THE FLOOR WAS NOW A moving platform, zipping underneath the huge garage, sideways, then down, then sideways, then down. It whizzed past sewer lines and fiber-optic cables, and all the hidden guts that make a city building work. It went so fast, Abel had to lie flat and grip the tiles with his palms, trying not to throw up or get thrown off.

“Hello?” he said into his earbuds. “Where is this thing going and when is it going to be over?!”

“Er … fit … gar … un … bree … hel …” he got in reply.

“You’re breaking up! Hello? Hello!” He’d lost his connection. Wherever he was heading, he didn’t have a signal. The platform sped up. It spun sideways and the g-forces of the spin were all that kept him from flying off into a concrete wall. Then it dropped straight down, so suddenly he couldn’t help screaming.

“AHHHHHHEEEEEE!”

The platform slammed to a bone-rattling stop. Abel knocked his mouth shut hard. He ran his tongue over his teeth to make sure they hadn’t shattered. He was actually glad he’d lost his phone connection because he didn’t want his friends or Arvin to have heard him screaming like that. It was not a dignified tone.

Once certain that he’d neither shattered his teeth nor wet his pants, he stood up and brushed himself off. He was in a huge windowless corridor; he guessed it was underground. Then again, it was hard to judge distance when you were screaming at the top of your lungs and clenching your bladder shut.

The corridor was big enough for three dragons to walk side by side on the floor, and nine more to fly side by side above them, like a giant trapezoid. There was a track down the center where the platform could slide, though in this case, it stayed put and he had to hop off and walk.

There were glowing arrows painted on the floor and walls, with different instructions for dragon riders and work crews. As Abel stepped from the platform into the hallway, the signs sprang to digital life, showing 3D hologram maps and exit signs and even the universal symbols for the bathrooms.

“This is some kind of base,” he said, just in case his friends could still hear him. He didn’t receive a response. “I’m going farther in.”

After he passed each sign, it flattened again into normal-looking paint. The movements kept making him spin around, nervous that he was being followed. Abel didn’t like walking through an interactive building. He actually missed his school building, where the signs were faded and didn’t move when you weren’t looking.

More technology just makes things creepier, he thought.

He reached an intersection where the huge hallway kept going, but two human-sized hallways branched off on either side.

As he considered which way he should go, the painting on the floor projected a hologram in front of him: an orange arrow shimmered, pointing left. Then it turned purple and blinked on and off, shifting back and forth between orange and purple, just like the drones in the race: short, short, long. It repeated the pattern over and over.

Roa, Abel thought.

Arvin had hacked the system, so even though they couldn’t talk, they could communicate through the building itself. Roa would know that Abel didn’t have a mind for secret codes, but he’d just finished a race following this pattern, so of course they knew he’d recognize it. His friends were talking to him!

He followed the arrow down the corridor. The walls were metal and smoother than the ones in the big hallway, where dragons had cracked and scratched them. Humans couldn’t do the kind of damage to a building that a dragon could.

There were metal doors all along the corridor, but none were labeled. They all had red lights above them, and small viewing windows. As he walked by, Abel peered inside and saw stalls and stalls of sleeping dragons, just like at the Burning Market. Each dragon wore electromagnetic cuffs on its wrists to hold them in place. As he went down the hallway, he could only just make out their shapes in the dim stalls, but he was pretty sure none of them was Lu’s.

There was one more door at the end of the corridor, but this one had no viewing window. No lights blinked over it either.

“Little help?” he said, but still got no answer.

A metal plate said the door was exam bay 7b. There was a keypad next to it. Abel waited for it to spring open, but nothing happened.

“Come on, Arvin,” he mumbled. “I’m here …”

Still nothing. He was on his own.

Maybe Arvin had lost contact with him, or maybe he’d reached the limits of his eighth-grade hacking ability. Maybe Abel had been wrong to trust Arvin at all, and this was a trap to get rid of him. It was definitely an underground lair, and if comics had taught Abel anything, it was that nothing good ever happens in underground lairs.

Or maybe … Abel touched the handle with his fingertips and gave a gentle push.

The door cracked open.

It wasn’t locked to begin with.

Sometimes, the obvious answer to a problem was also the best one.

He slipped through and found himself on a high catwalk above a huge industrial veterinarian’s office. Bright white lights blazed down, keeping Abel hidden in total darkness above.

