Chapter Text
“Okay, Marisol,” said Elsa. “Give me the damage.”
Marisol did not even look round as she handed the morning's printout over her shoulder. She knew that her boss would be behind her, and indeed Elsa was right there to pluck the papers from her hand. “Nothing worthy of note. Usual report from the medics: a few cases of heatstroke, some bruised knees, one minor asthma attack quickly dealt with.”
“And our keeper teams?”
“Midday reports are all satisfactory. No fence issues. Veterinary team is reporting some sickness among a group of Gronckles, but they suspect that it's blue oleander again. We've got the palaeobotany team searching the paddock.”
Elsa sighed as she took another sip of her coffee. Blue oleander had been everywhere on the island even when it had first been opened; they had spent the last twenty years trying to eradicate it fully. But so much of their infrastructure was now here – not to mention the mythos that was Dragon Island – that it would be too costly to move on. “You're too good at this,” she told Marisol. “You'll be doing my job before I know it.”
“Oh no,” Marisol laughed, “I have no intentions of trying to emulate your magic with the board or with investors.”
She handed Elsa the tablet which it had been necessary to leave behind while she had been talking with the potential investors of the Weselton Foundation. It had felt wrong not to have it at hand, as it usually was; Elsa even slept with it beside her bed. She immediately pulled up her email and skipped through, sorting the messages into urgent, important and low-priority. Nothing urgent so far.
“If there weren't a danger of jinxing it,” she said wryly, “I'd comment.”
With a grin, Marisol shrugged, and turned back to her reports. Their notification system meant that any noteworthy event across the island was reported to the headquarters, from users of the medical facilities to any dragon outside their designated area. Just as she did so, there was a green flash, and Elsa wondered why she bothered opening her mouth some days.
“Dragon outside the authorised area,” said Marisol as soon as she saw the code in the header. She pulled it up, looking back over her shoulder to Elsa. “Probably one of the Gronckle relocations. They originally reported that only two were going to the veterinary area, it could be–”
As Elsa caught sight of the words on the screen, though, a hard knot formed in the base of her stomach. “That's not a Gronckle code,” she said. The Gronckles were one of the most established species on the island, one of the original core four.
The smile faded from Marisol's face as she, too, turned to the page and scrolled down, but it was Elsa who saw the appropriate line first.
“That's a Razorwhip.”
She heard Marisol's sharp intake of breath, but she was already putting down the tablet and straightening up, picking up the headset and connecting it to her phone. She strode down into the centre of the control room, as the huge screen depicting the island took on a red border and an alarm sounded.
“All right, people,” said Elsa loudly, before the chatter that always followed an alarm could get too loud. “We have a Razorwhip out of containment, moving from sector thirteen into sector twelve. Marie, I need you to notify the sector twelve keepers, that'll be the Night Terrors team, they'll be on their low shift. Bard, check in with the Razorwhip keepers, get them to report their actions in. Lars, I need contact with our Retainment Team five minutes ago.”
She was just grateful that it was the Night Terrors enclosure. They were asleep during the day, which meant that there were no visitors in the area. The downside, of course, was that it was a Razorwhip that was out of confinement. It was the newest dragon that they had, the most dangerous so far – well, that was how they were marketing it, at least. It was supposed to be launching next spring, just in time to pick up the next waves of interest and up the park's revenue once again.
“We're through!” Bard called. The top-right quarter of the screen opened up to an in-car camera feed, showing a woman with black hair and a grim expression driving so fast the windows were a blur.
“Heather!” said Elsa. She made a point of learning as many names as possible, and the small, tight-knit Razorwhip team had been in closer contact over the last few months. “Don't get yourself killed on the road!”
“The road isn't what I'm worried about,” the woman replied. She was in her early thirties, some years younger than Elsa, but already had scars visible on her forearms beneath her rolled-up sleeves. “It's Windshear.”
“The dragon out of location?”
“Yeah. Should've known she'd be the one to find a weakness in the fences.”
Almost all of the dragon enclosures were individual valleys, the better to provide airspace for them to fly without having to build the towers for the fences and ceilings too tall.
“Do you know how she got out, yet?” said Elsa. In the bottom-right corner, another frame opened up, showing their Retainment Team suiting up. They called themselves 'the Berserkers', but Elsa did not take part in their nicknaming. Elsa raised a hand in greeting to their current Captain, Dagur, which he acknowledged with a nod, but kept on the line to Heather. “Is there a danger of the others following?”
“They aren't herders like some of the others,” said Heather. “She was a half-click distant from any of the others, and we've got a team stationed where she made it through.”
“How did she do it?” repeated Elsa, resisting the urge to grit her teeth.
“Shorted out one of the panels with a combination of spines and venom. We're going to need better base units.”
