by Laura Martin
“How well do you know your way around?” I asked Ivan.
“Not well,” he admitted. “We’re lucky. We landed close to the entrance your mother used to smuggle me in the three times I visited to meet with the Colombe.” He motioned to the hatch above our heads. I looked up, my brow knitted.
“But where’s the holoscreen?” I asked. “Every entrance at North Compound was required to have one. How do they scan for threats before going topside?”
“Too many entrances and exits here for that kind of security,” Ivan said. “Like I said before, the old subway lines had a lot of utility entrances like this one. Most of them have been bricked over, except,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling with obvious pride, “for the ones that your mother uncovered.”
Chaz ran a hand down the crumbling brick wall of the room and shrugged. “The lab had way better views with our windows and all, but this isn’t horrible.”
“Views.” Todd snorted. “Yeah. PREviews of what tried to eat us.”
Chaz rolled her eyes and turned to me. “What is our plan? Do we have one?”
I nodded, my throat dry. “We need to figure out where we are and where the Noah’s headquarters or base or technology hub or whatever is located.”
“Wrong,” Todd said, shaking his head.
“But, Todd—” I protested.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “No. You don’t get to but, Todd me anymore. I’ve helped you without complaining as we almost got eaten more times than I want to count, and you promised that if we made it to Lake Michigan you’d help me save my mom. Well, we made it to Lake Michigan, and now it’s your turn to pay up. We are going to find my mom, and we are going to make it a priority.”
“Without complaining?” Chaz asked, eyebrow raised. “I find that incredibly hard to believe.”
“Plus,” Todd went on, ignoring Chaz, “if this place is as big as Ivan says it is, we are going to need all the help we can get to find something big and important enough to stick that plug of Boz’s into.”
“We need the Noah’s headquarters,” Ivan said. “My daughter told me once that it was where all of the major technology for the compound is housed.”
“OK,” Todd amended. “Well, they can help us bust our way into the headquarters or whatever. The point is that we need their help.”
“We aren’t going to bust our way in anywhere,” I said, shaking my head. “We’ll have to sneak in. Even with your entire village, we don’t have any weapons.”
“Ivan has his gun, and we have these!” Todd said, gesturing to the bow still strapped across his back. I nodded. My own bow had been hard to forget as it jabbed me in the spine the entire ride here.
Ivan raised an eyebrow. “If I recall your story correctly, the members of the Oaks had weapons too.” Todd sagged, and Ivan clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder. “While I admire your enthusiasm, Sky’s right. Our weapons are not enough. We will have to use stealth. The marines here are heavily armed.”
“Really?” I said. “Don’t they use the same stun guns as the marines back at North?”
Ivan huffed. “Not exactly. The marines here at East have guns that shoot actual bullets. They need electricity to work, so when the marines are away from the compound, they use small portable generators they carry around in those helicopters. But here at East, they can move freely.”
“We have something similar at the lab for our tranquiliser guns,” Chaz said. “Only ours run off battery packs.”
“Well, that’s just great,” Todd muttered. “Just what we needed to make this whole thing harder.”
“We can worry more about the marines’ weapons in the morning,” Ivan said, patting Todd’s slumped shoulder reassuringly. “Right now, we all need some sleep.”
“Sleep?” I yelped. “We don’t have time for sleep. The Noah could set off those bombs of his any day now.”
“True,” Ivan said sternly. “But he left too many of his marines behind at the lake to set off any bombs tonight. Besides, you look dead on your feet.”
“I feel dead on my feet,” Chaz said, yawning widely. Her yawn triggered one of my own, and I stifled it in irritation.
“But—” I started to protest, but I was cut off by a sharp look from Ivan.
“No buts, granddaughter,” he said in a tone that put an immediate stop to any thoughts I’d had about arguing. “We are all going to eat something and sleep here tonight. It’s the only safe place I know of in this entire compound. If we venture away from it, we might not find somewhere else for miles. Everything that needs doing can wait until tomorrow.”