He recognized some of the equipment from his Dr. Drago comics. There was the special sonic heart monitor that could take readings through a dragon’s scales. There was a big machine with high-powered syringes that could inject medicine between a dragon’s scales. And there was a tray of surgical tools that could, if necessary, slice and dice and remove a dragon’s scales altogether.

A chill ran along Abel’s spine. He thought about the section of the Burning Market that sold dragon parts. Had he just stumbled into a “chop shop,” where stolen dragons were dissected and sold off in pieces?

Lu’s wyvern, Felix, was strapped to a large metal plate on the floor in the center of the room. His wings were bound to his body with huge restraints, and one of his legs was locked in a cuff. The mechanical claw on the other leg had been removed and sat on a table off to the side, hooked up to computers. There were extra cuffs too, enough for a four-legged dragon.

Like Brazza, he thought. They were ready for whichever dragon won. This was the place Silas had wanted to find. This was where someone was hacking dragon DNA.

Lu’s wyvern’s head and neck rested flat. His body rose and fell with deep, steady breaths. His eyes stared at nothing. All around the weary dragon were lab technicians in heavy leather smocks and big rubber gloves. Abel recognized a few of them by their infinity tattoos.

Sky Knights.

Then he saw something that turned the chill on his skin into a burning rage:

His sister, Lina, was standing beside the dragon, dressed in all black. She was the dragon thief!

No wonder she’d told him not to race. As much as Silas had wanted him to find this laboratory, Lina wanted him not to. He’d been caught up in a game between his brother and his sister—between the Dragon’s Eye and the Sky Knights. And the biggest losers in this game were the dragons themselves.

Of all the kinners Abel could’ve found down here, why did it have to be Lina?

Beside Lina stood another figure, one that made Abel grind his teeth on sight: Officer Grallup.

What were his sister and the KISS officer from his school doing in an underground laboratory with a stolen dragon?

“Will it work this time?” another man asked. Abel recognized this one too. Captain Drey, boss of the Sky Knights. He’d met Abel before. He’d stolen Karak, and Abel had taken the dragon back. Drey had vowed revenge, and only Lina had protected Abel from the Sky Knights’ wrath. If he got caught here, she probably wouldn’t be able to protect him any longer.

Abel took a deep breath to calm himself, and he listened.

“Science is a process, not an end point,” a lab technician in a shiny neon-pink rubber smock told Drey.

“It’ll be your end if you don’t start getting this right,” Captain Drey answered coldly. Officer Grallup laughed, but the Sky Knights boss hadn’t said it to be funny. He meant it. Lina wore a blank expression on her face, like she wasn’t listening at all, like she didn’t want to be there.

Is this why you warned me not to race? Abel wondered. Because you wanted to protect me from the Sky Knights’ dragon theft? Or because you wanted to keep me from knowing about it?

The lab technician in the pink smock lined up a giant needle at the wyvern’s side, using a laser to aim it between two scales. Then, with the press of a button, the needle shot forward and pierced the wyvern, who didn’t even flinch.

Abel did.

He watched, skin prickling, as the technician pressed another button and drew the dazed dragon’s steaming hot blood.

When the syringe was full, the technician put it in a different machine, and they all watched as swirling strands of DNA projected above it.

“This will do nicely,” the lab technician said. “We can use the wyvern DNA to improve speed, strength, and docility.”

Abel didn’t know what “docility” meant, but he repeated the word to himself three times to force it into his memory. He could look it up or ask Roa what it meant when he had service again. Doss-ill-ity. Doss-ill-ity. Doss-ill-ity.

“Why didn’t you get the faster dragon?” Grallup grumbled at Lina.

“My orders were to bring the winning dragon,” Lina replied. “Which I did.”

“Or were you just too sentimental to steal from your scrawny little brother?” Grallup snarled.

“Insult my family again and see what happens.” Lina glowered at the much bigger man.

“Lina follows orders,” Captain Drey defended her, forcing Grallup to back down. Then he turned to Lina and spoke gently. “But, Lina, we’re designing something never before seen in the world. Some creative thinking on all our parts is necessary. A good soldier isn’t just an order-following robot. She can improvise and adapt to achieve her mission objectives, understand? We’re trying to free Drakopolis from a corrupt and cruel government. We can’t afford to let family sentimentality slow us down. The oppressed of Drakopolis are all our family, yes?”

