The Lost Compass

by Joel Ross

  “Every time,” I promised, and I dove.

  17

  WISPY WHITENESS SURROUNDED me. My heart pounded, and wind tugged my hair. I spun on the end of my new tether, slicing through the mist until I sensed the ground beneath me.

  I landed softly, my boots scraping a hard surface. The dark outlines of ruined buildings loomed around me, and wide cracks zigzagged across the concrete slab underfoot. I squinted into the whiteness but couldn’t see the tethergirls. At least I didn’t see wild dogs or angry boars, either—or driftsharks.

  Saplings grew from the cracks in the ground, and I followed them across the plaza toward the crumbling fountain where we were supposed to meet. A minute later, a shape blurred into sight eight or nine feet away: it was Mochi, walking alone in the Fog, her tether rising in a thin line above her.

  “Over here!” I shouted.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Mochi? Mochi!”

  She crept along, scanning the ground through her goggles.

  “You can’t hear a word I’m saying, can you?” I tested her: “Hey, propeller-head! Mochi, you goose-feathered cockroach-cobbler, over here!”

  She paused, and I thought she’d heard me. Oops. I hadn’t meant for her to hear that. Then she started moving again, and I exhaled in relief and headed toward her.

  Six or seven feet away, I tried again. “Hey! What’re you doing?”

  Mochi looked at me, but her quizzical expression didn’t change. She still couldn’t see me at that distance.

  I shouted, “Mochi?”

  “Chess?” Mochi cocked her head. “Is that you?”

  “Right here,” I said, stepping closer.

  “Oh!” A flash of relief shone in her eyes. “I couldn’t find you.”

  “I . . . just got here,” I said. “What were you looking for?”

  “What?”

  “Were you looking for something?” I shouted. “On the ground?”

  “Yeah,” she shouted back. “My feet!”

  For a second, I didn’t understand. Then I realized that Mochi couldn’t even see five feet beneath her. For all she knew, any step might take her off a cliff—or into a slashing edge of metal. And when I saw Jada slowly inching through the Fog nearby, I got a little annoyed. I mean, these were the best tetherkids in the Subassembly? These stumbling slowpokes were supposed to help me?

  Except as I watched Jada groping toward Mochi, something else occurred to me. These girls were seriously brave. The Fog scared me, and I saw five times farther than they did and moved ten times faster. Yet here they were, trying to help the Subassembly save Port Oro. Trying to help me.

  “The Station is over there,” Jada said after we huddled together. “Forty or fifty feet away.”

  “Cool.” I turned away. “See you topside.”

  “Wait!” Mochi called. “We’re going with you.”

  I frowned. “Oh, right. To the top floor. Why?”

  “No, all the way to the bottom,” Jada said, looking scared but determined. “That way, if something happens to you, maybe Mochi or I can sneak past.”

  “First,” I said, “nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  “We’re going,” she said. “That’s final.”

  “And second, nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  “But if it does—”

  “And third,” I interrupted, “the sharks would eat you alive.”

  “We’re going, Chess.”

  “I’ve got a special tether, and you can’t even tell your feet from a hole in the ground!”

  “We’re going,” Jada snapped at me. “Don’t you try to change our minds.”

  “I’d have better luck changing a monkey’s diaper,” I muttered, too softly for them to hear in the Fog.

  “I have a little brother and sister,” Mochi said. “If Kodoc takes Port Oro, what happens to them?”

  “We’re fighting for our home,” Jada told me. “We’re fighting for our families.”

  “Just like you,” Mochi said.

  “Oh, fine,” I said, kicking at the concrete slab. “C’mon, then.”

  We crossed the plaza to a staircase that disappeared underground. A deerfly buzzed my ear, and I smelled spent matches on the breeze wafting from the Station: the scent of driftsharks.

  Okay. Head three floors belowground, find the map, and don’t die. How hard could that be?

  I led the tethergirls down the stairs to the first floor of the Station. Soggy leaves and broken ceiling tiles crunched underfoot . . . but I couldn’t see them. For a second, I panicked: why couldn’t I see five feet away?

  Then Jada shouted in my ear, “Your light!”

