Obsidian Embers Read online

  At the same time, the world became an ever-more dangerous place. The different nations crowded and threatened each other in ways that were just as competitive and vicious as when the various dragon types fought each other.

  Finally, in an effort to keep the peace before some nations went too far, the decision was made to allow the three Fleets of dragons to show themselves and demonstrate to the world what could be done to anyone who threatened serious harm to others of the world.

  The Sapphire Fleet was sent out over the Americas.

  The Obsidian Fleet went out over the Pacific Ring of Fire and the nearby nations.

  The Diamond Fleet went out over Africa and Asia.

  Once there, all three Fleets gave a terrifying demonstration of how quickly they could sneak in and out undetected, and of how they could carry explosive weapons to be dropped on command, and of how they could breathe fireballs of their own. There was no need to refuel or reload them. All a dragon had to do was find animals or fish to eat as fuel to keep flying forever, and seawater to drink to turn into flying flamethrowers.

  They were, it seemed, the perfect weapons.

  After the great worldwide demonstration, when all of the Fleet Dragons returned as commanded to do by their implants, Olivia heard that the creatures were spending a lot of time sleeping. Then, whispers from the technicians and controllers, like Zach, and messages sent over the network, began to rumor that the dragons were . . . changing.

  Some of the techs who cared for the dragons, who watched them in their caves and saw to it that they had fresh water and clean floors and a comfortably cool temperature inside, seemed to think that, while curled up and sleeping soundly, the creatures sometimes looked more human. And smaller. Their scales seemed to blend into smooth skin, and their faces looked more humanoid and less reptilian.

  Olivia had long thought the same about The Obsidian, but was prepared to believe that it was merely due to her years of watching and studying him so closely. He was her closest companion in a lonely world, so perhaps it was only natural that she start to think of him as humanoid at times.

  Often she would watch The Obsidian and also feel convinced that he was looking more and more human in the face, and in the smooth, clawed fingers at the ends of his front legs. She had stared at him in the shadowy cave for so long that it was hard to say what might be real and what was just her own wishful thinking.

  It was entirely possible that the techs, also leading lives of great isolation in a wholly artificial world, imagined they saw the same thing in the Fleet Dragons.

  But then, late one afternoon, came the event that none of them could deny.

  During a training flight, one of the Sapphire clones – one of the Birdies – got off course, and the creature ended up getting caught in a heavy snowstorm far out to sea.

  With the help of its controller, who eventually got it headed back in the right direction, the dragon was able to battle its way out. But by the time it was back over land, the Birdie was exhausted and far too cold. Unlike other reptiles, these dragons had been given the warm blood of their human side so that they could continue to function even in frigid temperatures.

  But they still had their limits, and finally the exhausted Birdie had fallen hard to earth. By the time the teams could get out to recover it, they did not find a Sapphire dragon at all. Instead, they found the body of a man – a very dead man.

  Olivia found it even harder to leave The Obsidian now that she knew – now that they all knew – what was happening. She would spend hours watching him until she found herself falling asleep while sitting on the cold stone floor in front of his cave. Yet there was no definite sign of any change in form with any of the Three Jewels, no matter how hard she strained to look for it.

  One night, The Obsidian curled up far at the back of the cave and went on sleeping so soundly that it was difficult to tell where he ended and the rocks of the cave began. Olivia finally gave up and decided to go and get some sleep herself. If he really was going to start to shapeshift, as she suspected, she had better rest while she could.

  It seemed to Olivia that she'd only just closed her eyes when an emergency alarm jolted her awake. What – ! Fire? Attack? What?!

  Olivia leaped up out of the bed, threw her clothes back on, and raced back towards the Cavern. She arrived at about the same time as her colleagues Dr. Winborne and Dr. Morgan, each looking as confused as her. Olivia slowly walked to the thick transparent window where The Obsidian had been, but was not any longer . . .

  Standing there was only a man, a very naked man.

  All was silent inside the Cavern. The technicians all stood at their computer stations in the center, just staring at the caves and at the men who stood in the center of each one.

  Olivia was aware that The Sapphire and The Diamond had shifted into human form, too; but Olivia only had eyes for The Obsidian as she slowly placed her hand on the transparent barrier.

  She had not known what man had provided the human DNA to create The Obsidian. That was among the most closely guarded of secrets here, and some said all records of the donors had been destroyed. But to Olivia, it did not matter now anyway.

  Inside The Obsidian's cave stood a tall, gorgeous man. His head was lowered, and his eyes seemed to be closed. His skin was a darker complexion, with long, flowing black hair. He was naked too of course, and had an incredibly muscular physique – especially his arms and shoulders, no doubt from the flying that he did in his other form. Olivia felt herself blushing a little as her gaze slid over his perfectly-formed manhood. He was like some sort of statue, without any sort of blemish that she could see. She wanted to study him more, up close.

  Then, as she stood there with her hand pressed against the window, the man slowly raised his head and opened his eyes – his very large eyes, so dark in color that they nearly looked black.