Hopefully not something that any of the other dragons had the potential to do, but they would need to wait for the full damage report from the maintenance team. “The Night Terrors will probably be spending their day in the caves. Enlarge map, north third,” she called. Within seconds, the focus had obediently been moved. “That's three clicks south-south-west of where you are. Access roads for the keepers. If it's after them, that's where it's heading.”
“Thanks,” said Heather. The image jolted, blue sky opening up in the window behind her, and Elsa strongly suspected that she had just gone off-road. “Windshear is mine, that's why they sent me. I might be able to talk her down without sedation.”
“Too dangerous,” Elsa said immediately. “I want location only, relayed to our Retainment Team. Captain Dagur,” she said, with a wave to Lars to bring up the connection. “How close are you to moving out?”
“Readying the jeeps,” Dagur replied, with a feral grin. He had his helmet under one arm, his short-cropped red hair held back with a band that almost matched the blue tattoos down his face. “Let me switch to the remote link and we'll move.”
“Go,” said Elsa. Dagur reached in to turn off the feed, and above him Heather angrily shifted gear and clenched her jaw so hard that Elsa could see the muscles twitching in her temple. The Retainment Team had no friends among the keepers, their methods and weapons equally disliked, but right now they were the safest way to deal with an escaped dragon. “Heather, I need you to promise you won't get in their way. Their sedative doses are calculated to dragons, not humans.”
“I know.”
It didn't sound much like agreement, but the warning was enough. Within a minute, Elsa was back in contact with Dagur again, directing them to the appropriate sector. Her eyes were on Heather, though, and she knew in the moment that Heather's posture stiffened and her chin picked up that they had visual.
“Heather, speak to me,” she said, deliberately leaving both lines open at once. On the left hand side of the screen, she watched their dots coming together near the sector twelve caves. The green dots of the Night Terrors were clustered together, as they should be, with the white dots of Heather, the Night Terrors keeper team, and the Retainment Team all moving in at their various rates. But there was no sign of the red dot that should have marked the Razorwhip. “You have visual. Why aren't we getting a tracker signal?”
“Their scales can interfere with the signal,” said Heather. In Elsa's opinion, she did not look nearly as apologetic as she should have for keeping this information from Elsa. “We talked to the tech guys to get a boost on the towers in sector thirteen to make sure we always had them. We must be too far out.”
God preserve them. It was a damn wonder that the Razorwhips had not escaped before, if this was what they were up against. Elsa closed her eyes for a moment and allowed herself exactly two breaths in which to be angry before focusing on the task at hand once again. “All right. Keep visual contact. I'm having your coordinates patched through to the Retainment Team so that they can get to you.”
This was going to need sorting out, and sorting out fast. Even in their off season, Dragon Island was the busiest park in the world, and they had not kept their remarkable safety rates by holding back from addressing issues in their security.
For a while, all that she could do was watch through the internal cameras as Heather and Dagur both raced on to their locations, then Heather slammed on her brakes and all but threw herself out of the car, shouting something that sounded worryingly like the dragon's name.
“Heather! Heather!” Elsa's voice was loud enough that one or two of her employees nearby looked round in surprise, but all that Elsa could think of was the fear of one of her keepers throwing themselves, without a weapon or very probably a plan, in front of one of the most dangerous dragons on the island. Her hand clenched so tightly that her nails almost cut into her palm. “Captain, tell me that you have a visual, because one of the keepers just went to confront that Razorwhip solo.”
There was only a momentary pause, Dagur leaning forwards in the passenger seat as one of his men drove, then his eyes lit up. “Oh, we have visual.” He whistled. “That is a beauty.”
The Retainment Team tended to be the last ones to see any of the dragons in the flesh; in an ideal world, they would not need to see them at all, but sooner or later all of the breeds ended up making trouble. Teething problems, Elsa always called it when she talked to the board, but every time that it happened it was terrifying. “Marisol, get me the sedation notes on Razorwhips, top right quadrant,” she called over her shoulder. The inside of Heather's car disappeared, replaced by the bare-bones notes which was insisted upon for every dragon species. “Captain, be aware of the scales. They're very high-density, almost impossible to get through. You'll need to go for the underbelly.”
“Heard and understood,” said Dagur. He licked his lips. “All right, men. Let's lock and load.”
They came to a halt and in turn piled out of their vehicle, and then all that Elsa and the others in the control room could do was wait. Through the connection she could hear the distant roar of the Razorwhip, and indistinct shouting from the Retainment Team and, most likely, Heather as well. Elsa kept her head high and her eyes on the screen, with only a muted order to zoom back out to the full island view once again. It would do no good to be so caught up in this that they missed another event.
Silence reigned. It was so complete that Elsa could hear the soft ding of Marisol's computer behind her, as another notification came in. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marie cross herself, lips moving silently. Elsa understood the urge.
Then there was a ragged cheer which had to be the Retainment Team. A sigh of relief left Elsa's lips, and she reached up to touch the earpiece she wore just for the need to move somehow. Moments later, one of the other Retainment Team slid back into view in the driver's seat of their vehicle, taking off his helmet.
