March, 14 AEI

…

Deimos counted the seconds on the end of his tail, claws itching at the pavement. They’d know he was gone soon. His bare scaled feet flexed against cement, claws adding to years of wear from feet walking over the hills of San Francisco.

The stars glimmered faintly above him, the moon barely a sliver of light against the orange glow of streetlamps. Even that dazzled Deimos’s eyes when he first snuck out of the Planetary Security Sector facility. Was it only hours ago? The novelty of the sky and strangeness of the human city made it feel like much longer.

His heart pattered double time with the ticking seconds, reminding him of his mission. It was the first mission he’d ever given himself, the first time he’d realized he could decide what to do with his own claws and teeth. 

He only had a small amount of time to choose a target not important enough to enrage the human population, but visible enough to be noticeable to… anyone not human who was watching.

His eyes ticked to a tall open structure that took up the corner of the block. A sign identified it as ‘Harvey Milk Memorial Children’s Playground’. The structure did not look load bearing to the city’s infrastructure, with its strange curving metal structures, and the protracted training equipment scattered between strange colored depictions of flowers and blue landscapes painted on it.

Deimos darted out from beneath the bushes he’d been hiding under, straightening to his full bipedal height as he approached the ‘playground’. He ran his hands over the surfaces, noting plastics and metal and resin components. Well within his tested capabilities to manage. 

Deimos snapped a pole off the tower-like portion of the structure, the metal screaming. Adrenaline rushed through him. For a moment he waited for a shock of electricity from a handler or a siren to call more white coats with muzzles and chains to hold him down.  Giddiness bubbled through his chest at the continued silence. 

Deimos beat the pole against the slide, creating hollow booming sounds that echoed down the block as it dented the plastic. Throwing it away, he raked his claws over an unstably constructed walking bridge, feeling chains snap beneath his fingers. 

They had to come.

He’d calculated everything: the timing with the least amount of humans to interfere, the areas of appearance where they first were seen, the most likely neighborhood to be monitored by them based on damage wrought before they first appeared fourteen years ago.

Destruction made the dragons appear once to defeat the alien invaders that tried to take over San Francisco. Destruction would make them appear again.

He hoped.

“Everything okay over here?” 

Deimos snapped around, claws ripping from the now twisted climbing bars.

The words came from a figure wearing a dark blue hoodie, carrying a stack of square, flat cardboard boxes in one hand. Tantalizing smells of meat and protein and carbohydrates emanate from the box, but Deimos pushed down his hunger.

“Fine.” Deimos snapped, shifting further back into the shadows beneath the partially destroyed tower.

“Really? What did the playground do to you then? Did you get a wedgie on the slide?”

Deimos’ long snout crinkled. “Wedgie?”

The figure sidled closer. Deimos inched back, wondering if he should abandon this plan for another innocent structure to vandalize. He didn’t want any humans to see him. Weren’t they always asleep at night? The white coats at the PSS always were gone to go to their homes and real lives to sleep at night.

“Hey, it’s okay, kid, I’m like you.” The figure leaned closer. Deimos saw their smooth human skin shimmer and melt, like water from an icecube. The face it left was scaled with silver and delicate blue stripes, with a long muzzle. He could see  sharp carnivorous teeth inside when the figure smiled.

This was a fae then, one of the non-human entities the PSS discovered walking amongst the unsuspecting human population. All fae had mysterious magical powers and should be treated as a high level threat. 

Deimos gingerly leaned out of the shadows, showing his own tarnished silver scales with  shocks of purple striping down his sides. His long tail flicked behind him, the black fin on his head like a bird’s crest standing rigid.

“You should be wearing something, if you’re up top like this.” The fae said, examining him. “You’ll catch a cold, and some humans might see you.”

“I don’t have anything,” Deimos said hesitantly.

“Right.” 

The figure crouched, setting the stack of boxes on the ground. His eyes ticked over Deimos’s face and down his back to the end of his ticking tail. Deimos rubbed at the purple striped scales on his cheek. The figure’s voice took on a softer tone, and he pushed back his hood, showing that the blue stripes on his face curved nearly over the back of his head. 

