“I have reviewed your previous assignments, Agent Cobalt,” Roth began, dispensing with the pleasantries, which was a relief. I didn’t have the patience for useless small talk about my trip and what I thought of my accommodations. “Your trainer speaks highly of you and, from what I can discern, with good reason. We have not had such a young Basilisk do so well in a long time. When we asked your trainer who was best suited for this assignment, you were his top pick. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said flatly, dredging up a polite nod and a stiff smile. “I do what I can for the good of the organization.”
I almost gagged on the words. But it was what I was expected to say. I was not so crazy as to insult the organization itself; if I did, I probably wouldn’t walk out of this room alive.
Mr. Roth smiled, though his expression was cold. Turning to the giant screen on the far wall, he pressed a remote, and an image flickered to life: a satellite feed of a snowy wilderness in the middle of nowhere. A scattering of plain gray buildings sat within a fence at the edge of the mountains.
“I am certain you know what you are looking at,” Mr. Roth said, watching me across the table.
I gave a short nod. “It’s a St. George facility,” I replied, observing the image on the screen, committing the layout of the place to memory. “If I had to guess, one of their northern chapterhouses.”
“Yes,” Mr. Roth agreed. “A brand-new Order chapterhouse, in fact. We discovered this base last week and have been monitoring it heavily ever since. As their security system isn’t online yet, we have decided this is a perfect opportunity to strike. Do you see this building, Agent Cobalt?” A red circle appeared on the screen, around one of the identical gray buildings in the center of the compound. “That is their data center. And your target.” Roth’s voice remained matter-of-fact, as if he’d just announced the time of the next conference call. “We need you to infiltrate their base, find the main computer and download a sensitive file from their network. After that, destroy the building so that no traces of us, or the information theft, can be found.”
I kept my expression cool, but inside, my stomach dropped. I’d received dangerous assignments before, but this? Sneak into a St. George base? Break into a chapterhouse swarming with enemy soldiers? “What will I be looking for?” I asked. “I have some computer skills, but I’m no hacker. Even in a new base, their files are sure to be well protected, or at the very least encrypted.”
Mr. Roth smiled. His cold gaze shifted to the person sitting across from me, and the human looked up from his laptop.
His eyes were sullen. As if sitting in a room with three dragons not only failed to impress him, he resented being here in the first place.
“Right. Hang on a moment.” Somehow, his English accent didn’t surprise me. I watched as the kid reached around his laptop, yanked something free, then slid it to me over the table.
I picked it up: a simple black USB drive rested between my fingers. Puzzled, I looked back at the human and raised an eyebrow.
“What is this?”
“A program that will let me hack into their system undetected, find the data we’re looking for and download the correct file to Talon’s network,” the kid answered, not meeting my gaze. “Take back the drive, and the theft will be untraceable. They won’t be able to follow it back to us. So don’t worry about the technical stuff. I’ve got it covered. All you have to do is plug it in. You can do that, can’t you, mate?”
Ignoring the challenge in the human’s voice, I nodded, slipping the drive into a pocket. I wanted to ask what the data was for, what was so important that I was crossing enemy lines. But I understood that everything was on a need-to-know basis, and if Roth thought the information was important, he would tell me. If not, then he wouldn’t answer the question regardless. I had my mission; I didn’t need to know the whys.
I was, however, even more curious about the human across from me. He obviously knew what we were; Roth was making no attempt to hide it. Talon employed some of the brightest and most talented humans from around the globe, luring them with promises of wealth, power, security, whatever they desired. But most of Talon’s human workforce had no idea who—or what—their employers actually were. They did their jobs, went home to their families and returned the next morning, completely unaware that the company they worked for was anything but normal. Only a few mortals were privileged with the truth, those whose silence had been bought with money, threats or blackmail. There were a few humans in Talon who were slavishly loyal to the organization, who truly believed dragons were the superior race and were proud to work for them. But every dragon knew that humans, as a whole, were gullible, weak and easily swayed. To bring one into the know, to reveal our true nature, was a massive risk and something the organization avoided unless there was a solid, undeniable reason the human would not betray us to the outside world.
So, what was this human’s reason? I wondered. Why did he seem nearly as angry and resentful as me?
“When you are finished transferring the file,” Roth continued as the kid dropped his gaze and went back to staring at his computer, “find the data storage center and destroy it. This will cripple their network and blind this particular base. They will be unable to recover quickly, making retaliation against us nearly impossible. But there is another reason we are sending you, agent.”
He paused, and his gaze flicked to my trainer, who grunted and sat up in his chair before turning to me.
“The other reason,” the old Basilisk said with one of his faint, evil smiles, “is to test what we hope will be a fun new toy for our side. So you’re going to be a bit of a guinea pig for this assignment. We have something that we’ve been working on, and we believe it’s nearly ready for use in the field. Congratulations, agent, you get to take it for its trial run.”
I suppressed a wince. A hatchling or rookie agent might’ve been excited for this news, willing and eager to test out something new. I was not. I knew what kind of “toy” I’d be working with, and frankly, it scared the crap out of me. Talon had always been on the cutting edge of science and technology, knowing that keeping ahead of the times was not only profitable, it was essential for our survival. As a race, we had survived because we had evolved, and knowledge was power. Talon hoarded knowledge like they did wealth, turning everything into profit for the organization. Not only did they fund countless research centers, they had their own laboratories, where the most brilliant minds the organization could find worked tirelessly, uncovering secrets, pushing boundaries, experimenting with things best left alone.