“Ma'am. We've got it.”
“Good,” said Elsa, biting back the urge to say thank you instead. They were only doing what they had been hired for, after all, and she was director. She could hear some of her staff saying quiet words of thanks around her, though. “Get it back to the sector twelve and into containment. I'll have the veterinary staff come to check it out as soon as they have free members. Is Ms. Osland harmed?”
The man frowned.
“The dragon keeper. Is she harmed?”
“No, no,” he said. “Mad at us over the dragon, but not harmed.”
That was going to need dealing with, as well. Elsa nodded, then turned and climbed the steps again to stand beside her assistant. “Marisol, make sure that Heather heads back to base. Contact me if she doesn't. I'm going to go out and talk to the sector twelve team.”
She scooped up her tablet again as she left, but left the coffee behind. Something told her that she wasn't particularly going to need it today.
Once the dragon was actually sedated and strapped into its transport, it became almost a simple procedure to take it back to its original sector. Not that Elsa much appreciated it, from having to put off her meeting with the Fireworm keepers to standing in the middle of a muddy field while her Razorwing keepers and tracker technicians stood sheepishly in front of her and explained exactly what they had done to the towers.
She could have done it inside, of course, but something in her suspected that would not have had the same effect. To stand before them in their own world and berate them with the same confidence would get through, she was certain.
Or, at least, she desperately hoped.
With strict orders that all of the explanations were also to be filed in triplicate through official standards before the end of the week, she finally let them go, driving until she was sure that she was out of both sight and earshot before pulling over, parking up, and resting her head against the steering wheel while her anger and adrenaline faded.
Sooner or later, all of the dragons escaped. They learnt from it, improved the fences again, and kept going. But every new species of dragon had to be more impressive than the last, more dangerous, to keep people interested and coming back for more. Elsa knew that after Razorwhips, they would only get worse.
She checked her watch. There was still enough time to talk Fireworms, if she was lucky and the keepers had not already gone home for the evening. If not, she would have to find somewhere else in her schedule to squeeze them in. With a deep breath, Elsa turned on her in-car phone again, ready to dial through to the Fireworm Keepers. You had to be at least a little mad to work with dragons, and the Thorston Twins were certainly no exception. They were used to working strange hours, though, and might well be willing to add a couple of hours onto their usual time as a result.
She did not expect there to be a message waiting for her.
Everyone who could have wanted to contact her was at the control centre, and unless there had been another incident that needed her immediate attention, they knew that she was on the scene of something too important to be interrupted. Frowning, Elsa pulled up the number, and could have sworn that her heart dropped into her stomach when she realised that it was Westergaard.
One person on Dragon Island to whom she answered, and he had called at one of the few times in the past month that Elsa had not been within fifteen seconds of being able to answer her phone. She bit back a curse, and instead turned the rear view mirror to look herself over. Her hair was windswept, but smoothed back into place easily enough, and she pinched her cheeks to take advantage of the colour that the wind had given them. Even nowadays, a woman in her position had to take note of her appearance in a way that a man would not. It grated, but Elsa could handle it. She always had.
Calm and collected once again, Elsa dialled Westergaard back and counted the rings until he picked up. The in-car screen popped into life to show him, smiling and collected in his perfect three-piece suit. There were bright lights and white walls behind him, and the murmur of conversation.
“Ms. Winters. Such a pleasure to hear from you.”
“My apologies for not being in immediate contact, Mr. Westergaard,” she replied. “I had an urgent meeting with the Razorwhip handlers.”
“Oh?” He quirked an eyebrow just slightly.
Elsa folded her hands in her lap. “Nothing of concern. Is there something about which you need to speak to me?”
Westergaard gave her an airy smile, and a faint wave of his hand. “Not urgent, I assure you. I was hoping to speak to you in person, however. The Restricted Area laboratories? As soon as possible?”
That explained the white walls, although Hans Westergaard rarely had need to go into the actual laboratories of the island. The ones which the public saw were for show, carefully timed hatchings of the safer Gronckles or Nadders, staged ‘scientists’ doing their work. The real work of Dragon Island went on in laboratories that were far less visitor-friendly; it was far more complicated, and required far greater security. Elsa understood little more than the bare minimum of what they did, and she was not sure what Westergaard could possibly need to know beyond that.
“Of course,” she said aloud. “I can be there in,” she calculated the time in her head, “just under fifteen minutes.”
“Make it twenty,” said Westergaard, in a tone that was just condescending enough to make Elsa’s smile falter, but more than sincere enough that nobody else would bat an eyelash. ”I hear the roads can be difficult in the fall.”
“Thank you for your concern. I will see you shortly.” She hung up before she could say anything that she would regret, and allowed her now-false smile to fade as well. There went the Fireworms. As she started up the engine again and turned her car towards the laboratories, she dialled Marisol’s number. Her schedule was going to need some serious rearranging.