I looked to Chaz for support, only to find that she was already shrugging off her pack and bow, obviously settling down for the night. Even Todd, who I thought for sure would protest in favour of charging off in search of his mom, just nodded resignedly and unfolded the large, thin blanket he’d found in Ivan’s cave and laid it across the floor of the small circular room.
With a sigh, I sank down beside him as Ivan produced some hardened strips of dinosaur jerky and passed them out to each of us. Chaz gave her piece a brooding stare, sniffed it, and shoved it in her pocket without taking a bite. I gnawed on mine, hardly tasting the peppery meat as everyone attempted to get comfortable for the night. When Ivan flicked off the light a short while later, I stared into the dark, sure that sleep wasn’t a possibility for me. But as the sound of first Todd’s, then Ivan’s, and finally Chaz’s slow, rhythmic breathing filled the room, I discovered I was wrong. I didn’t even remember closing my eyes.
I’d woken up somewhere new every day for the last two weeks – the only exception being my time spent in the underwater lab, but even then the view out of my window had never been the same twice. So I should have been used to opening my eyes and having that baffling instant where I expected to see the familiar walls of North Compound but instead found myself staring out of a tree house window, or through the filmy fabric of my tree pod, or even at the face of a curious plesiosaur as it peered in to watch me sleep. But I wasn’t. That first morning in East Compound was especially confusing.
I woke up in darkness so complete, so inky black, that I wasn’t even sure if my eyes were open for a second. After my fingertips assured me that they were in fact open, I sat up gingerly, aware of the heavy sleeping bodies on either side of me. Sometime during the night I’d lost my ponytail holder, and now my hair flopped across my shoulders in a tangled curly mess. A blind search of the surrounding floor didn’t turn it up, and I huffed in frustration. I didn’t have another one. It was stupid to let something so small and insignificant bother me, but it did. How was I supposed to function without something to get this mess of curls out of my way?
Shawn came immediately to mind. If he were here, he’d come up with some clever way for me to tie my hair back. Probably using something he’d cobbled together out of a bit of this and a spare part of that. He’d always been so good at that stuff. I sniffed, and realised I had tears running down my face.
“What’s wrong?” Chaz asked groggily beside me, sitting up. “Is it morning yet?”
“No,” Todd groaned from my other side, rolling over. “Go away.”
“How do you know it’s not morning?” Chaz asked indignantly.
“Because I’m still exhausted,” Todd grumbled.
“It’s about time you all woke up,” Ivan said, and a light flicked on overhead. We all gasped as the sudden brightness accosted our eyes.
“Nice hair,” Todd quipped, and I shoved it off my face to glare at him.
“What’s wrong?” Chaz asked gently, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I shrugged her off, looked down at the blanket we’d all slept on, hoping to spot my lost hair tie. “Nothing,” I muttered. “I just lost my stupid hair tie, that’s all.”
“What’s a hair tie?” Todd asked.
“Here it is!” Chaz said triumphantly, scooping it up and handing it to me.
“Thank you,” I sniffed. I’d let them think I’d been cryin
g over a lost hair tie. It was better than admitting how hopeless I felt. I squared my shoulders and turned to Ivan. “We need a map of the compound. Do you know where we can find one?”
“I might.” Ivan nodded. “But a map isn’t going to tell us the location of the Noah’s headquarters. From what your mother told me, that is kept top secret.”
“That’s OK,” I said, sitting down to slide my boots back on. “We still need a map.” I glanced up at Ivan. “Do you know where supplies are kept?”
“I know they are kept in multiple locations,” Ivan said, “but I’m not sure where any of them are.”
I nodded. “OK.”
“Will you stop saying OK?” Todd asked. “It’s too early, and if you say it one more time I can’t promise I won’t smack you purely on reflex.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, thinking hard. “We need a way to blend in here. There is no way we can walk around like this,” I said, gesturing to our clothes. Chaz, Todd, and I were still wearing the bright blue jumpsuits of the lab, and even in their stained and tattered condition, the red dinosaur badge on the left shoulder stood out like a beacon. Ivan wore a dark brown tunic, a rope slung across one shoulder and wrapped around his waist, his pants a worn and supple black fabric I’d never seen before. None of us was going to be mistaken for a citizen of East Compound.
