The Intuitives(100)

Ammu looked through the viewfinder and then stood up slowly.

“I believe it is time for us to move to the seventh-floor observation deck. Help me gather the others, if you would be so kind.” He said it easily, even cheerfully, as though there were nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary about either the request or the reason behind it.

“How much time until the launch?” Rush asked.

“Thirteen minutes,” Sam replied, her voice tense, the stress of their predicament welling up within her as she fought to maintain a casual front.

Gathering the others and moving upstairs: three minutes. Performing a summoning: one minute, minimum. That leaves nine minutes to figure out what to summon and use it to get rid of that thing, if we even can.

Sam’s mind performed the time calculations as naturally as breathing, whether she wanted to or not. As it happened, she did not, in this particular case, want to know that they had nine minutes to work with before the Orion test flight—the manned Orion test flight—exploded on the launch pad, or worse. But she was right, nonetheless.

It took exactly three minutes to gather everyone back together, move up to the seventh floor, explain the situation to the others, and post Christina at the door so they wouldn’t be interrupted. The high, white terrace was the perfect size for a summoning, but that was the only thing Sam could think of that they had going in their favor, which didn’t seem like much under the circumstances.

“We’ve never summoned anything even remotely big enough to fight that thing,” Rush blurted out as soon as they were alone.

“We have one minute to summon something and another nine minutes to do something with it,” Sam said. “That’s it. So whatever we’re going to do, we have to do it fast.”

“How do you know it will wait until the launch?” Daniel demanded, his voice rising in desperation. “How do you know it’s not going to just rip the Orion to shreds like three seconds from now?”

“It won’t,” Sam declared. “Nine minutes. Trust me. We have time to fix it. I know we have time to fix it. I just don’t know how yet, but we have to figure it out. Now. Planning time counts, by the way.”

“It doesn’t matter what we decide to bring if we don’t have the pattern,” Kaitlyn protested. “It’s not like Ammu brought his book with him to this thing. The point was not to let them know what we can do!”

“I do not have the book,” Ammu confirmed.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam almost yelled. “You’re not hearing me. I’m telling you, I know we have time to fix it—with what we have, here with us, right now—but we won’t for much longer if we don’t figure this out. Come on, people. What can we summon that has a chance against that thing?”

“This,” Sketch said bluntly, and he held out his art pad, pointing to the page he had been searching for. It was his drawing of Alexander’s tomb, but it wasn’t the tomb he was pointing at. It was the white dragon, standing on its rear legs next to the pyramid, facing down the black dragon on the other side.

“Yes!” Mackenzie shouted. “Sketch! You’re a genius!”

But Rush looked almost panic-stricken. “Guys, there’s no way I’d be able to control that thing. The pterolycos was almost enough to kill me.”

“You do not have to do this alone,” Ammu told him. Despite the urgency of the moment, his voice was serene, unflustered, as it always was, his confidence in them palpable. “I know you do not feel prepared for this, but I have seen the six of you do so much, accomplish so much, in such a short amount of time… you can do it, but you must do it together.”

“We’ll have to figure it out as we go,” Sam said. “We don’t have a choice. We have to start the summoning now. Gears, do you have it?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed, wide-eyed but trying to appear calm.

“Sketch,” Sam ordered, “give her something to draw with.”

Sketch dug a precious charcoal pencil out of his box and handed it over.

“We start here,” Mackenzie said, even as Kaitlyn was tracing out the summoning circle on the white floor with trembling hands. “Disco?”

“Ready,” he said.

Sam counted them in with no further discussion. “One… two… one, two, three, four!”

They moved around the circle efficiently, but the summoning had an inner rhythm to it that could not be hurried. The dance Mackenzie performed was the most beautiful yet, and Daniel sang as he had never sung before, his clarion tones ringing out into the morning air. As Kaitlyn approached the last rune, Sam called to Mackenzie.

“Just in front of the terrace, on my mark! Five… four… three… two… one… NOW!”

Sam threw her hands toward the empty air in front of the building, and a portal began to open before their eyes, suspended seven stories up in the sky, just beyond the edge of the terrace.

“Sketch?” she asked.

“Bring it,” he acknowledged.

The portal expanded to herculean proportions, and a tremendous white dragon emerged from it, turning to bow in the air before them, bellowing gloriously into the sky and glittering in the sun, its scales catching every ray of light as though they were covered in an impossibly fine mist.

“Oh!” Kaitlyn exclaimed, gasping in delight.