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  “Local time is 3:17 in the afternoon. I believe we have hundred-degree weather today.” President Turner waves me forward. “Ready to meet your teammates?”

  My stomach somersaults twice. I’m about to meet the six other players and their Sol de Noche steeds. This will be the first time I’m introduced as a Blazewrath athlete. Little by little, the nightmare fades to the back of my memories, carving out a hole for the dream to reemerge.

  Keep your cool. Be polite. Make them love you off the bat.

  “I’m ready,” I tell President Turner.

  “Good. I’m starving.” Manny plows through the sand.

  President Turner and I follow him to the Compound, where the nearest guards bow their heads to the man who hired them.

  “Afternoon,” he says to every guard in sight. “Now, Ms. Torres, you’re going to feel a lot better once we pass the shield.”

  “Shield?” I ask. Then a cold blast of wind slams into me. The area where the guards stand is magically air-conditioned. I can’t feel the sun burning my skin anymore, either, so the shield must also protect from getting more than a tan. “Why am I able to go through the shield?” I ask President Turner. “Do I already have some sort of magical clearance?”

  “Indeed you do.” He motions to the sixth bubble on the left side. “That one is where you’ll be staying along with your teammates. They’re all expecting you.”

  There go those somersaults again. “Are any other teams already here?”

  “Yes, they all have already arrived! You’ll be meeting everyone a few nights from now, when Ambassador Haddad hosts a special welcome party for the teams.”

  Awesome.

  Each house has a flag that designates which team lives where. Argentina, China, France, Portugal, Egypt, Puerto Rico, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela are on the left side. To the right side, there’s Russia, Scotland, South Korea, México, Pakistan, Guatemala, Sweden, and Spain.

  The entrance to the sixth bubble on the left is an oval door. Manny reaches it first, sliding a matching ivory key into the lock, then leaving it open for me to follow him inside.

  White walls. White floors. White couches and settees and coffee tables and vases. Three white sets of double doors: one to the left, one to the right, and the last one at the very end of the lobby. There’s even a white staircase at the opposite end of the main lobby, which spirals upward. It’s the kind of white that haunts you at hospitals. At least the flat-screen TV is a newly dusted black. A modest tower of video games and DVDs has been set up on top of a white ottoman. There are plenty of books on the white shelves, including Harleen Khurana’s A History of Blazewrath Around the World, which I devoured at the Red Crown High library in a day.

  “¡Joaquín!” Manny calls out to the empty lobby. “¡Estamos aquí!”

  Something clangs to the floor beyond the double doors to the left. There’s some rushed chatter, too, followed by the double doors sliding open.

  A man in his late twenties rolls out of the room in a wheelchair. Smiling at me like I’m a Girl Scout selling Thin Mints, he’s dressed in jeans and a plain black T-shirt, but his Nikes are a bold neon green. He’s a younger version of Manny except for his eyes. They’re a more subtle green than his sneakers. Before his car crash three years ago, he’d been an international track-and-field superstar. I’d last seen him during the press conference announcing Puerto Rico’s invitation to the Cup, his five-year-old son sitting on his lap and his adoring wife at his side.

  “Joaquín Delgado,” Manny’s tone is lighter now, “my son, and your trainer slash coach.”

  I smile at Joaquín, who’s stopped right in front of me. “Very nice to meet you. I’m Lana.”

  “Hola. ¿No hablas español?” Joaquín says.

  “Oh, um … Sí. Un poco.” Crap. I’ve been defaulting to English for the past twelve years. The only person I sometimes speak Spanish with is Papi, and it’s a few sentences here and there. I can understand it just fine, but sometimes stringing sentences together is a bit of a pickle.

  “It’s okay. I speak both languages,” Joaquín reassures me with a sweetness I’ve yet to detect in his father. “It’s more than a pleasure to meet you, Lana. What you did for the Fire Drake was amazing. It will be an honor to train you these next few weeks.”

  I must look like a kid at the Disney Store. “It’s my honor to train with you, Joaquín.”

  Manny gives Joaquín a one-shoulder shrug. “¿Y los demás? ¿Dónde están?”

