Deep underground in the Planetary Security Sector’s file room, Deimos clicked on a computer terminal. The screen lit up, nearly blinding him. Deimos squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for them to adjust, before squinting another peak. The Planetary Security Sector’s logo appeared across the screen, then a prompt for a password and identification card. Deimos tapped across the keyboard, using the passcode inscribed on a sticky note stuck to the wall, and the ID badge taken from one of the white coats the last time Deimos was dragged to solitary confinement. 

He’d only found the loose panel into the vents a week ago. It let him creep out of the conservatory where he and his brothers were kept, and into the HVAC system that ran through the underground PSS facility. However, Deimos had the plan to steal an ID badge ever since he found the vent passage that connected to the PSS file room and computer. This was his second time venturing into the space. Neither the handlers nor Knight had found him, so Deimos was confident in his sneaking ability.

Once the screen loaded, Deimos navigated to his most viewed files, pulling up neatly organized video clips and notes.

‘Draconic Subject One’, one file said, and Bardi clicked through it. He drank in blurry phone images of a purple dragon clawing its way up the skyline of San Francisco, snarling at the undulating jellyfish-like ship that encompassed the sky. 

There were thousands of images and videos from security cameras, red light cameras, phones, news outlets. A note on the file indicated most videos and sources were deleted from the wider internet and servers by an unknown source. Deimos wondered whether this dragon, his progenitor, knew how computers worked. Would it be pleased that Deimos was proficient in such things as well?

He shook his head. Unimportant. Deimos’s mission did not require him to look at these pictures again. He clicked out of the file, pulling up another which contained a map of San Francisco. The dragons first appeared on camera near the Golden Gate Park, though they arrived from a south east direction, possibly from Forest Hill. It made sense, Fae lived under hills, from what Deimos read in the white coat’s notes. 

He resolved to look there first.

Deimos glanced at the clock inside the file room. He didn’t have much time left.

He erased any sign of his activity, shut the computer down, and climbed deftly onto the file cabinet. Slithering neatly into the vent, he moved quietly like he’d been taught, following the map of the vents he’d constructed inside his head. 

Deimos slipped back into the Conservatory and replaced the vent cover, screwing it back on with pointed claws. Then he descended through the fake trees, down into the brush. Tucked behind the mix of fake and real bushes and ferns, was entrance to the den he shared with his brothers.

It was an epoxy constructed cave that could withstand their roughhousing, even if they never did roughhouse in the den. The den was for hiding and sleeping. They had dug the bottom deeper as they grew, filling it with what few blankets they’d been allowed over the years. It made a fine covered nest.

“Dee?” Icelus murmured, single eye opening blearily. Perses’s arm was snuggled over him, keeping both their baby brothers hidden under Perses’s bulk.  “Where’d you go?”

“Out,” Deimos replied, nestling down beside his brothers. Perses rumbled softly, his tail sweeping around to meet Deimos’.

Icelus hummed, but didn’t ask more as he snuggled against Deimos’s scaled chest.

“In the vents again?” Moros asked, blinking sleepy yellow eyes open.

“Yes, the vents again,” Deimos murmured, brushing the back of his fingers between Moros’ eyes. They closed again, Moros letting out a small churr.

“What are you doing out there?” Perses asked, resting his chin on his arms. 

Icelus snuggled closer to Deimos, squished between Perses and their eldest brother.

“Just looking.” Deimos didn’t want his brothers to know what he was doing, how close to freedom they were. They were still so young, and only Moros really knew how to keep a secret. But even Moros would crack if Knight really wanted them to talk.

Deimos settled fully on the blankets, curled so that Moros and Icelus were tucked between himself and Perses. Moros nestled down on Deimos’s hip and Deimos stroked his head.

“Did you find anything?” Icelus asked in a small voice.

Deimos cupped his cheek, pained by the way he flinched away from the touch. Icelus’ bad side was still sore. A year had gone by and the scar had faded to be less deep, scales growing over the hole so it almost looked smooth, but his eye was still gone. Knight cut into the spot enough times to prove Icelus’s eye would never heal back.

Knight always said they were expensive to make. For a long while Deimos thought that meant they were too expensive to throw away.

He knew better now.

“Not yet,” Deimos said, scratching under Icelus’s jaw. “But I will. Now it’s time to sleep, or we’ll be exhausted tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. With any luck, Deimos and his siblings would be gone from this place tomorrow, meeting the dragons Deimos had only seen as blurry images on video.

Icelus leaned into his touch with a little churr, snuggling up closer. Deimos’s tail coiled around Perses’s as everyone settled back down. He laid his cheek on his own arm and watched his brothers doze off.

He didn’t get any sleep that night.

…