Free Scorched by Mari Mancusi Page A

checking out the cute guys stringing up the lights?
    A choking sob escaped her.
    “Are you okay?” A warm hand slipped into her own and she realized that while she’d been lost in her thoughts, Connor had upped his pace, falling to her side. He squeezed her freezing hand, a comforting gesture that somehow managed to soothe her raging fear. At least she wasn’t alone in this. At least she had someone on her team.
    “I’m fine,” she replied quickly, trying to downplay her fear. Still, she couldn’t help a nervous glance around her, half expecting to come face-to-face with the machine-gun wielding soldier from the museum. Or maybe the two men in black, escaped from their bindings and ready for revenge. But the highway was empty. Silent as the grave. “I’ll feel better when we’re not so exposed.”
    “So will I,” Connor agreed. “Being aboveground like this, with all this open sky—well, it winds me up.” He glanced uneasily at the starscape spread above them like a glittery portrait. “I keep expecting…well, you know.” He shuffled his pack to one shoulder.
    “Are you saying you live underground in the future?” she asked.
    He nodded. “Only a few of the elite Dracken live on the Surface Lands in specially made sky houses. The rest of us are simply moles, scrounging in the dirt.” He snorted bitterly. “Though I suppose it’s better than the alternative.”
    “Which is…?”
    He gave her a steely look. “Being eaten by a dragon.”
    Oh. Right. She paused, not sure what to say. It still seemed so unreal, like something out of a movie. Her eyes traveled to the pack on his back, containing the egg. Could something so small and fragile-looking really spark a worldwide apocalypse?
    “It was called the Scorch,” Connor told her, as if overhearing her thoughts. “The year the dragons decimated the surface of our world. They burned through every forest and every field. From the smallest town to the largest city. Homes, businesses, theme parks—it didn’t matter. Nothing could withstand the dragons’ fire.”
    Trinity shivered, trying to imagine a world like that—where monsters ruled the skies and flames fell like rain. Where there were no football stadiums, no movie theaters, no Disney World even. What would it be like to live in such a place? To be forced underground, never seeing the sun. No wonder Connor was so pale. “When does this happen?” she asked curiously, though she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know. “This…Scorch?”
    “About ten years from now.”
    She stopped in her tracks. “Wait, what?” she cried. “But that’s so soon!” For some reason, she’d had it in her mind that this terrible holocaust was a far off event—two hundred years in the future, like her new friend. But ten years? Could this nightmare really be right around the corner? She found herself looking fearfully at the trees dancing in the breeze. The twinkling lights of Old Oak Grove shining in the distance. Could her entire world really be taken down by dragons within the next decade?
    “It didn’t take long,” Connor replied. “Once your government managed to hatch this one egg and realized what they’d stumbled upon, it was only a matter of time before they figured out how to extract its DNA and start the cloning process.” He grimaced. “They probably thought they were doing great work, bringing extinct creatures back to life.” His voice betrayed his disapproval. “Little did they know. It wasn’t long before the creatures had broken free and started flying wild.”
    She shuddered. “Couldn’t anyone stop them?”
    “No one knew how. Dragons are pretty much immune to traditional weaponry. Guns, missiles—everything your government tried to throw at them. And by the time people did start figuring out other methods to bring them down, the world was overrun.”
    “That’s awful,” she murmured, trying to grasp the implications of his words. Suddenly her earlier money concerns