  Oh. Right. I couldn’t see because it was dark underground. I switched on my headlamp and crossed a tile-floored corridor lined with rusted metal doors.

  “So this is a subway, huh?” I bellowed.

  “What?” Jada asked.

  “I bet they launched submarines from down here!”

  “What?”

  “A ‘subway’?”

  She shot me an exasperated look, then slunk silently to the end of the hallway. She pointed to a sign on the wall that looked like a tangle of colored snakes.

  “The cogs say the map will look like that,” Mochi yelled. “But totally different.”

  “Different how?” I asked into her ear.

  “More map-y. And with a compass.”

  “I guess that’s the important part.”

  “One level deeper,” Jada yelled, “the colors and labels are different.”

  “What do they look like two levels deeper?” I asked.

  “Nobody knows,” she said.

  “Right,” I said, hunching my shoulders. Because the tetherkids who went that far never came back.

  “Keep moving,” Jada yelled. “Before the sharks find us.”

  “I thought they stayed off this floor,” I said.

  Mochi shifted uneasily. “Usually.”

  “Hoo, boy,” I muttered, wiping my goggles and peering into the Fog.

  I didn’t spot any suspicious curls of mist. Yet.

  We followed the corridor into a concrete ditch with three sets of tracks but no trains. In the darkness, the whiteness felt suffocating. We climbed the other side of the ditch and followed the hallway to another staircase—the one that dropped to the second floor, where driftsharks swam and tetherkids died.

  I looked into the gloom and swallowed a sudden lump in my throat.

  Mochi plucked at Jada’s sleeve, then glanced around, looking for me. When she didn’t see me standing five feet away, she shouted, “People die on the second floor, Jada!”

  Jada gave her a quick hug. “I know.”

  “I’m scared!”

  “We’re all scared,” Jada said. “Just . . . trust Chess.”

  My heart shrank two sizes. Trust me? What if I couldn’t do this? What if I let them down? What if I let everyone down?

  “Okay.” Mochi’s lips trembled. “Okay.”

  And that’s when I saw them: driftsharks.

  18

  TWO PALE WISPS slithered through the glow of my headlamp. One veered out of sight ten feet away, while the other corkscrewed closer.

  I lunged for the tethergirls. “Sharks! Move! Go!”

  “Which way?” Mochi asked, eyes terrified. “Where?”

  The fact that she couldn’t see the sharks scared me more than anything. How many sharks were floating beyond my sight? Five? Ten? A hundred?

  “Run for the exit!” I screamed as the first shark jutted toward us. “Now!”

  I leaped into the air, grabbed the girls’ tethers, and hit the ground sprinting. The driftshark flashed out of sight, and I yanked Jada and Mochi toward the train tracks, shouting, “Move! Move!”

  They scrambled across the tracks, and I landed beside them, tugging and shoving until we reached the stairs to the outside world.

  I shouted to Jada, “Get out of here!”

  “We’re staying!” she said.

&n
bsp; “Please!” I begged. “Go!”

  “This is our only chance to save the Port. We didn’t just come to show you the way, Chess.” Jada swallowed. “The cogs asked for volunteers, and . . .”

  “We’re numbers ten and eleven,” Mochi told me.

  For a second, I didn’t understand. Then I realized: nine Subassembly tetherkids had already died. They’d volunteered to be the next two.

  “We’re going all the way,” Jada said, her determination clear in her voice. “If you get us close enough, we’ll find the map or distract the sharks for you. This is our last shot. We need to try everything. We’re not turning back.”

  “You’re—” I didn’t know what to say. “You’re loco.”

  “We have faith,” Mochi said faintly.

  “You have courage, too,” I told them, stepping closer. “But I have this.”

  I swept my hair back and revealed my freak-eye behind my goggles.

  “It’s t-true,” Jada stammered, while Mochi whispered, “You’re blessed.”

  “Yeah, lucky me. Now, would you please—”

  A driftshark whipped toward us through the Fog, and for once, my mind didn’t blank. For once, I reacted just like Hazel: immediately.

  I somersaulted into the air, pulled my new hacksaw from my leg sheath, and sliced through my tether in a single motion. Grease speckled my face, and moving fast with fear and Fog, I knotted the end of my tether to the girls’ tethers—theirs weren’t half as fast as the one Bea made—and gave three sharp jerks.

