At Speculative Chic, we feature a lot of authors who share everything from their favorite things to the inspiration for their work. But why not also share their fiction? Welcome to Fiction Friday, where you’ll be able to sample the fiction of a variety of authors, including those who write at Speculative Chic! Today, we’re featuring Ty Drago, to celebrate his upcoming science-fiction young adult adventure novel, Dragons!
About the Book
Dragons (2020)
Written by: Ty Drago
Genre: Science Fiction YA
Publisher: eSpec Books
For one young man and others of his kind, their very existence is a long-held secret. But someone knows. Someone not above kidnapping to learn about the secret society of dragons, though they wouldn’t recognized the reality if he was walking beside them. To them, the answer is the end of the world. To Andy, it is staying alive. Ask yourself, are you Kind?
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Other Books by Ty Drago
Dragons Excerpt
ONE — Day 3
I wake up with a start, thinking three things in rapid succession.
First: This is a weird dream.
Second: Wait a sec. This doesn’t feel like a weird dream!
Third: Oh … furk.
My mom wouldn’t approve of that last one.
With a gasp, I sit up on the mattress.
I’m wearing an orange jumpsuit. On my feet are these little white gum-soled canvas pull-ons, without a doubt the ugliest shoes I’ve ever seen. Don’t ask me why, but it’s those pull-ons that tip my mind’s scale from “confused” to “scared.” But then I look around, and “scared” ratchets up to “terrified.”
I’m in some kind of futurey-looking cell.
It’s a cube, maybe twelve feet to a side. Glowing squares in the ceiling cast an artificial light that makes the flat gray walls look, if possible, even flatter and grayer. Every inch of every surface, ceiling and floor included, is made up of featureless metal tiles.
There’s no door, no windows, and no furniture. In fact, the only things in the room, besides the foam mattress, are a square pedestal sink and a somewhat shorter, square pedestal toilet. No soap, no towel. Both the sink and john look like they’re made of the same gray tiles as the walls.
I climb to my feet, half expecting something bad to happen when I do.
When nothing does, I try the sink faucets. The water’s cold. I cup some in my palms, and drink. It tastes clean but slightly “off,” almost as if it isn’t real water but more like someone’s idea of what water should be.
Very End-Of-2001-A-Space-Oddessey. The book, not the movie.
The toilet works — well, like a toilet. No answers there. With no towel in evidence, I dry my hands on my jumpsuit-ed legs.
Above the sink is a small mirror. Except it’s not a real mirror but just a rectangular grouping of those same square tiles. Only these are polished somehow, so that they give me back my own reflection.
More futurey weirdness.
My complexion’s sallow, the way I get when I spend too much time playing vid games. If this was home, my mom would be all over me with epithets like, “You’re not getting enough rest!” and “You’re not getting enough sun!” I once considered asking her if she wanted me to take long afternoon naps in the backyard.
But, as I recall, I kept that particular snark to myself.
Where are my folks?
Do they know I’m missing? They must, and are probably crazy with worry, even crazier than most parents would be in such circumstances, given — everything.
I’m suddenly, bizarrely glad that I wasn’t kidnapped out of my home, like the Lindbergh baby was. Otherwise, I might be standing here in this cell worrying that whoever took me also killed my parents.
Or worse.
“Okay,” I say aloud, trying not to sound scared. “What’s the deal?”
I don’t expect an answer.
Which is why I almost jump out of my skin when I get one.
“You’re in no danger.”
I don’t scream. Honestly, I don’t.
But I do whirl around, searching for the source of the voice. It sounded mechanical, disguised. That could be a good thing. If my captors don’t want me to be able to ID them, then maybe they don’t intend to murder me after they get the ransom.
You know, the ransom my folks can’t afford to pay.
Except a ransom motive is only the best-case scenario.
Questions tumble through my mind, lots of them. I pick the most obvious. “Where am I?”
The reply is both immediate and unhelpful. “Safe.”
“Great,” I say. The voice seems to come from everywhere at once. I can’t even tell if the speaker’s male or female. “Not what I asked, though.”
“All your questions will be answered eventually. Are you hungry?”
“No.” Though I am.
“Thirsty? We can do better than tap water.”
“No.” Though I am.
“Then what are you?”
“Pissed off.”
