The moon hung fat and silver over Seattle, bathing the city in a cold glow. Its light spilled down glass towers and wet asphalt, caught on the chrome of moving cars and the faces of pedestrians drifting home with coffees gone cold in their hands. Ferries whispered across Elliott Bay, and a gull cried once and was swallowed by the hush. The air was crisp—the kind of night that lied to you and said nothing bad could happen.
But in the shadows, something moved.
A shimmer of blue, so faint it could've been a trick of the light, rippled along the brick wall of an alleyway before melting back into the dark. It slid up a drainpipe, glanced off the corner of a rooftop, then flattened against a billboard like a stain. A predator's motion. Silent. Purposeful.
The figure resolved as it reached the edge of the roof—a towering man, easily six-eleven, wearing matte-black armor traced with faint cerulean lines that pulsed like a heartbeat. A helmet concealed his face, its visor a narrow slash of electric blue. Despite his size, he moved like liquid, every step precise and unhurried.
Agent Bumblebee, Reconnaissance Division, Section Six. Unit Nine.
The voice in his earpiece was low and grainy, the product of a man whose best days were half a century behind him. "This is Headquarters. Section Six Recon, Agent Bumblebee, do you copy?"
Bumblebee tapped a finger against his helmet to open the channel. "Copy. Closing in on the objective. I'll update once I have visual confirmation."
"Roger."
He vaulted a chain-link fence, dropped to a crouch in the alley below, and cut across a sleeping street where a liquor store's neon sign blinked in a tired red OPEN. Ahead, rising like a spear into the heavens, was his target—five hundred feet of steel and glass tapering to an illuminated crown.
The Space Needle. The city's pride. A relic from an older time, retrofitted now with scanners, comms relays, and enough defensive shielding to shrug off a small-scale aerial assault.
He paused at its base, letting the suit's sensors sweep. No civilians at this hour. Just the low hum of the Needle's perimeter field and the steady beat of his own pulse.
Sometimes, walking through Seattle at night, he forgot the world had ever been different—forgot the lectures on the Unity Accord, the wars of a century and a half ago, all the maps with borders like jagged scars. People laughed on sidewalks again. They argued about coffee. They posted sunsets from the ferry deck. That was the point, he guessed. That they could.
"Telemetry looks clean," HQ's voice crackled. "Proceed as planned."
"Roger."
Bumblebee bent his knees and ran straight up the side of the structure, boots magnetizing to the steel with soft, reassuring clicks. His climb was fluid, almost lazy. Wind rushed past, tugging at the seams of his armor. In forty seconds, he was crouched just below the observation deck, the city spread like circuitry beneath him.
"Bumblebee, report," HQ said.
"At the top. Beginning sweep now."
He vaulted onto the roof, rolling to a knee, rifle already tracking the angles his visor highlighted. The city stretched in every direction—constellations of office windows, the snake of headlights along I‑5, the black slab of water beyond. For a heartbeat, it was almost peaceful.
Then, movement. In his peripheral vision: a blur of white, low and fast, streaking past without a sound.
He rose. "I'll only say this once," he said, voice flat through the external mic. "If you can speak, do so now. Otherwise… you'll be eliminated."
Silence. The kind that pressed against your eardrums.
He began a slow circle, scanning every shadow. The suit threw up a dozen false positives—heat off a vent, a pigeon coiled under an HVAC unit, someone's lost helium balloon collapsed into silver wrinkles. Ten minutes passed. Nothing.
Then—a sound. A faint growl, six o'clock. He turned, rifle up, finger settling against the trigger guard.
Two creatures crouched on the steel, staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes.
They were small—no bigger than hounds—with wings tucked tight and tails coiled like ropes. One was black as midnight, absorbing the moonlight into a skin that looked less like scales and more like shadow given shape. The other was white, and not merely white but luminous, a thin radiance lifting off it like frost under a lamp.
Dragons.
The word arrived in his mind without permission, dragging a century of myths behind it.