  "Hello, Olivia," he said softly, looking right at her.

  4

  The world went dark and she nearly fell over. She would have fallen if Zach hadn't steadied her. "I can hear him," she said, even as she thought it strange that this was the first thing she would think of.

  "Sound system in the roof," Zach said, carefully letting go of her shoulders as she found her balance again.

  "How – how did I not know about that?"

  "It was never turned on before. We wanted to keep things quiet for them, remember?"

  Immediately Olivia reached for the floor door at the side of the window. "No! No," said Zach. "You can't get in there anyway. It's sealed. It takes more than one person to get a door open if it leads to the dragons, remember?"

  She looked upward, towards the top of The Obsidian's cave.

  "And that includes the roof doors," Zach said. He again took her gently by the shoulders. "Come away from here, Olivia. Come away. You can still monitor–" "No!" Olivia pushed him away and leaned against the window again, seeing nothing but The Obsidian in his human form. She wanted nothing more than to speak with him, and especially face him, at last, with no barriers of any kind between them. But this was the best she could do for now.

  Taking a deep breath, Olivia drank in the sight of The Obsidian as a man. "You're so beautiful," she said, before she even realized what she had said.

  He smiled, and his teeth were as white as the snow outside against the night sky. "So are you, Olivia."

  "I'm – I'm so happy to be able to talk to you at last," she whispered. "I never hoped to – I mean, I did hope, but didn't know – "

  "Yes. You were right, all of you. We can change. Right now, it happens in times of duress, but I think that soon we will be able to change at will. A little practice, as with anything else." Again, he flashed that brilliant smile, and Olivia felt her knees go weak again. But this time, instead of letting Zach steady her, she just leaned harder against the transparent wall, as though she might somehow slide through it and find herself one step closer to The Obsidian.

  "Change at will," she breathed. "This was something we neve
r expected. How wonderful."

  "Indeed." He took a few steps towards her, and as he got closer to the barrier Olivia saw that his skin actually looked as though it had some trace of the obsidian glass, for it was nearly as smooth and shining as the scales of the dragons.

  "Obsidian," she began, "please tell me – "

  "Kushanu," he said, stopping a few paces from the window.

  "What – what did you say?" Olivia truly had not understood him.

  "That is my name. I have a name. In life, as a man, the name I used was Kushanu."

  "Ku-sha-nu," she repeated, carefully pronouncing it.

  She could not help but smile. "It suits you." Another deep breath. "What else do you recall, Kushanu? What do you recall of your former life?"

  He stood there, tall and gleaming, and gave her a slow smile. "I am sure you mean my life as a man, Olivia. It is all the same life for me, though."

  She nodded, and he turned away and paced slowly across the cave. Immediately she followed along and stayed right with him at the window.

  "In life, in human life, I was – a footsoldier," Kushanu said, stopping once again. "I was a member of the United States Army." To her surprise, he grinned. "Even there, my weapon was fire. The explosives. I worked with bombs. Perhaps that was why I was chosen for this – or at least, why some trace of me was chosen.

  "I believe that I am dead. I remember trying to disarm a weapon before it could destroy a building – a building where men and women lived and worked. There was a great light. I remember nothing more."

  Olivia closed her eyes. "Then you were a hero, Kushanu. You were brave, and you were strong, and you tried to save others."

  Kushanu looked at her again. "Being human is not all I remember though. I do recall the life of a small white dragon – the ones you rather disparagingly call 'Lizards' – here in the brilliant cold and very long nights of this place, this land called Antarctica.

  "Of that life, I remember taking very long flights to look for food – for the birds and fish we needed to live.”

  Olivia nodded. The Lizards were hardly a quarter of the size of the Fleet Dragons and their hides were a plain leathery white, with no gleaming armor like the great cloned dragons.

  "I remember those hunting excursions," said Kushanu, gazing off into the distance once more. "I remember the taste of blood, and of seawater. Those things kept us alive. I crave them now."

  She felt a little taken aback. "You are allowed to hunt, when you fly," she said. "It is just the seawater that you can't – I mean, we can't allow – "

  "Oh, yes. I know. You can't have us throwing fireballs here in this cave, or even outside. So no seawater for us. For the Jewels. But I have a feeling that may change."

  Where the Fleet Dragons were controlled with chips implanted in their spines, that technology hadn’t been perfected until after the Jewels were fully-grown – and by then, it had been considered too risky to attempt the implants on them. Instead, they had always been controlled by those large, bulky collars.

  Suddenly, Olivia realized The Obsidian's collar lay neglected on the floor near the center of the cave, now far too large to fit him. Olivia knew that it would not rest on his neck – or the necks of any of the great Jewel dragons – ever again.

  Though she had eyes only for The Obsidian – for Kushanu – Olivia had to spend some time at the enormous cave of the Fleet Dragons, for they too had begun to shift into human form.

  In the cave of the Glassies – the clones of The Obsidian – some of the thirty-two dragons remained tightly curled up near the back of the cave. Looking like shining glass rocks; but perhaps ten of them stood talking to each other, and to the technicians on the other side of the window, as men.