“Are you lost? Do you need help finding your parents?” 

Deimos paused, unsure if this was the right way to go about this. Shouldn’t the dragons be coming? He was causing a mess in their territory.

“Yes,” Deimos answered. Maybe another fae would know where their progenitors were.

“Okay. My name is Chiron, but you can call me Chi. Do you know where your parents are? What part of the undercity they live in?”

“The dragons,” Deimos blurted. “The ones from the invasion. They glowed like fire.”

The invasion was a long time ago now, longer than Deimos had been alive. Fourteen years, but the memories in those older than him wouldn’t have faded. The bright firework forms that struck the sky that day saved the world. This fae must know the dragons.

Deimos knew he would never forget seeing them, even if it was only on a grainy video.

Chi blinked slowly. 

“The… dragons?” His scrutinization of Deimos sharpened, like he was mapping the corners of Deimos’s face against something in his mind. “Do you know their names, kiddo?”

Deimos’ claws twitched at his sides and he buried them against his palm. “They’re named after figures in Greek Mythology.”

This was a test.

“They are,” Chiron agreed. He reached some kind of conclusion. “Where did you come from, kiddo? What’s your name?”

Deimos stiffened. “Deimos.” 

He avoided the other question.

“Did someone bring you out of the undercity as a prank and leave you here?” Chi asked, still in that soft way. “I promise you won’t get in trouble. My job is to make sure you get home to your parents.”

Deimos shook his head. “I don’t know where the Undercity is.”

Not for lack of trying. The PSS theorized a larger population of fae must exist somewhere, but their efforts to gather more information always failed.

“How old are you, kiddo?”

“Twelve, sir.” His voice was stilted, spine straightening as he shook off his thoughts. He needed to find the dragons quickly, and he had no guarantee this fae was going to help.

Chi laughed, leaning back so he sat on the pavement. Deimos noticed he had a short tail that didn’t drag on the ground when he walked, but he could still curve around himself.

“You don’t have to call me sir, unless you ask nicely. I’m not at work right now.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’m.” Deimos grasped desperately for conversational options. He remembered a phrase from one of the white coat’s assessments. “I’m not well socialized.” 

“You have nothing to apologize for.” Chi patted the pavement beside him, watching Deimos’s face through half closed eyelids. It reminded Deimos of the way his little brother Icelus would size up new white coats or handlers, figuring out which ones would go for the tasers first and which ones would give warnings.  “Do you want something to eat?”

“I’ve already eaten my allocated meal,” Deimos mumbled, hesitant. “I don’t have long. I need to find the dragons. They’ll come if I–” 

He looked towards the beaten slide, voice fading. Shame flooded his chest. He was a fool for dreaming this childish solution would work. What was a playground’s destruction compared to a whole city’s?

“If I make a mess,” he pressed on.

“Why do you need to meet them so badly? Are you in trouble, Deimos?”

Deimos nodded, looking away from the fae.

Chi nodded too. “Okay. Can you tell me what’s chasing you? I promise I’ll help, and I can get the dragons to help too.”

Deimos looked at him hopefully. “You know the dragons? And you can tell them to come?”

“I can,” Chi said. He held a hand over his chest, raising the other in the air. It had four long fingers ending in claws, just like Deimos’s. “I solemnly swear the dragons will learn all that you tell me.”

Relief flooded over Deimos. “My brothers and I were being kept in a human facility nearby. A fan in the vents hasn’t been repaired and I was able to dismantle it and get us out. But we– the PSS will be coming for us soon and we need protection. That’s why I need to find the dragons.”

Chi listened, face an impassive mask as Deimos spoke. His arms crossed at some point, one hand raising so the tips of his claws tapped against the corner of his scaled mouth. 

“That is a very concerning story.”

“And you’ll tell the dragons?” Deimos pressed, scratching at his arm.