  “En la cocina.” Joaquín waves to the room he exited earlier. “The rest of the team is in the kitchen, Lana. They wanted to give you a surprise. Ready to meet them?”

  “Yes, of course,” I say a little too fast.

  “Wonderful. Follow me.”

  I leave my carry-on in the lobby. I’m the first to trail behind Joaquín, taking a steady breath that does little to calm my nerves. Manny and President Turner are whispering to each other behind me, but I don’t pay attention to them. I’m about to meet my human teammates.

  Joaquín enters the kitchen before me. The first thing I notice is the food. Most of the offerings on the L-shaped dinner table are just one big buffet for salad lovers. Baby spinach leaves. Kale. Spring mix. An assortment of toppings is displayed in sky-blue ceramic bowls. Other bowls have every single fruit known to man. Watermelon is the clear favorite, with four plates covered in triangle slices. There are glass jugs with a variety of juices farther down, but most are filled up with a slick green substance. I spot a huge pot of arroz guisado con habichuelas at the end. Half of it is gone. I suspect it’s as delicious as it smells.

  Six people stand at the end of the dinner table. The same six people whose names and faces I memorized since they were first announced as my country’s team in a two-page spread in The Weekly Scorcher. They look exactly the same as they did two years ago. Three boys. Three girls. All clad in black activewear and black sneakers, which I suspect is what they always have on.

  One of the boys has a white towel around his neck and a fistful of green grapes in his mouth. He’s standing to the right, with brown skin that matches mine, short curly hair the color of wood, and wide-open eyes that are as dark as his clothes, as if I’ve just caught him in the middle of a prank. He chews at lightning speed and swallows even faster.

  “¡Hola!” He makes his way toward me and offers me his hand.

  “Luis García,” I blurt out, shaking his hand. “Charger.”

  Luis’s laugh is hearty, vibrant, and borderline contagious. “That’s right.” He lets go and points at me. “Lana Torres. Runner.”

  Wow. When a teammate says it, my new reality feels like home. “That’s me.”

  “So I ate some of your grapes,” Luis admits. “I’m sorry, but you have to understand. I can’t be near grapes.” He waves to the bowl and pretends to be in the deep throes of love. Or maybe he really is in the deep throes of love. “Nothing on this earth will ever keep us apart.”

  “He says the same thing about mofongo,” Joaquín says. “We don’t allow that dish in the team’s diet, but trainers can eat all the mofongo they want. Sometimes twice in one day.”

  Luis slaps a hand to his heart. “Estúpido.”

  I burst out laughing. Luis joins me mid laugh, and we both sigh once the fit ends.

  “There’s still more food left for you,” he says. “I only murdered most of the grapes. And the arroz con habichuelas.” Luis puffs out his chest all proud. “We prepared you dinner!”

  “We? I don’t remember you doing much.” Another one of the boys walks up to me, grinning and raising an eyebrow. He towers six inches over Luis. He’s the darkest-skinned team member, even darker than Samira. His jet-black hair is cropped military style; his arms are massive, thick rods capable of pulverizing anything. “Welcome to the team, Lana.”

  “You’re Héctor Sánchez. Keeper,” I say before he can. “And our team captain.”

  Héctor nods. At nineteen, he’s the oldest of us all, so it makes sense for him to be our capta
in. “How was your Transport here?”

  “It was nice. And thanks so much for the welcome. Everything looks delicious.”

  “It is,” Luis says. “Especially the grapes.”

  “Jesus. Get a new obsession,” says Héctor.

  “Bullying,” Luis tells Joaquín, pointing straight at Héctor. “This counts as bullying.”

  The remaining boy and two of the three girls laugh behind him. The one who isn’t laughing, fifteen-year-old Victoria Peralta, stands with her arms crossed. She’s watching me like I’ve just spilled soda all over her white furniture. Victoria’s the only light-skinned girl on the team, as white as my mother, but with peach lips and caramel hair straighter than a stick. She’s even shorter than I am. I’m guessing five feet flat. Despite being the thinnest girl here, with a flat chest and small hips, she’s rocking some ridiculous muscles under that black tank top.

  I try breaking the ice with a smile. She remains stone-cold serious. Maybe she’s not the smiling type? Or she could still be processing the fact that Brian Santana got fired?