Lina nodded. She looked like she did after getting scolded for wasting water in the shower, annoyed but also knowing she’d been wrong.

It was weird for Abel to hear his rebellious big sister described as a soldier, especially since Silas actually wore a military uniform. Out in the world, his siblings were so different from how he saw them at home. Lina, the rebel, was a good soldier committed to a brutal cause. Silas was a loyal soldier, breaking the rules to try to clear his sister’s name. His siblings were so much more complicated than Abel had thought they were. Perhaps the same was true of him.

Maybe we’re all complicated, Abel mused. My friends, my parents, even my enemies. Even Grallup.

“Come on, Drey, just order her to steal her brother’s dragon,” Grallup said.

Okay, so not Grallup, Abel thought. He’s just a goon.

“We could integrate its speed into the program,” one of the technicians said. “But its temperament would need adjustment.”

Drey looked at Lina. Abel held his breath.

“I’d really rather not steal from my own family,” she said, and Abel exhaled. Maybe his sister wasn’t a total Sky Knights fanatic yet.

“He bought that dragon with the race winnings we gave him,” Drey said. “It’s hardly stealing.”

“I’ve already brought you dozens of dragons,” Lina objected. “Are you telling me that that’s not enough?”

“Progress demands sacrifice,” the lab technician said. “We’ve used up the dragons you brought.”

“Used up?” Lina asked. “What does that mean?”

Used up. Abel thought he knew what that meant. It was terrible.

“Don’t be squeamish,” Drey said. “We’re changing the world. We didn’t break you out of prison to have you sit on the sidelines. We need the best dragons, and you’re the best dragon thief. If you won’t do it, then you’re of no use to us.”

Grallup shifted behind Lina. He had a stun gun in his hand, ready to use. She didn’t turn, but she flinched a little at the sound of it powering on behind her back.

“I know it seems harsh,” Drey told her, resting a large hand on Lina’s shoulder gently. “Especially after what happened at the raceway … but imagine the power the Sky Knights will have when we control a flock of super-dragons. No one will need to pay the Thunder Wings for their armor or weapons because we can engineer dragons that don’t need armor and extra weapons. We can design custom dragons, genetically modified to be whatever the buyer wants them to be.”

Abel thought about the glowing pangolin from the Burning Market. He thought about the invention of dragon peppers. He thought about all the cool things science could do—and how it could all be bent to horrible ends by wicked people. Smarts and talent were just as dangerous in the wrong person as a ten-ton Reaper with the wrong rider.

“Once they can buy our superior dragons, no one will want old-fashioned natural breeds,” Drey said, warming to his little motivational speech. Lina looked like she was drinking it up. “We’ll sell to everyone. We can even donate dragons through our charitable foundations. And after our dragons are in every last corner of Drakopolis … we’ll unleash our code to take control of them. We’ll control everything. We can remake Drakopolis as we want. No more Red Talons or Thunder Wings. No more Dragon’s Eye. We’ll make a more just, a more free Drakopolis.”

Lina nodded along with the speech, but she didn’t clap or swoon or even smile. Drey looked disappointed in her response.

“I need to know I can still count on you,” Drey told her, leaning down to look into Abel’s sister’s eyes. “No matter how many dragons we have to destroy, no matter how many dragons we have to steal, I need to know you are a true believer.”

He tapped the infinity dragon symbol on his neck, then the one Lina had on her forearm. Abel had never seen it before. She always concealed it at home. His heart sank. Maybe she was already a true believer.

Lina took a deep breath. The stun gun buzzed in Grallup’s hands. She nodded.

“Bring us your brother’s dragon,” Drey said. “Or Grallup will do it his way.”

The KISS officer grinned.

Abel felt his heart breaking as his sister met Drey’s eye and said, loud and clear, “I’ll do it. I’ll bring you my brother’s dragon.”

Abel didn’t want to cry, but tears hot as dragon’s breath streaked his cheeks. He didn’t want to watch whatever they were about to do to Lu’s wyvern either. But he couldn’t stop them, not alone. He fled into the hallway and ran back toward the platform that had brought him.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said into his earbuds. “But we need a plan.… We have a lot more than one dragon to save!”