“This must all be very confusing.”
“Confusing? You furking kidnapped me!”
No immediate response. So, I wait, trying to ignore the twist in my gut.
“All this is for the greater good. Soon, everything will be explained to you.”
“Why not now? I don’t have anything else on my calendar.”
“Not quite yet.”
“Listen, if you’re looking for ransom, you snatched the wrong kid.”
“We know exactly who we ‘snatched.’ You’re Anthony ‘Andy’ Draco, eighteen-year-old senior at Haddonfield High School in New Jersey, Class of ‘2099”
I feel my mouth go dry. “If you know all that, then you know that my folks aren’t anything like rich!”
“We’re not interested in money, Andy. But we’ll address that later. For now, I’d like you to do something for me.”
Here it is. The big ask. Will they demand that I strip naked? Could all this be some kind of perv party? I can’t spot a vidcam, but they know I used the sink just now, so they must be able to see me. Besides, they changed me into this jumpsuit, which means they’ve already seen my junk.
Unfortunately, bad as a sexual angle would be, there are worse possibilities.
“What kind of something?” I ask, trying to sound more impatient than scared.
There comes a gentle swoosh from above. I glance up in time to see something drop out of a square hole in the ceiling and land at my feet. A moment later, a tile slides over the hole and blends in with the rest, indistinguishable.
Do all these tiles move?
Wary, I look down at the thing that fell. It’s a crumpled piece of paper.
I reach for it.
“Don’t bother. It’s blank.”
“Then what’s it for?” I ask. Though I know. Of course, I know.
“I want you to burn it.”
My stomach lurches.
“What?”
“I want you to burn the paper,” the voice repeats tonelessly, as if reciting the time of day.
“I…don’t understand.”
“You understand perfectly, Andy. I’m aware of the rules of your people, but these are extraordinary circumstances. As far as any potential damage, these walls have an extremely high heat tolerance. Believe me when I say that there’s zero risk.”
“Believe me when I say that I don’t care.”
“I can appreciate that. However, we do need to see it.”
“See what?”
“See you burn that wad of paper.”
“Okay. Fine. Whatever. But you’re going to have to give me a lighter.”
Silence.
“Or, I don’t know, a match?”
“I was really hoping you wouldn’t play this game.”
I look balefully around, struggling to seem genuinely confused. “I don’t know what you want from me!” I whine. It’s a good whine, one of my all-time best. “How am I supposed to start a fire without even a lousy match?”
“I’m disappointed, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
I make a show of being exasperated. I scowl. I huff. I throw up my hands, putting all the “What the furk do you expect me to do? into it as I can.
“Burn the paper, Andy.”
“How?”
“Burn it.”
“I can’t!”
“Of course, you can and we both know it.”
With a frustrated cry that I think sounds genuine, I kick the wad of paper into a corner of my cell. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re a lunatic!”
“All right. Obviously, this was too much too soon. Let’s try again later.”
“What? Furk later! I want to go home!
“The fastest way for that to happen is for you to cooperate.”
“How can I cooperate when what you’re asking doesn’t make any sense?”
“Why don’t you get some rest? I suggest you lay down on the pallet. I don’t want you to get hurt when the vector takes effect.”
“The what?”
“Lay down. For your own sake.”
“I’m not doing anything for you! I don’t know what any of this is about, but I want nothing to do with it!”
“Your call, I suppose.”
A moment later, the world starts spinning. Alarmed, I try to steady myself. I can’t. Whatever’s happening to me is happening fast. Darkness closes in. As it does, a single horrific understanding wracks my already overtaxed brain.
They know! My God…they know what I am!
Then I hit the floor hard and stay there.
***
TWO — Day 3
“He doesn’t look like a holocaust.”
“And what, in your mind, does a holocaust look like?”
“I’m … not sure. But this is just a gangly kid, all arms and legs.”
“He’s been with us for two days and you’re only now noticing what he looks like?”
“I’ve had other priorities, Adjunct”
“Well, as of today, he’s our priority.”
“I understand that.”
“You know what’s at stake.”
“Of course, I do!”
“You seem tense, Mister Brandt.”
“Sure, I’m tense. We just woke that … thing … up.”
