connor announced, rising to his feet. He walked over to the door and pressed the severed digit against the sensor. A moment later, the LED light above the panel blinked green, followed by a loud click as the door unlocked.
Trinity didn’t wait for a second invitation. She dove through the door, running toward Emmy as fast as she could—without bothering to check whether there was any more security inside. Her ears caught the cries of the room’s other animal occupants, whooping and wailing and rattling their cages in protest of the strangers’ presence, but she tuned them all out. At that very moment, nothing else in the world mattered but the dragon in front of her.
When she reached Emmy, her legs gave out from under her, and she dropped to her knees, unable this time to stop the vomit from rising to her throat as she looked at her dragon.
At what remained of her dragon.
Emmy. Beautiful Emmy—the gentlest, sweetest, kindest creature to ever live—now lay listlessly in her cage, her once brilliant-emerald flanks faded to a dull gray, checkerboarded with ugly scars and pus-filled sores. One wing hung oddly at her side, as if it had been broken and not set correctly. And her shorn claws were caked with sinew and blood.
But it was her eyes that were the most troubling. Those beautiful blue eyes that set Emmy apart from the rest of her kind, eyes that had once sparkled like so many sapphires. Now they were colorless, translucent, vacant. Empty eyes drained of all spark and life.
Suddenly Trinity had the urge to go kill that scientist all over again.
“Emmy!” she cried, hating the fact that she was forced to speak out loud in order for the dragon to