The dragon surreally flapped its wings as it hovered a hundred feet above the planet’s surface.
Her jaw was on the floor.
Parkowski was stunned. Not only were dragons not real, and certainly not on Venus, but her rational mind wouldn’t allow for anything, let alone a gigantic mythical creature, to fly in the thick atmosphere. But there it was, clear as day, in front of her.
She was exposed and out in the open. The field of boulders was kilometers behind her, there was no way she would make it back there if the dragon would attack.
The dragon stopped flapping its wings and went into a lazy glide in an orbit about half of its original altitude.
Parkowski breathed out. Maybe it hadn’t noticed her.
But it had.
The beast made a sharp turn and came straight in her direction.
CHAPTER SIX
Parkowski screamed.
The dragon swooped down and opened its mouth wide. Flames shot out towards the ACHILLES unit.
Her survival instincts kicked in. Parkowski dove towards the planet’s rocky, cracked surface. Unfortunately, she forgot that she wasn’t actually there on Venus.
She fell to the floor in a heap of wires, equipment, and hardware.
It was like something out of a nightmare. Parkowski felt trapped, constrained by the wires wrapped around her body.
The sensor on her left leg slid off as she slammed, knee-first into the lightly padded floor. Her other leg hit a moment later, followed by her torso and arms. Parkowski felt a shooting pain in her right elbow that had gotten twisted in the fall, and a slight ache in her knee.
The dragon was still there, overhead, blotting out the stars. It roared and started another dive.
She screamed again and rolled away from the dragon, entangling herself even more. Something unplugged, likely her headset, and her entire world went dark.
Parkowski paused for a second. Was she dead? Had the dragon’s fiery breath gotten her? Was she in heaven… or hell? Then she remembered. She wasn’t on Venus. She was on Earth, in a high bay, in the building she worked at every single weekday.
A couple of deep breaths later, she was calm. There was no immediate danger. But, she was still in a shock, a daze as everything at the moment seemed so surreal.
She tried to stand up, but couldn’t. A cord or wire strapped to her leg prevented her from doing so. The skin-tight clothing Parkowski wore made it hard for her to tell just how many cables were around her, or where they were, but they were definitely constricting her body. She was only able to make it up on one knee.
There were muffled sounds outside of her headphones, some voices and scuffling of feet, but it all was a haze. “Lost connection!” she heard a male voice shout. She recognized it but couldn’t put a name to it. Someone grabbed her wrist, trying to help her up, but instinctively she pulled away, falling back and trapping her left foot under her.
Parkowski took another deep breath. She was on Earth, there was no dragon, and everything was going to be ok. Another set of hands, softer ones, began detaching the cables from her leg sensors. She relaxed. Just by the touch, she could tell that it was Dr. Pham.
A second and third set of hands started unwrapping from the cables from the nest that surrounded her. “Stay calm, Grace,” she heard Pham say. “Everything is ok.”
“Can you take my headset off?” she asked.
“No, not yet, sorry,” the male voice she had heard earlier said. It was one of the technicians in the high bay. “We need to get all of the wires off before we can safely remove it.”
“Ok,” Parkowski replied. “Thanks, everyone, sorry about that.”
She felt like shit. Everything had been going so well too.
No one responded, the team of three was in the process of slowly untangling her from the VR setup.
Finally, soft hands — Pham’s — were placed on either side of her head, and the headset was lifted off. Parkowski breathed a sigh of relief. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the bright, artificial lights of the high bay but after a few blinks she could see.
Pham, a technician, and an older woman were positioned nearly on top of Parkowski, unplugging and unwrapping, trying to free her from the mess of cables. A second set of people, Dr. Rosen included, were huddled around a four-screen computer terminal in the front of the room.
She stood up. Her eyes shot up to the large computer monitor displaying the simulated environment. It was frozen, showing a still image of the ridgeline that she had reached before the dragon had attacked her. Something must have happened to the system, either through the communications pathway or by her own actions here on Earth.
Conspicuously, the wyvern wasn’t present.
“Are you ok, Grace?” Dr. Pham asked.
Her eyes snapped back to look down at him. “I think so,” she said. “Sorry about that.”
“Did something happen?” he asked as the last loop around her right leg was removed.
Parkowski was surprised by his question. “Did you guys not see it?”
“See what?”
“The dragon,” she insisted, her stomach giving an audible growl.
The two technicians shot her weird looks.
“Grace, you’re hungry,” Pham said loudly, changing the subject. He lightly grasped her elbow and steered her towards the edge of the raised platform. “Let’s go eat something in my office.”
“But the mission,” Parkowski protested. “Is everything ok? Are the ACHILLES units safe?”
“Don’t worry about them now,” Pham said in a lower tone as he helped her get off of the stage. No one looked at her. They were either working the bank of terminals, trying to reacquire contact with the robots, or cleaning up the mess she had left up on the raised platform.
He gently steered her to his small office and closed the door.
Parkowski was about to ask if he had seen the dragon when the older man shoved a protein bar in her face. “Eat this,” he said, more of an order than a suggestion.
She tore the wrapper off and bit into it. It was some weird fruity flavor, not one she would have chosen herself, but with how hungry she was the young engineer didn’t care.
Pham watched her as she devoured the bar. “Do you want another one?”
She shook her head. “Maybe… maybe in a few minutes?” Parkowski swallowed. “Thank you.”
“Not a problem.”
Pham then got serious, the amused look disappeared from his face. “You said something odd back there,” he said to the still-chewing Parkowski. “Unless I was hearing things, you mentioned a dragon.”
She paused. “I did because I saw one.”
Pham just looked at her.
“Really,” Parkowski insisted. The protein bar was gone.
He didn’t respond.
“Did you not see it?” she asked.
Pham shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Grace,” he said softly. “A dragon?”
“Yes, a dragon.”
“A Chinese dragon, or a European one?”
She thought for a second. “A European one… wait, are you messing with me, doc?” Parkowski asked, suddenly angry.
“No, no, most definitely not,” he said, defensively. “Just trying to gather information.”
“But you didn’t see it?”
Pham shook his head again. “No. You were coming up on the waypoint, you were almost done, and then all of a sudden you screamed and fell. We still had a signal then, the robot fell hard to the ground, same as you, but when you started rolling we lost the connection. Not sure where along the pathway we lost it, but lost it we did. Most of the team started trying to bring it back up while a couple of the techs and I went over to make sure you’re ok." He took a breath. “It happened so fast. But, I feel like I would have remembered a dragon.”