  Men who looked just like Kushanu.

  Frantic discussions followed among those who controlled the base and the great experiment of creating the dragons. For now, they were faced not with animals to be controlled but with very human creatures who surely deserved to be treated as such.

  There were arguments about what had triggered the creatures to begin shapeshifting now, but eventually it was agreed that it must have been the Great Demonstration.

  It had been determined that the Lizards would sometimes adjust their shape in order to either camouflage themselves, or to take the form of a creature better adapted to surviving in whatever environment they found themselves. It was always about survival, and now life had just become even more dangerous for the dragons.

  They had been created as weapons. But now that the world knew about them, they were targets as well. The ability to hide themselves by appearing as humans would be the perfect form of disguise.

  It was also the one thing no one had expected with the cloned recombinant dragons. And now that it was clear that the Fleet Dragons were not simple animals to be exploited as the people of this world saw fit. There were fierce arguments between those who insisted they should be used as the weapons they were created to be, and those who insisted they should be released as the sentient, reasoning humans that they were.

  No one could imagine what would happen if a consensus could not be reached.

  5

  But then, one night in late spring, all those decisions no longer mattered.

  Once again, anyone asleep was jolted awake by the loudest alarm Olivia had ever heard. This was far worse than the first time when the Jewels had shifted into their human forms. This must be a fire out of control or a breach in the walls or a loss of life support for their underground world. She could not imagine how bad it could be for this kind of alarm and this kind of panic, and she ran with everyone else to the Cavern.

  The techs in the Cavern all frantically tried to watch their screens and communicate with the outside world. "What is it? What's happened?" cried Olivia. But no one answered as they tried to get their cell phones to work and tried to get information from their computers.

  Almost more terrifying was the way that The Obsidian, The Sapphire, and The Diamond, all in dragon form, roared and cried out and beat their wings and tried to fly up to the roof doors in their caves. Olivia was just about to run to The Obsidian when someone grabbed her arm.

  "Olivia! No. Come with me!"

  It was Zach, keeping a tight hold on her and dragging her away from the caves back towards one of the workstations. "Look. Look! You don't understand what's happened!"

  "You're damned right I don't!" she cried. "What's got all of the Jewels so upset?"

  "They're not the only ones," Zach muttered, working fast at his keyboard. Finally he got the screen he wanted. "Here. Look. And you'd better look fast. It might be the last information from the outside world that we ever see."

  Gradually, in the hours that followed, the truth began to emerge. While the nations of the Earth had threatened and battled each other, the long-dreaded asteroid had come out from the direction of the sun and slammed into the northernmost pole of the planet. There was no warning, but even if there had been – what good would it have done, except to promote a worldwide panic causing even more misery at the end? It was too large to be dealt with.

  The computer screens remained almost entirely blank to anything that did not come from their own base. There was nothing from the satellites in the sky or the buoys out in the sea.

  "Of course, we'll all be safe here at this base for a good long time," said Zach, sitting down at his workstation to try to raise the outside world yet again. "I'm betting we're a lot better off than most people are right now. When you're underground at the bottom of the world, you're virtually impossible to reach."

  Olivia nodded, folding her arms across her chest as she stood behind Zach's chair and glanced back at The Obsidian's cave. He had remained in dragon form since the asteroid strike, as had the other two Jewels, and right now was again curled up at the back of his cave.

  "I'm sure you're right," she said to Zach. "We can shelter here indefinitely. We've got food and supplies enough for years. The dragons could even hunt meat and fish for us i
f we asked them to."

  "That's right. Good thinking," he said. "We're sheltered, defended, and unreachable. We'll be safe here for a long time."

  "Yes," she whispered. "But then what?"

  By the following day, at least one decision had been made.

  The system used to keep the Fleet Dragons under control was starting to fail. It relied in large part on GPS, and that had vanished with the satellites. And in any case, all of the base's power and resources had to be directed towards allowing the humans to survive.

  Since the Dragons could no longer be controlled, there was no choice but to let them go . . . and hope they would find isolated places where they could live and hunt and fly as they wished.

  The Lizards would stay in their caves in the Antarctic, the same caves where they had lived for untold thousands of years. Though the geneticists and techs hardly talked about it, they knew it was possible that the entirely male Dragon Fleet might eventually want some of the fertile female Lizards as mates.

  Yet the Dragons could no longer be considered animals, as the Lizards were. The Dragons were quite literally as human as they were reptile, and the people left at the base could only imagine what the Dragons' future might be. It seemed quite unlikely that they would allow their kind to die out after one generation.

  Olivia, along with Winborne and Morgan, watched as the Three Jewels were released one at a time. Each of them had his own clones released from the Fleet first, so that they'd be waiting for him. The other two women looked stricken, as though they were sure they'd never see their dragon again; but Olivia kept her hopes high.

  Maybe this was not the end. Maybe this was just the beginning. For some reason, she was convinced that The Obsidian – Kushanu – would not leave her behind.