“THIS IS A SECURITY ALERT. Do not move.”

The blasted warning repeated again and again over the speakers. All around the arena, holograms turned into red exclamation points above the symbol of the Dragon’s Eye. Every phone buzzed and lit up with the same emblem, a dragon with an eye for a head wielding a huge curved sword.

Dragon Safety Officers rushed the crowd. Abel saw them grab the old man with his grandchildren and pull him away. He saw the Wing Scout leader yanked from his troop. He quickly scanned the crowd for anyone else whose phone Lina and her crew had taken. Sure enough, they were all getting hauled away by the police.

That meant the four officers with their mirrored helmets and riot shields charging down the aisle were headed straight for Abel.

“What did you do in the bathroom?!” Roa cried, bracing themselves for the charging riot police.

“What’s going on here?” his father called to the officers in his best dad voice, which was neither terribly loud nor very convincing against tactical body armor.

What did give the riot police pause, however, was Carrot Soup Supreme, the mad-eyed orange Reaper diving low over the stands.

Abel’s mother yanked him and his father down to the ground; Roa dove on top of Topher, and they all lay in a heap as the dragon plowed through the riot police, slashing its huge claws and tossing spectators, stadium employees, and armored riot police aside like they were rag dolls.

Did people ever actually make dolls out of rags? Abel wondered, his brain doing that annoying thing where he dealt with panic by getting completely distracted with irrelevant thoughts.

Nothing focused the mind, however, like hot dragon’s breath, which he now felt warming the air above him.

He bent around to see Carrot Soup Supreme surrounded by three Sawtooth Reapers in full military combat armor, ridden by Dragon’s Eye pilots with weapon system modifications, like flash cannons and electric stun missiles. Above the Reapers, blocking the orange dragon’s escape, was a Golden Wyvern, its mouth open to show a ball of poison breath building. The attack Reapers had balls of fire in their throats and their wing-mounted missiles ready to fire.

Carrot Soup Supreme, however, was insensate with rage.

“Insensate” was the word of the day on the vocabulary app his dad had made Abel download. It meant the dragon was too mad to feel, think, or notice the danger it was in. Insensate with rage was not a way you wanted a loose dragon to be. A word Abel knew that sort of meant the same thing was ”berserk.”

Carrot Soup Supreme had gone berserk.

“Look at its eyes,” Roa whispered. They’d turned pearl white from lid to lid.

“Racing dragons are well trained,” Abel said. “How could it just go berserk?”

“How could it come from behind to win that race?” Roa replied. “It wasn’t natural.”

At that moment, all three military Sawtooth pilots fired their missiles, which struck the orange dragon in the chest and in each shoulder. It roared and lashed out, tearing off a plate of one Reaper’s armor and almost knocking the other two out of the sky.

“Those attacks should have taken it down!” Roa gasped.

The Reapers spat fire. One dragon alone probably couldn’t hurt another dragon too badly just with their breath, but three at the same time could do some damage.

Apparently, Carrot Soup Supreme wasn’t totally insensate, because when the flames hit it from all three sides, it shrieked. Then the wyvern above fired its poison breath, which mixed with the flames and ignited as green fire.

Carrot Soup Supreme unleashed a cry so loud and high-pitched that the glass of the luxury boxes cracked. People on the ground covered their ears and screamed. Even Dragon Safety Officers in their riot gear fell to the ground, their helmeted heads in their hands. Abel noticed Jazinda Balk being rushed from her box by her Red Talon bodyguards. Her son lingered a moment longer, looking back at the suffering dragon with disgust.

“They’re torturing it!” Roa cried out. Roa was the sort of person who loved all dragons and hated to see one in pain. Roa respected a dragon’s nature, even when that nature was destructive. “They’re killing it!”

Abel dared to look up as the orange dragon went rigid in the sky. Wyvern poison filled its lungs, and the trio of dragons’ breath burned its scales. Then, like a demolished skyscraper, it collapsed toward the terrified crowd below.

People scattered as the dragon’s body crashed, cracking the concrete.

Roa had tears in their eyes, but Abel’s parents were already looking at the Dragon Safety Officers staggering back to their feet.

“Mom,” Abel whispered to his mother, who was still protecting him with her body, as if that would’ve mattered against a berserk Reaper or a riot police stun blast. “I think those cops are coming for me.”

“For you?” she whispered. “Why?” But then she looked around and saw what Abel saw: riot police by the hundreds grabbing people, young and old, some dressed in the colors of different kins, some clearly in no way connected to any criminal gangs whatsoever, and some who might’ve been dressed in kin colors, but not on purpose. Maybe they just liked fashion. The DSOs were arresting people at random. They’d think of what to charge them with later. That’s how the Dragon’s Eye worked.

Of course, they had good reason to arrest Abel. He didn’t know how yet, but the Sky Knights had rigged this race.

“It has to do with Lina,” Abel said, which his mother immediately understood.

“You can tell me about it later.” His mom met his eyes. “And you will. But for now, let’s get out of here.”

His dad helped Roa and Topher up, and they moved quickly through the aisle to one of the holes that Carrot Soup Supreme’s claws had torn in the stands. Hopefully they’d be out before any of the riot police noticed where they’d gone. They blended into the fleeing crowd as quickly as they could, heading for the ramps and elevators, where the taxi-backed dragons had already lined up to whisk people away.

Before Abel slipped from the stadium on an overcrowded long-wing bus, he glanced back at the chaos; then he took another look at the account balance on his phone. The screen still showed $550 he didn’t have before.

While their bus winged away between the glass skyscrapers and bright neon billboards of the Raptura District, Abel watched swarms of Dragon’s Eye wyverns dive into the stadium. Huge long-wing prisoner transports landed to load the hundreds of civilians the police had arrested, while short-wing Blue Foots flapped in with ambulances on their backs to haul away the thousands more people who’d been injured. In Abel’s head, the shrieks of the orange Reaper echoed.

Oh, Lina, he thought to himself, what have you done?