  Relax. She doesn’t know you yet. Once she does, everything will be okay.

  “Get used to these two bickering about nothing,” says another girl. She’s headed toward me with a spring in her step. Her skin is a golden tan, but her hair is an explosion of neon that could stop traffic from a galaxy away. The right side has to be the hottest pink known to the human eye. The left side is a dazzling purple. Unlike Victoria, this girl is all boobs and hips and bubble butt. “Hi. I’m Gabriela, but you knew that already, right?”

  “Yes,” I admit. “Gabriela Ramos. Charger. Just like Luis.”

  “Best Chargers ever.” Luis drapes an arm over Gabriela. His right hand dangles from her shoulder. She holds onto his wrist, glancing up at him like a little sister admiring her big brother.

  She flips her ponytail. “We are pretty dangerous.”

  “Debatable,” says Héctor, who’s pretending to look unimpressed.

  Man, I’m going to love hanging out with them.

  President Turner claps his hands once. “Come, come! You still haven’t been introduced to your Blockers and Striker.” He guides me forward to where the remaining team members watch me. Victoria still looks like she’d rather choke on glass than say hello. I pretend I can’t see her. I don’t think throwing a fit my first day here is the wisest idea.

  President Turner halts right in front of the girl standing next to Victoria. She’s the same skin tone as Héctor, making her the darkest girl in the room, but whereas Héctor barely has hair, Génesis Castro sports an Afro of nut-brown curls. For a girl whose sole purpose is to beat the living daylights out of the opposing team’s Runner, she’s as light as a yoga instructor, lean and chiseled without too much definition. She does have an impressive set of hips, though.

  “Génesis Castro. Blocker,” I say.

  “Muy bien.” Génesis gives me a quick wave. “Bienvenida, Lana.”

  “Gracias.”

  President Turner waves to the boy on Victoria’s right. He’s also light-skinned, with an angular face like an elf from a Tolkien book, but his super-straight hair is entirely bleached.

  “Edwin Santiago. Blocker,” I say. “Awesome to meet you, man.”

  Joaquín clears his throat. “Edwin doesn’t speak much English.”

  “Oh.” I flash through the interviews back from two years ago. While the rest of the team answered in English, Edwin spoke exclusively in Spanish, with Luis and Gabriela alternating as his interpreters. “Hola, Edwin. Es un placer conocerte.”

  “Igualmente, Lana.” He speaks with the deepest voice out of all the boys. If I’d heard him over the phone without seeing what he looks like, I’d think he’s a gigantic bouncer. Instead, the boy before me has the shape of a soccer player: strong arms, but even stronger thighs and calves.

  “And this,” President Turner says, “is Victoria Peralta. Striker.”

  I can’t avoid her any longer. I try another smile, hoping to appear as friendly as I’m secretly praying for her to be. “Very nice to meet you, Victoria.”

  Victoria keeps her scowl in place. “Hi.”

  My smile is gone. Winning this girl over will be harder than I feared.

  “Moving welcome, Victoria. I’m about to cry,” Manny says as he wipes a nonexistent tear away. He claims the first seat at the dinner table. “Can we eat now? I’m going to eat now.”

  Nobody stops him from diving into the spring-mix salad bowl. He drowns half of his plate in ranch dressing, which has masking tape across the front labeled SÓLO PARA MANNY.

  “Actually,” I say, “I just had breakfast a little while ago.”

  Héctor nods. “Not a problem. We can save everything until you’re hungry again.” He’s waving at the doors behind me. “Are you too tired for a walk?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Perfect.” He gives Joaquín a knowing look, a secret only they understand, then turns back to me. “Now let’s go meet some dragons.”

  An egg is typically a dragon’s first home. It can live inside that egg for weeks or months, depending on the species. Then July 2015 happened. On a hot summer’s night, a newborn dragon rose out of the waters in Laguna Grande, a bioluminescent bay located in eastern Puerto Rico. There were no traces of dragon egg at the bottom of the bay. No evidence to support that the newborn had broken out of a shell. Marine biologists could only find a fissure in the lagoon’s soil, which led to much-debated speculation that the island itself had given a dragon to its people.