“I will. But first, I’m going to call someone who can help figure all this out.” Telegraphing his movements, Chi reached into his pocket, pulling out a metal and glass rectangle. Deimos thought it was a cellular phone, though he had never seen one of this style. It had a colorful casing with a picture of a cartoon rabbit on it. “Do you want something to eat while we wait?”

“I don’t have much time,” Deimos insisted, glancing around for any sign of sparking rods or the smell of kevlar.

“They’ll be here soon,” Chi assured, thumb tapping across the glass screen. He opened one of the boxes, revealing a circle covered in red and white, with tentacled eyeballs creeping over its surface. “The Scary Supreme appeals to all carnivorous reptiles, or so Pies ‘N Pies say. The horrors are especially delicious.”

Deimos hesitated. He’d never seen food like that before. “What is it?”

“It’s a pizza. Bread rolled out with tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings. This one has some horrors, bacon bits, and sausage!”

“I’ve heard of all of those,” Deimos said. “Except the horrors. Are those the eyes? It’s cooked?”

“It’s a type of squid from the Undercity. The pizza is cooked to make the crust delicious. I dunno how, my little sister is the chief of the family.”

“We aren’t supposed to eat cooked things.” Deimos’ hand moved to scratch his stomach, trying to soothe the ache the smell brought on. “It’s bad for our desired psychological profile.” 

He had read that in his files.

“Well, I can assure you that dragons love pizza.” Chi nudged the box closer. “Have some! Growing reptiles need to eat.”

Deimos tried not to squirm in place. Then he squatted down beside Chi, picking at the edges of the ‘pizza’. “How do you eat it?”

Chi demonstrated, pulling one of the edges away, revealing that the circle was cut into even triangular slices. “You can fold the bread in half so nothing spills out, and you take a bite!”

He snapped at the pizza, capturing one of the creeping squid like eyeballs between his teeth with a pop.

Deimos picked up a slice, careful that the squid eyeball didn’t go wiggling off. He snapped it up, trying not to show too much teeth as he did. The humans didn’t like it when he did that, he doubted Chi would appreciate it either.

The eyeball chewed much like a grape did, with a long, melting piece of tender meat trailing off it. It was one of the best things Deimos had ever tasted. He devoured the rest of the slice without noticing he’d finished until he was licking his fingers free of grease.

Chi opened another box, this one without the eyeballs, and nudged it closer to Deimos. He smiled widely, showing off his own teeth to Deimos. Within a few minutes Deimos had downed another slice, a pain in his stomach he’d forgotten was there starting to unclench.

“How much am I allowed?” Deimos asked, eyeing both pizzas hungrily.

“As much as you want,” Chi said, after a moment. 

“Could I take them with me?”

“Sure. I can get more too. Are you very hungry, Deimos?”

Deimos nodded. “My brothers are, too. Especially Perses… He’s always hungry.”

Chi nodded. He tapped his phone, still typing. “I’ll make sure you have a lot of food to eat, okay? Kids shouldn’t go hungry.”

“Do the dragons have food like this?” Deimos plucked at another horror.

The corners of Chi’s mouth ticked up. “The dragons do. I know one of them makes the best food you’ve ever eaten, and loves to feed people.”

“They didn’t know, when they made us…” Deimos bit down on the horror, slurping up its tail. “So they gave us lots of squid and fish and vegetables.”

“Dragons don’t eat very differently from most other people,” Chi said. “Our teeth are a lot stronger though, so we can eat more fun things too. I think I got a gold leaf pizza in the stack, if you want to try.”

“Metal?” Deimos blinked. He remembered Perses occasionally chewing through bars, and Moros tearing through a wall when he was little. They’d been… severely discouraged from eating metal again.

Chi watched him, a fixed smile on his face. “And some minerals. It keeps your scales tough.” 

“Oh.” Deimos brushed his hands over his scales. They already felt tough compared to human flesh, which was soft enough to cut through with even the lightest touch. That was another thing severely discouraged.  Deimos’s scales didn’t have the same kind of rainbow oil-slick sheen that Chi had though, but Chi wasn’t a dragon.