“Well, we can’t very well proceed with him asleep. Besides, everything possible has been done to mitigate the risk. It’s a little late to lose your nerve.”
“I’m not losing my nerve! It’s just … now that we’ve done it, I feel like we just armed a bomb.”
“Getting him not to kill us is going to be the easy part. Relax, Mister Brandt. You did your job. Your blackbirds secured him without incident. What happens next is on me.”
“Kind of a disappointing start.”
“But anticipated. Given his culture, even inevitable. I didn’t expect him to comply right away. This was just Step One.”
“What’s Step Two?”
“I’ll wake him in an hour. He says he’s not hungry but he’s been intravenously fed for two days. Trust me, he’s starving. Maybe that will alter his perspective.”
“I don’t get why he’s fighting so hard. If he … they … are what you say they are, why hide it?”
“You read the background material, didn’t you Brandt?”
“Of course. Well, not all of it. Okay, fine. It was too dense.”
“Too dense?”
“Something like four hundred printed pages, Adjunct.”
“It’s a history. History takes time to tell. Their history, in particular, has been pieced together over the course of centuries.”
“I guess I was expecting a standard dossier. One, maybe two pages, a photograph.”
“You’re not dealing with your typical security risk, here.”
“I understand that. Maybe if the material were in digital format. I’ve never been big on reading paper docs.”
“Then you’re out of luck, because that material doesn’t exist in digital form. Not anywhere. Paper only. Usually it’s reserved for heads of state, and then only for those from the most politically, economically, or militarily powerful nations. Just seeing it is a rare honor.”
“So, I feel honored. Doesn’t keep it from being long and boring as hell.”
“The biological and physiological analyses are dry, I’ll grant you. But there’s anecdotal evidence as well. I suggest you dive into it again. If you do, you’ll quickly identify a pattern of careful, deliberate concealment. These people almost never reveal themselves. It’s virtually a cultural absolute, which is why only an infinitesimally small fraction of humanity even know they exist.”
“But you said there were times when they …”
“Oh, yes. Mister Brandt. More than a few over the centuries. Italy in 70 A.D. Krakatoa in 1821. And then there’s Nagasaki.”
“Nagasaki? As in Nagasaki, Japan?”
“Oh, yes. The world is full of secrets. I’d expect a man like you to know that.”
“Sure. But –”
“The truth, Mister Brandt, is that the American government only dropped one atomic bomb on Japan in 1945.”
***
THREE — Day 3
Conceal and Protect.
Those words, always capitalized in my mind, were drilled into my head from toddlerhood — so much so that I, as Tony and Bonnie Draco’s son, grew up thinking of it as our family motto. Back when I was in fourth grade, I learned about familial coats of arms. Afterward, totally jazzed, I drew one for my family. It depicted a fire-breathing dragon shooting flames out over a charred and blackened field. I even wrote the words “Conceal and Protect,” very carefully, above it in big block letters.
Eight-years-old and largely friendless, I showed this “masterwork” to my mom, who immediately paled.
“It’s beautiful, sweetheart.” My father was at work and we were alone in the house. Even so, I remember the way my mother looked furtively around, as if worried that someone might see. “You’ll be a great artist someday if that’s what you want. But…this isn’t something that you can ever show to anybody.”
I was crest-fallen, pun intended. “But … I thought we could put it above the fireplace!”
Without warning, Mom pulled me into a desperate kind of hug. “I wish we could, Andy. Your father and I would be so proud to have it there. But it’s too dangerous. We’ve talked about this.”
I squirmed and pulled away. “Dad says we shouldn’t be ashamed of what we are.”
“And he’s right,” Mom replied tearfully. “But it’s not just us who are in danger.”
“Then why are we Draco?” I demanded. For the first time in my life – though not the last – the frustration that had haunted me since my earliest memory surged to the surface. “Why’d we pick a name that tells everybody what we are when we can’t be what we are? I know what ‘draco’ means, Mom! They told me at school!”
She looked at me, stricken, and suddenly my newly found, pre-pre-adolescent fury vanished like smoke.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you want to be like the other children. But you’re not. Our family is Kind, and we need to remember how few we are and how many they are. Andy, human beings scare so easily, and they always strike out at what scares them. This means that, to live among them, we have to try to appear human … even though we never will be.”