  —Excerpt from Julissa Mercado’s article “Puerto Rico & Its Miraculous Sol De Noche Dragons” in The Weekly Scorcher

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PAPI AND I HAD BEEN CONVINCED THE CARIBBEAN WOULD NEVER see another dragon.

  The Haitian Tempête has been around for a decade now. He’s the sole protector of the nation, flying around with his female rider in all of his eighty-foot-tall glory.

  But he’s not alone in the Caribbean anymore. Two years ago, a dragon as dark as night had been born in Puerto Rico for the first time. She’d soared into the sky at midnight, flames bursting from every inch of her, like a comet hurtling toward the stars. Hours later, she’d found her rider, the stone-cold serious Victoria, and waited patiently for her to accept their Bond. Papi and I had called her a miracle. A gift from beyond. Now there are six Puerto Rican dragons, which all are competing with their riders in the Blazewrath World Cup.

  And I, Lana Aurelia Torres, am about to meet them.

  Breathe. Just breathe and do. Not. Pass. Out.

  “Watch your step,” Joaquín says as the elevator doors slide open. He and the other guys wait for the girls to get in first.

  Victoria rushes to the back of the elevator. I trail behind Gabriela and Génesis, using them as my shields from Victoria. The guys file in one by one. President Turner’s last in line.

  He trips, then drops to his knees.

  “Mister President, are you okay?” Joaquín beats me to it.

  “Oh, goodness! My clumsiness knows no bounds.” President Turner’s laugh is as awkward as his attempts at getting up. Manny’s quick to help him, though. “I think I need a bit of a rest, my dears. This old chap isn’t what he used to be.”

  “Move along. I’ll get him some water,” Manny tells Joaquín. He presses the button to close the elevator doors without bothering to glance at any of us.

  The doors snap shut.

  “What did he trip on?” Gabriela asks Joaquín. “His own shoes?”

  “Most likely,” he replies as he presses the number-four button.

  That must be it. There’s nothing on the floor. At least the president didn’t look like he was injured. Hopefully, his knees weren’t banged up too bad.

  The elevator stops. A loud ding! bounces off the walls. “Level Four,” a disembodied female voice says above me. When the doors open, there’s not a single trace of white ahead.

  There’s only pitch-black, uninviting darkness.

  This
habitat is dead silent. I can’t even detect the dragons’ breathing.

  “Go ahead, Lana,” says Joaquín. He’s not the least bit concerned of something horrible happening. What if I trip and crack a bone in half? Or step on a dragon’s claw by accident?

  “You’re sure this is safe?” I say.

  “See for yourself.”

  How comforting.

  No one speaks as I drag myself across the vast expanse of onyx. I’m on my own, hoping against hope I don’t kick a dragon’s leg. The floor isn’t concrete but dirt. My sneakers slide across the grainy surface with ease. One step forward, stop. Another step, then stop. Hands grab at the nothingness, then I drop them again. I keep this up for what feels like forever. There’s no sign of life anywhere near me. I feel like I’m playing hide-and-seek, and so far, I’m losing hard.

  Then a faint glimmer of light shines straight ahead.

  I squint at the light from a safe distance. It’s a tiny spark, but it’s not a spark at all. Smoke doesn’t fly into the air above and around it. The flames don’t fan anywhere. Instead, the spark is caged inside a shell, as if night itself has hardened into a giant, three-pointed star.

  I’m staring at the tip of a dragon’s tail.

  There you are …

  The first time I saw a tail like that, I’d been watching a livestream a local channel did for Victoria’s dragon, and I hugged my laptop. Her steed, Esperanza, had been gracious enough to let cameras zoom in on her body. She’d even done a pirouette in the air. I remember falling in love with her, desperate to see her in person. Desperate for more dragons like her to fly out of the same bioluminescent bay. The other five dragons surfaced weeks later, and even though they all looked alike, I didn’t lose my breath over them the way I had with the first Sol de Noche.

  The dragon before me isn’t Esperanza. Its tail is much thinner, less spiked and imposing. A male dragon. Little by little, the male’s spine lights up in a fading, almost weakened glow, but the light isn’t bursting out of his scales. There are no holes or crevices for the light to pour out of.