Free Akaela by E.E. Giorgi Page A

wriggles away
from my clasp, which is okay, because now I can open my arms wide to greet Kael
back.
    “Kael!”
Athel whispers, raising his arm.
    Kael
approaches and my excitement turns into anguish. His left eye is covered in crusted
blood and two of his left talons are gone. He veers to the Tower and lands,
letting out a long squeal of distress. Athel and I jump on him and hug him,
cooing and crooning as if he were our baby. Athel is so happy to see the falcon
back that he even forgets about his eye still dangling from Kaels’ right ankle.
    Kael hops
and trips. He looks at us with his one eye, his beak hanging open as if to ask, Why ? Tears roll
down my cheeks.
    “Darn it,
he’s a mess,” Athel says.
    “We should
take him to Uli,” Lukas mutters.
    I pick up
Kael and examine his wounds. I’m not sure if he lost one eye, but two of his
left talons are gone for sure, cleanly severed at the junction.
    “Oh,
baby,” I murmur, checking his other foot. The makeshift camera is still
attached to the ankle, but there’s something else stuck between Kaels right
talons.
    Athel
scolds Lukas for even mentioning Uli. “How are we going to explain this?”
    “What?
You’re gonna risk him getting an infection?” I say, trying to pry the small
object from Kael’s talons.
    Lukas gets
to his feet. “In case you haven’t noticed, the sun’s almost out. If we don’t
get back now, we’ll have a lot more to explain than just an injured bird.”
    Athel
stoops down to pick up Kael. I look up at him, my fingers clasped around the tiny
object I just retrieved from his talons. My brother peers at me
and frowns .
    “What is
it?” he asks.
    I swallow,
words failing me. “Dad,” I whisper, and show him the flap of metal Kael has
brought back. There’s a serial number engraved on one side, Z1633, one I’ve
memorized a long time ago. One edge is chipped and covered in dirt. And as I
brush my finger along the broken edge, the crust of dirt breaks into fine
flakes that waver down to the floor.
    Fine red
flakes.
    Dried blood.
    Dad’s serial number encrusted in blood.
    Athel was
right. Dad is in danger.

 
    Chapter Ten

 
    Athel
    Day Number: 1,532
    Event: We now have a map, but we need a
plan.
    Number of Mayakes left: 431.
    Goal for today: Meet at the stables and
discuss a plan.

 
    Kael’s head flops to the side and
his legs give out. Uli lays him on a white sheet of paper and feels his heart.
    “He’s
fine,” he says, “but he ate half his battery life.” He slides two fingers under
the scapular feathers at the top of the right wing and inserts the TCB charger
into Kael’s port. “The eye should recover in a couple of weeks. The two missing
talons on the left foot sadly won’t grow back. But I’ll disinfect his wounds
and increase the antibiotic release through his implants to avoid an
infection.” He drops his chin and stares at us. “Are you two going to tell me
what happened to him?”
    Akaela and
I exchange a glance. “He came back like that this morning,” I say, before my
sister has a chance to reply. I rub my right eye and blink.
    “And what
happened to your eye?” Uli asks.
    Damn, why am I so bad at hiding things ?
    “Nothing,”
I say, and rub it some more.
    We’ve
rushed Kael down to Uli with no time to fix my eye. I plucked it out of the
makeshift camera right before leaving the sixtieth floor and popped it back
into my socket. Lukas promised to meet me as soon as I’m done with Kael so he
can solder back the wiring. In the meantime, the eyeball keeps moving in its
socket and I can’t refrain from rubbing it.
    “Will Kael
be ok?” Akaela asks.
    Uli
examines Kael’s left foot, where two of his talons went missing. “The implant
should prevent him from getting an infection. I wonder what happened to him.
This doesn’t look like an animal attack.” He stares at the two of us, both
sitting back-to-back on a recharging chair looking as innocent as we possibly
can.
    Which is
not a whole lot.
    I