"Comms, this is Bumblebee," he said, not taking his sights off them. "I need backup at my location. Two creatures—white and black, draconic in appearance. Potential threat. I'll hold them until—"
The white one cocked its head, curious. The black one's pupils pinpricked.
A new sound unspooled—deeper, resonant, not from the two in front of him but from something behind. He felt it before he heard it, a vibration through the soles of his boots and into his bones.
He couldn't move.
It was as if his body had been poured into a mold and allowed to set. Every instinct screamed: run, run, run—but his muscles ignored him. The air grew thick, pressing against his lungs like wet concrete.
"Bumblebee?" HQ again, sharper now. "Status update."
He tried to answer. His jaw wouldn't obey.
In the corner of his visor, a shadow rose. Massive. Towering. He turned his head by degrees, a statue dragging itself an inch.
Two larger versions of the creatures loomed over him, each the size of a three‑story building. The black one's hide absorbed the light into a velvet darkness, edges smearing as if they had trouble staying fixed in place. The white one's scales threw the moonlight back in shards. Their wings unfurled, blotting out the stars. The roof trembled under their weight.
His comm unit slipped from numb fingers, clattering and skittering across the roof to smack against a vent.
"Bumblebee, do you copy? We need a status report. Bumblebee?" HQ demanded. A second voice—Conner's—broke in, tight with something that might've been fear. "Galen, answer. Hey—answer, man."
The name cut through the paralysis like a pin through skin. Galen. He could see the academy gym for half a second—Conner jawing a joke after a spar, sweaty forearms braced against the mat, the two of them laughing at nothing. "You're too big to be that fast," Conner had said. "Nah," Galen had grinned. "You're too slow to be that small."
"HQ," he managed, jaw unlocking by millimeters. "Visual on—on four targets. Two small. Two—"
The white dragon lowered its head until one eye filled Galen's world. It wasn't blank. It wasn't animal. It was aware. He expected to see himself reflected in the glossy surface, a blue-lit figure dwarfed by a god, but what stared back from the cornea was different—lines and arcs like a map sketched in light.
He heard a voice, or thought he did. It wasn't sound so much as a brush along the inside of his skull. Foreign. Ancient. Gentle.
Found you.
The black dragon's chest expanded, a soundless inhalation that pulled the warmth out of the air. The little black one mirrored it, ribs flaring, pupils blown to coins. The little white one took a step toward Galen, talons clicking on steel.
"Back," he said, his voice tinny in his own ears. He tugged at the paralysis like a man yanking on a stuck door. Something gave—a finger, a wrist. He brought the rifle up two inches, enough to line the sights on a point between the little white one's eyes.
It blinked, slow.
A pulse rippled across the roof, like heat over asphalt. Not from them, he realized. From below. From the Needle itself. His visor flickered, HUD rebooting twice in a strobe of error text.
"HQ, I'm experiencing anomalous EM interference," he said. "Request field analysis."
"Copy," HQ replied. "Triangulating. Air assets scrambling. Hold your position." Conner again, lower, almost a whisper: "Hang in there, Bee."
The black dragon's head tilted, as if listening to something far away. The white one's gaze never left Galen.
A shape fluttered at the edge of the roof—trash uplifted by wind. Except trash didn't open a seam in the air when it moved. The seam widened into a slit of darkness, then a ring, then a mouth that swallowed the stars behind it. The edges of space flexed like a muscle. The little black dragon hissed once and bounded, ignoring Galen entirely, into the opening. It vanished. The ring snapped shut like a coin dropped flat.
"HQ," Galen said, voice steadying almost against his will. "Portal activity on-site." Saying the word felt like violating a rule you didn't know existed.
The little white one looked back at the larger white, then at Galen. It took a single step closer and exhaled a breath that fogged his visor from the outside. For a ridiculous second, he imagined it was trying to warm him.