  As I fell to a crouch on the broken tile floor, my tether yanked the girls into the stairwell. They crashed against the wall, shouting in surprise. I caught a glimpse of Mochi’s terrified eyes through the Fog before she disappeared, dragged upstairs and out of sight.

  The driftshark twisted into a sinewy curve and looked almost confused at the sudden disappearance of its prey. It didn’t seem to notice me, trembling beside the wall, and a moment later it shimmered away.

  I exhaled in relief. At least Mochi and Jada were safe.

  Then the fear hit me.

  What was I doing? I’d just cut my tether to save two girls I barely knew. And this wasn’t a normal dive. This was a Station plunging three stories underground, into dark caverns where driftsharks swam.

  Sweat broke out on my forehead, and my body screamed at me: Go, run, leave now or die. Maybe with the tether I’d stood a chance. But now? Alone and untethered, in a nest of sharks? I’d never get out alive.

  I glanced toward the stairs. Nobody would blame me if I left—that’s what Hazel had said. I should run. I should flee. Except I’d blame me. I’d watch Kodoc invade Port Oro, I’d see white waves of Fog drown the green peaks, and the crew would lose our new home. Our only home.

  So I squared my shoulders. “Okay, Chess. Stop moaning.”

  Forget running—I was born to dive. And the Fog didn’t just swirl in my eye, it ran through my veins.

  I retraced my steps through the rubble to the second stairway. My boots squelched in puddles as I climbed down into a long corridor with a wide railing in the center. The driftsharks’ scent of spent matches grew stronger, and the Fog seemed to darken around me.

  “Well, maybe a little moaning is okay,” I muttered—and a driftshark thickened from the Fog.

  Fear spiked in my chest. I yelped and vaulted onto the railing and started to run. My boots skittered, and my heart hammered like a blacksmith throwing a temper tantrum.

  The driftshark lashed the air behind me, and halfway down the corridor the railing ended in a jagged hole, a dark pit opening below me like a gaping mouth. But like a mouth leading away from the shark—and toward the bottom floor. No time to think. No time to hesitate. I reached for my tether, then remembered I didn’t have one anymore. Great. Perfect. Peachy.

  So instead of swinging down on my tether, I screamed and dove headfirst into the hole.

  The dark Fog blurred around me. I grabbed a dangling length of the broken railing and jerked to a stop an instant before the driftshark blasted past my shoulder.

  The broken railing swung wildly, and I careened through the air—then I fell. Flailing downward, I couldn’t see the walls or floor; but the moist air smelled of rust and decay, and the room felt like a huge, cavernous space.

  I smacked the floor hard, curled into a ball, and groaned. Pain throbbed in my leg, and I was scared of turning my headlamp toward the injury. If I’d broken a bone, I’d die here, alone in the dark. I wanted to cry out for Hazel. I wanted to open my eyes and wake up in bed. For a second, I’d have given anything just to feel safe again.

  My goggles misted, and my breath sounded harsh. Then I looked down at my leg, and tears sprang to my eyes. Tears of relief: the pain was just from the mostly healed cut where Kodoc’s harpoon had slashed me days earlier. I was okay. For now.

  I stood and swept the room with my headlamp. Vaulted ceilings. Dozens of alcoves with what Mrs. E called “at ’ems,” which is how you pronounced ATMs. Plasteel seats lined the walls. Under the highest arch of the ceiling, a massive sail dangled from a scaffolding, frayed and corroded, exposing the circuit boards woven inside.

  I’d never seen cloth like that and wondered how much the junkyard bosses would pay for it. Then the squiggles of the circuit boards reminded me of the colorful-snake maps, and I remembered why I was there.

  My boots scuffed as I crossed the room, looking for the map. The air smelled like mildew and rotten eggs, and a soggy chill gave me goose bumps. I’d spent years diving into the Fog, but I’d never felt so alone.

  Except I wasn’t alone. There were driftsharks down here.

