I was three years old the first time the scientists dropped me into the tank as punishment. I was so young, my memories could have been constructed.
Except they weren’t. I came back to the lab when I was a teenager, and I found the videos. They recorded everything.
The first time they dropped me in, I was delighted. Water was my element, and I loved the feeling of breathing through my gills. I had been watching the jellyfish through the glass for some time. They were so pretty. So, when I finally could touch them, I did. But the pain—oh, the pain—is burned into my memory. They were some of the deadliest jellyfish in the world. I think the scientists had hoped that I would die. They all hated me. But even as a toddler, my mutations made me extremely resilient. I convulsed at the bottom of the tank for hours, but I lived.
It became their favorite pastime between experiments. Drop the little monster in the tank to have a few hours of peace and quiet.
“A nightmare?” asks Jude in the dark.
I find him watching me. His face is illuminated by the faint light coming from theFirefly’s control panel.
“Yes.”
I don’t know why I’m even answering.
“Good. I hope it keeps you awake all night,” he says before closing his eyes again.
His hatred is strangely casual and familiar, as if it’s something he’s used to. Something he has tamed. Mine has always been a wild thing.
Even my nightmares can’t stop me from falling into a slumber so similar to a coma.
Fyfe’s voice pulls me out of restless sleep a few hours later.
“Unidentified aircraft incoming.”
The sun is rising, and the sky is turning three shades of orange.
“Fuck…” says Jude. “It’s not an aircraft. Dumdumb, turn off all the lights. We need to go dark.” He’s craning his neck to watch the sky.
The AI obeys immediately, and theFireflyturns off entirely. With the morning light, I can see that we landed in the middle of a rocky formation. It hides the aircraft from prying eyes coming from the wasteland, but not the ones in the sky. And it’s from the sky that the threat is coming. An old god is flying toward us.
Did the dragon follow us all the way here?
We wait, barely allowing ourselves to breathe, as the giant creature gets closer. Will they notice the slick aircraft among the rocks?
His body is long. It undulates in the sky, like a snake in water. Two large wings carry him swiftly over the wastelands. As he flies above us, I notice the red underbelly. He flies past us in a great swishing noise. In a matter of seconds, he has flown away from us.
“Fuck…” Jude says.
“Was that Quetzalcoatl?” I ask.
What is the feathered serpent from Central Mexico doing so far north?
Jude nods. “He’s going north. Maybe the Amazon forest is burning again, and he’s looking to relocate.”
That’s not a comforting thought. We have enough old gods in North America as it is.
While I wonder how the hell I survived the night, Jude rummages through the back of theFirefly. Soon, the smell of coffee and food wafts over me. This food was meant for me, but now it feeds my captor.
At some point, he comes back to the cockpit and drops a plastic plate on my lap. There is some kind of canned meat and vegetables on it. He places a fork in my palm and unties the rope. I barely have the strength to lift my head, much less my hands.
“Eat,” he says.
“Why?” I ask.
What’s the fucking point of feeding me if it’s to kill me as soon as we reach the Traveling Market?
“Because you need to stay alive long enough to let me reach the hacker. I don’t know how far the market is or how long it’ll take us to find it.”
