Chapter 314: Humanity

When Dan Lasser's shoe heel got caught in the cracked asphalt, he smelled the metallic ozone scent.

cbs's spotlight cast a pallid halo over United Nations Plaza, but the camera could never stably capture the massive silhouette atop the building—whenever the focus locked onto that lingering shadow, the monitor speckled with snow‑like noise.

"This is cbs News, reporting live from the United Nations headquarters in New York." He loosened his tie knot, his Adam's apple bobbing, "as you can see, this creature that looks like a legendary dragon is …"

The Scroll-Volume Dragon's tail fin swept across the building's north wing, the gust lifting Dan's script into mid‑air. The paper hovered eerily in the gale, forming a Fibonacci‑spiral pattern, then was struck by lightning and turned to ash.

"God…" cameraman Brian moaned from behind the viewfinder. The creature in the lens slowly unfurled its wings, ghostly blue arcs flowing between its scales causing every electronic device to whine. Three street‑side phone booths suddenly dialed automatically, their receivers emitting a cacophony of Latin and Morse code.

"At present we cannot confirm the creature's origin." Dan raised his volume to drown out the howling wind, "the Pentagon refuses to comment on whether it is a new Soviet weapon, but the White House has activated …"

A homeless man in a military coat burst into the frame at that moment. Jonas Wilson's beard was studded with ice shards, and the Corona bottle he waved fizzed with strange bubbles. "Open your eyes and look!" he spat at the armored vehicle's cannon, "the Red Dragon of Revelation Chapter Twelve has arrived! Though, damn, its color is silver!"

The National Guard's Humvee slammed on its brakes, its onboard radio blasting a harsh dragon‑language broadcast. Dan noticed the sergeant's pupils flash a dim yellow light for an instant, then return to normal the next second.

"Step back! This is a military exclusion zone!" The soldier's shout was swallowed by the Scroll-Volume Dragon's low hum. The sound resembled a church organ blended with a particle collider's hum, and the plaza fountain's droplets hung in the air, refracting countless miniature star maps.

Brian suddenly grabbed Dan's arm: "Look at the building's glass!"

All curtain walls were displaying luminous patterns—not damage, but some information code beyond human comprehension. Dan's temples throbbed, convinced he had glimpsed the "Blue Marble" Earth photo taken by Apollo 17 in 1972.

"This is the New York Police Department! All civilians evacuate immediately!" As a helicopter's searchlight swept by, Dan's peripheral vision caught an anomaly: the light spot moved across the dragon's wing 0.3 seconds slower than physics permits.

When the Scroll-Volume Dragon lifted its head to swallow storm clouds, car alarms within a five‑block radius erupted simultaneously with a cacophony of noises.

"I am Dan Lasser, reporting live from United Nations headquarters." He said to the camera last, his voice drowned in the sudden hum of an electrostatic field.

"The only thing we can confirm is that the old rules are failing."

After shutting off the camera, Dan began coiling the microphone cable that the wind had blown onto a utility pole, and at that moment he saw the dark‑brown ponytail—Doctor Ailin Watson.

His ex‑girlfriend was being sandwiched between two Army Intelligence officers, cradling not her usual coffee cup but a Taiwanese green recording device, its antenna wrapped with Cyrillic‑letter tags.

"Ailin!" he ducked through the National Guard's human barrier, cameraman Brian nearly tripping over a tripod, "Why did they bring you here? This place is unsafe!"

As his ex‑girlfriend turned, Dan noticed a Pentagon insignia pinned to the collar of her white coat.

"Because your TV station's modern English lexicon," Ailin nudged her glasses with her thumb, "can't match the practicality of a 1400 BCE Hittite spell."

The Army colonel strode forward, blocking the lens: "This is a classified operation, Mr. Reporter."

"Classified enough to involve a linguistics associate professor at Columbia University?" Dan's pen tip jabbed at the parchment copy in Ailin's hand—a fragment of the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh hastily requisitioned from the British Museum.

He suddenly recalled something, his eyes brightening: "You want to converse with it."

Ailin suddenly seized Dan's wrist, the gesture recalling the breakup scene from three years ago for both of them. A chill from her fingertips seeped through her shirt: "Twenty minutes ago, nsa intercepted a sound wave of 23 ancient languages mixed together, from Sumerian to Proto‑Germanic."

She lifted the recorder, the spectrogram on its LCD screen forming a dragon‑scale pattern.

"Take me in." Dan stared resolutely at his ex‑girlfriend; he couldn't let her face danger alone, even if they were no longer a couple.

"Or I could go live right now as the Pentagon appoints a folklore professor as a weapons consultant."

——

Dan's thug finally let him inside.

They stood in a quarantine zone seventy yards from the United Nations building's main entrance, Ailin's combat boots planted in a puddle of melted‑then‑re‑solidified asphalt. When Dan counted to the third armored vehicle, he saw every onboard radar screen displaying Dungeons & Dragons monster stats—a detail he hadn't mentioned on camera.

"Switch channel three to Hittite pitch‑shift mode," Ailin said into the radio, her fingers flicking rapidly across a military tablet.

When the Pentagon's sound‑wave emitter activated, Dan heard a familiar Old Persian prayer— the background music they had recorded together on the Iranian border during their passionate romance.

Apparently having understood the Old Persian, the Scroll-Volume Dragon's magical back markings resonated, dust shaken from between its scales projecting wedge‑shaped script under the spotlight. Ailin's recorder auto‑rewound, playing that smoky dragon language.

"It's encrypting with Linear B script," Ailin's voice trembled, the first time Dan recalled her showing uncertainty in an academic setting, "but the grammatical structure is closer …"

The building's glass curtain wall suddenly reflected strings of Mayan numerals; Ailin grabbed a prepared Sanskrit scripture cassette. Dan noticed fine sweat beading on her neck, just as it had during those all‑night PhD defense prep sessions in Cambridge Library.

"Switch channel four to Old Church Slavonic!" she shouted into the radio, "tone‑modulate to the frequency of Eastern Orthodox chants!"

!

This response came even more violently. The Scroll-Volume Dragon's tail fin swept across the night sky, and every street‑light bulb within three hundred meters exploded simultaneously.

High‑ranking military officials felt a jolt seeing this; it seemed the other side understood and was also communicating something to them.

In the sudden darkness, Dan's fountain pen floated, its tip oozing neon‑green ink, automatically writing on Ailin's notebook.

It was English spelled with Phoenician letters: "Stop the noise."

Naimi Xisi flicked its tail impatiently, muttering that these Earthlings were ridiculous, recounting that god's deeds over and over in every language.

He is Omega's favorite; even if he believed, he wouldn't worship some vague, intangible thing.

Ailin's expression froze in surprise, delightedly asking, "You… you understand English?"

The dragon snorted, "English?"

A booming voice seemed to recite the most esoteric language, but unlike before, this time Ailin and Dan understood it.

"All peoples' languages are indistinguishable to me; I don't need to 'understand'—being 'linguistically omniscient' is enough for me to grasp everything you say."

"Including that nonsense of the earlier pseudo‑spiritual works."

(End of Chapter)