  I zigzagged across the trash-heaped floor. Instead of a map, I found blotches of spongy mold on big metal cubes surrounding a collapsed kiosk. I found a nest of rusted nano-wires. A trickle of fluid oozed down one of the walls, leaving a wide orange smear behind it.

  Then something crackled under my boot. I swiveled my headlamp beam downward and saw a thin plastic sheet poking out from a puddle of goo. A few lines squirmed across the corner of the sheet. A colorful snake?

  Was it the map?

  “No way,” I said. It couldn’t be that easy.

  I grabbed the sheet, and the goo felt oily and corrosive, like acid. My fingers tingled, and I couldn’t get a strong grip on it, so I plunged my hand into the puddle and groped around. Elbow-deep in the burning goo, I finally felt the other edge of the sheet. My goggles fogged as I turned my head and yanked.

  With a slurp, the plastic sheet oozed from the puddle, and in the light of my headlamp I saw these words:

  —EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS

  BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK—

  “Oh, boogers,” I muttered, and the Fog rippled in the dim light of my headlamp.

  The bulky mouth of a driftshark snapped at me through the mist. The Fog muffled my whimper as I shot backward. My vision narrowed in terror, and I stumbled into one of the metal cubes. A sharp edge jammed my leg. A driftshark lashed at me, and I shoved myself sideways, sick with fear. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die here, lost and alone in the dark.

  I scrambled through a pile of trash. My heart thundered and my breath thinned, and the driftshark vanished into the Fog. I stumbled and fell, and almost wept in panic. Please, please. I don’t want to die. Not yet, not here. I shoved to my feet and sprinted away—

  Until my boot snagged on rubble. A snap shot through the cavern as my foot tangled in cloth. I sprawled to the ground, my headlamp shining on the rubble I’d tripped over.

  Except it wasn’t rubble . . .

  It was a body. A corpse. A skeleton with a skull for a face—and wearing the gear of a tetherkid. That snap had been my boot breaking one of its bones.

  My shriek was swallowed by the darkness. I forgot the Fog, I forgot the driftsharks—I forgot everything except the horror of that body, shrunken and still, staring at the ceiling with eye sockets blacker than nightmares.

  A tetherkid sent to find the map. A tetherkid who’d neve
r see the sun again. Who’d never laugh or cry or dream again. A tetherkid lying forgotten on the floor with all the other trash. A tetherkid just like me.

  After far too long, I tore my gaze away from the body’s grotesque stare, and my terror faded to a dull throb. That’s when I spotted a scrap of paper in the tetherkid’s sagging glove. I swallowed the lump of fear, then wriggled the paper from between the bony fingers.

  Most of the paper was rotten and black, but swirls of ink ran across one corner. A map. I even saw a hint of a circle that might’ve been a compass. But the paper had mostly rotted away into a mess of water stains.

  “You found it,” I whispered to the body. “You did it—you found the map. . . .”

  But it was ruined. Completely torn and illegible and—

  Driftsharks swirled toward me.

  Terror cut through me like a knife. I leaped straight upward as the sharks lashed through the Fog beneath me. I grabbed a fistful of the circuit-board sailcloth and climbed like a monkey with his butt on fire.

  A misty jaw slashed at me, and a tail flicked the cloth inches from my elbow. I jerked away, swinging through the darkness as another shark uncoiled from the Fog.

  My mind dizzy with terror, I climbed until I reached the plasteel scaffolding from which the sailcloth hung. I clambered on top, scanned the ceiling for the hole that led to the second floor.

  If I stayed down here, I’d die. I’d rot on the floor next to the other tetherkids. Nobody could beat a driftshark, not for long. Not even me. And I couldn’t find the map anyway. I trembled on the scaffolding, scanning the ceiling for the hole. Then my neck prickled with sudden fear. My blood froze, and I spun, certain that driftsharks were swarming at me.

  Behind me, the Fog glowed quietly in the light of my lamp. No driftsharks, no dangers. Nothing scary except my shaky, panting breath. But when I looked upward again, the fear returned. I twirled and dodged, grabbing a beam and swinging across the scaffolding before scanning for sharks.

  I still didn’t see any, so I scanned the ceiling for a third time—and gasped.

  “No way.” My knees turned to jelly. “No way.”