Ember cocked her head, looking bewildered. “Why?”

“Well, because...” I raised my hands like I was hefting a watermelon. “The egg inside her gets too big and starts to stretch...certain things—”

“Okay, okay.” Ember held up both hands, wrinkling her nose. “I get it. Point taken.” She frowned. “So, how long after...breeding...does it take for the egg to come out?”

“Fifteen months. And most of that time will be spent in dragon form. From what I’ve been able to discern, as soon as the egg is laid, it’s taken from the female and sent to the hatchery, where it’s put under an incubator. The hatchlings grow up never knowing their parents—they’re raised to be loyal to the organization and nothing else, as I’m sure you’ve experienced. So you can see why Talon maintains such a tight hold on their breeding facilities. And why no one in the organization is allowed to choose their own mates.”

“Well, that’s...awful, as usual.” Ember snorted. “So Talon tells you who you’re going to be mated with, as well? Good thing I’m out of the organization, then.”

A sudden, awkward silence fell. My stomach danced, and I didn’t know if it was me or Cobalt tying himself into a knot. I sneaked a glance at Ember and saw her staring rigidly forward, her cheeks as red as her hair.

We rounded a corner, and I lurched to a halt. About a hundred yards away, another building sat alone and quiet at the end of the lot. It looked the same as the ones surrounding it: deserted and abandoned. No cars, no lights, no people.

But it was the sign near the entrance that caught my attention.

Quickly, I ducked behind the wall, pulling Ember with me. She gave me a puzzled look but didn’t say anything as I scanned the area for cameras, guards, security, anything that seemed out of place.

Nothing. This was getting weirder and weirder.

“Did you see anything?” Ember whispered, peering around my arm.

“No,” I muttered, drawing back. “But we’re in the right place.”

“How do you know?”

“Do you see the sign?” I gestured back to the building. NewTech Industries, it read. Building a Brighter Tomorrow.

I smiled grimly. “NewTech is one of Talon’s branches,” I said. “They maintain a front as a medical equipment manufacturer, but they’re really a genetics research lab working for the organization.”

“Do you think this is where they keep the breeders?”

“I don’t know. Wes, did you get that?” I continued, speaking into the wire. “There’s a NewTech branch here, but it looks deserted. Could this be the facility? Everything we’ve seen so far has been empty.”

“Hang on.” There was a pause as Wes turned to his trusty laptop. After a few silent minutes, he muttered, “Well, according to the internet, there was a NewTech lab here. But it was shut down five years ago and has been abandoned ever since.”

“Dammit.” I clenched a fist against the brick wall. It seemed the likelihood that this was the facility I’d been searching for had completely vanished. I’d suspected as much, from the lack of security around the building, but I still held out hope that we might find it. “So this was a waste of time. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted Griffin.”

Ember put a hand my arm. “We’ve come all this way, and it is a Talon facility,” she observed, as Cobalt leaped inside at her touch. “Maybe we should go in, see if they’ve left anything behind that we can use against the organization. Maybe there’s something that will tell us where the real facilities are.”

“I doubt it, Firebrand.” Even if this had been a facility, there were no dragons here now, and the chance to rescue the breeders was gone. It was back to square one. “But, yeah, we should go in, look around. Any dirty secrets we can dig up, any hints at what Talon is up to will be worth it. Let’s just be cautious. We don’t know what’s really in there.”

“I don’t like this, Riley,” Wes muttered, a worried buzz in my ear. “It’s too clean. Something about this whole situation seems wrong.”

“We won’t be long,” I told him, walking around the corner toward the building at the end of the lot. Wes was right; the area was way too clean to be in use anymore, but we still might be able to learn some things about Talon. I wasn’t about to give up on the breeding facilities. “It’s worth a quick look around,” I said. “Fifteen minutes, tops, and then we’ll leave. If you see anything strange out there, let me know.”