Now, alone in this strange cell, my mother’s words echo. That day’s conversation was a pivotal one, grimly transformative, and I never forgot a word of it.
We have to try to appear human … even though we never will be.
This, of course, is how my captors must see me.
Inhuman.
When I wake up after being “vector-ed”, whatever that means, I’m stretched out on the tile floor where I fell. The room is unchanged. I have no idea how long I’ve been asleep. Hours certainly. Maybe longer. Without a clock or window, time’s a bit of a mystery.
What isn’t a mystery is how hungry I am.
“Hello, Andy.”
The Voice — yeah, I’m capitalizing it now — startles me. I try to hide it and don’t reply.
“You must be hungry.”
This time, not replying’s harder. My stomach growls.
“No? Well, let’s skip breakfast then.”
“Wait!” I call, jumping to my feet. “Yes, I’m hungry.”
Immediately, I hear a scraping sound and another wad of paper lands on the floor in front of me.
“Breakfast is waiting. All we ask in return is a little cooperation.”
My stomach growls louder. “What do you want me to do?”
“You know the answer to that question.”
“So…what? You’re not going to feed me unless I obey?”
“Cooperate,” the Voice corrects patiently.
I glare down at the new wad of paper. Then I kick it into the corner with the first one.
“No hurry, Andy. When you’re hungry enough, just say so. I’ll keep your food warm.”
The Voice goes silent.
I wait, but it doesn’t return.
Time passes furking slowly. The growling in my stomach deepens. I struggle to ignore it. Drinking water helps. Every so often, I go to the sink and fill my belly from its tap. But the feeling doesn’t last and, before long, I have to pee like a racehorse. After a while, I get into a tortuous rhythm. I wait until my stomach’s too empty to bear, and then I drink myself full and, later, pee myself silly.
Rinse and repeat.
It makes for a brutal day. I keep expecting the Voice to return, maybe to tempt me, first with lunch, then dinner. But it doesn’t. They’re letting me, as my mother sometimes likes to say when I’m being a snot, “stew in my own juices.”
It frankly sucks.
But they want me to break Conceal and Protect.
And. That. I. Will. Not. Do.
Eventually, and without warning, the lights dim. They don’t go out completely. If they did, I’d be in pitch darkness in this windowless room. But they drop low enough that I sense this is supposed to be “nighttime,” that I made it through a full day without eating. I wish I could call it a win, but every second of the ordeal felt like a minute and each minute like an hour. And I have no reason to think the night’s going to be any easier.
I do my best to sleep. By now, cramps twist my guts, forcing me to lay curled up in a tight ball.
I’ll never know how, but eventually sleep finds me.
In the “morning,” after a fitful night of pain and terrible dreams that left me sobbing in the dark, I awake to find a bowl of oatmeal – a big one – waiting for me.
I run to it and eat greedily, shoveling the food into my mouth with the included spoon.
As I do, the Voice says, “You’re a stubborn young man.”
I don’t reply as I lick the bowl clean. I half-expect to vomit, but I don’t. The stuff tasted like paste, thin and sticky but easily digestible. Maybe they don’t want me puking either.
Nice of them.
“This would all go so much easier if you’d just cooperate.”
“How?” I ask.
“You know how.”
“What I know is that you want me to somehow start a fire without a match. If you’re expecting me to use my heat vision, then I suggest you try a big guy in a cape and with a red “S” on his chest.”
The Voice says nothing more.
Sometime later and without ceremony, my lunch arrives.
About the Author
Ty Drago is a full-time writer and the author of eight published novels, including his five-book Undertakers series, the first of which has been optioned for a feature film. Torq, a dystopian YA superhero adventure, was released by Swallow’s End Publishing in 2018. Add to these one novelette, myriad short stories and articles, and appearances in two anthologies. He’s also the founder, publisher, and managing editor of ALLEGORY (www.allegoryezine.com), a highly successful online magazine that, for more than twenty years, has features speculative fiction by new and established authors worldwide.
Ty’s currently just completed The New Americans, a work of historical fiction and a collaborative effort with his father, who passed away in 1992. If that last sentence leaves you with questions, check out his podcast, “Legacy: The Novel Writing Experience,” to get the whole story.
He lives in New Jersey with his wife Helene, plus one cat and one dog.
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