"Identify intent," he told it, knowing how stupid that sounded. "Identify—"
The paralysis tightened, a ring closing around his ribs. The black dragon's growl deepened, and in answer, somewhere beyond sight, an answering call rolled across the sky like thunder muffled by snow.
Far below, sirens began to wail. The Needle's perimeter alarms kicked to life, red strobes painting the city in heartbeat flashes. A hum rose under Galen's boots as defensive fields spooled up. The suit threw warnings at his eyes in yellow and red. Shield harmonics destabilizing. Perimeter at 68%.
He gambled. If he could move his left hand, he could move his right. He slammed his thumb to the rifle's selector and fired a short, controlled burst over the white dragonling's head. The rounds shattered into harmless sparks against a translucent layer of air a foot from its horn.
The little white didn't flinch. The big white's eye narrowed.
"Nonlethal," he muttered to himself. "Try nonlethal." He flipped a wrist and a baton locked into his palm, crackling blue. He rapped it once on the roof—clack—to make himself large, to announce himself like a hiker with a bear.
The black dragonling flowed sideways, its outline blurring, as if moving didn't quite apply to it the way it applied to other things. The white dragonling mimicked the motion a beat later, less graceful, like a younger sibling still learning how to dance.
"Bumblebee," HQ said, louder now, more voices in the background. "Air support ETA three minutes. Keep those targets contained."
"I'll do what I can," Galen said through his teeth. It wasn't bravado. He just didn't know what else to say.
He took a step. The white dragonling stepped in mirror. He swept the baton left; it tracked. He dropped; it dipped its head. Somewhere behind him, metal creaked like a ship's hull as one of the larger bodies shifted weight.
"Conner," he said, because saying HQ felt too formal. "If I don't walk out of this—"
"Shut up," Conner said, voice too quick. "Save it for the bar. You still owe me a bottle for that last spar."
Galen smiled inside the helmet despite himself. "Copy."
The roof shuddered under a hit he couldn't see. A blossom of orange lit the city to the north. A half-second later, the pressure wave hit—whump—and the air tasted like copper. The dragons didn't react. The world felt like it had moved a centimeter to the left without taking him along.
The white dragon finally blinked. Its eye dilated, then tightened, and the gentle brush in Galen's skull returned, clearer this time. Not words. A feeling. Recognition. Relief.
Found you.
He wanted to ask found who? but the question snagged somewhere under his tongue. He had the sudden, stupid thought that he should've cleaned his apartment, as if someone he cared about might be stopping by after this.
The little white dragon made a sound, a chirp more than a roar, and stepped close enough that he could see his own distorted reflection in the curve of its horn. Its breath fogged the visor again. A thread of warmth seeped through the suit where none should have.
"Bee," Conner said, softer. "Status?"
Galen looked at the dragons, at the city, at the sky that no longer looked entirely like sky. He took a breath against the ring of pressure around his ribs and said, "I think… I think they're not here to—"
He didn't finish.
The black dragon lifted its head, mouth opening on a sound so low it lived under hearing, a pressure that razored the edges of his vision. The paralysis cinched. His grip loosened. The baton fell, bounced, and spun away into the dark.
His comm unit, already on the edge of the roof, vibrated once as if considering, then slid off and fell, the channel still open.
"Bumblebee? Bumblebee, do you copy?" HQ demanded. Conner's voice was a raw edge now. "Galen!"
The white dragon brought its eye level with his again. Up close, the map-lines within that pupil shifted and reoriented, as if aligning to coordinates he couldn't read. The brush in his skull turned into a single clear note, bright as struck glass.
Found you.
Something like a door opened where there was no wall—just a painless, absolute absence, a cutout in the world. Wind roared through the absence without making a sound. The little white dragon stepped backward into it and vanished. The black dragonling followed, swallowed by the same not‑place.
The larger black unfurled its wings, and for an instant the city went dark as its shadow crossed the Needle. The larger white folded its head, almost a bow.
Galen thought of Conner on a mat, laughing. He thought of the ferry wakes on a summer evening. He thought of nothing at all.
The world went black.