“That, I might be able to help you with,” Ivan said, eyes twinkling. “Sky,” he said, “you come with me. The rest of you wait here.”
“But!” Todd protested.
“If I wanted to hear about your butt, I would have asked,” Ivan said coolly, and with that he opened the door and slipped out. I scrambled to follow him.
“Not what I meant,” I heard Todd mutter as I eased the door shut behind myself. I grinned at Ivan in the dim light of the tunnel.
“I didn’t know you could be funny,” I accused.
“Who’s being funny?” Ivan asked, his face completely straight. I sputtered, but then the corner of his mouth twitched up in the tiniest of smiles.
“Anyway,” I said, “where are we going?”
“Do you fancy a shower?” he asked, heading down the tunnel at a brisk jog.
“A shower?” I asked, hurrying to keep up. “Did you really just say shower?”
“I did,” Ivan said.
“Yes.” I grinned. “But how is taking a shower going to help anything?”
“The locker rooms attached to the bathrooms have places for people to store their clothing while they bathe. We are going to be helping ourselves to some of that clothing. You were right when you said we needed a way to blend. Your mother always used to meet me at the entrance with a compound uniform. She’d insist I shave my beard for those visits too,” he said, tugging at the white hair that stretched down past his chest.
“I see,” I said, trying to picture Ivan without his beard and failing.
“If I remember correctly, the nearest bathroom isn’t far,” he went on. “It’s early yet, so if we can make it into the showers before any compound residents come in, we should be fine. Find yourself a shower stall and shut the curtain. Get the water running and wait until at least a handful of people have started their own showers. Then slip out, steal enough for you and Chaz, and meet me back at the utility room. Luckily we are in one of the more heavily populated sections of the compound, so we have a good chance of going unnoticed, but it’s still best if we are never seen together. One person that they don’t recognise can easily be dismissed, but even this place isn’t large enough for a pack of strangers to walk around without being questioned.”
“OK,” I said, “I think I can do that.”
“Don’t think it,” Ivan said gruffly, “know it.”
I nodded. A moment later we rounded a corner, and I saw two large metal doors embedded in the side of the tunnel. A large plaque above them announced that this was RESTROOM #5. Ivan jogged for the entrance, and I followed, looking left and right down the empty tunnel. One of the doors was marked for women, and the other for men. Without anything but a nod, Ivan disappeared into the men’s. I took a deep breath and headed into the women’s.
It took everything in me not to gasp at the size of the place, and I realised that I must be standing in the basement of one of the skyscrapers. Thick pillars held up the ceiling that hung low over my head. Dented metal lockers of all shapes and sizes lined one of the walls like mismatched soldiers, while the other wall had been turned into a line of showers. Divided by small curtained stalls, each showerhead hung down from a thick pipe that stretched the length of the room. A stack of dingy grey towels sat on a bench beside the showers, and I turned slowly, taking in the far wall with its sinks and mirrors. I wanted to inspect every nook and cranny, but a sound behind me had me grabbing a towel and scurrying into the closest shower stall seconds before the bathroom door opened and a bunch of talking and laughing women entered. I hurriedly turned on my shower, and icy water shot from the showerhead, soaking me instantly. Trying not to gasp, I ducked out of the worst of the spray, and carefully peeled off my now-drenched blue uniform. Wadding it into a ball, I shoved it on one of the shelves. My leather boots came off next and went up on a second shelf, away from the spray of damaging water. If I’d learned one thing about topside life, it was that good footwear was vital.
Luckily, the water warmed up quickly, and even though my heart was hammering, I allowed myself to revel in the heat and the feeling of being clean. The soap in the dispenser on the wall was an unhealthy green colour and smelled oddly minty, but I didn’t care. Gobs of it went onto my hair and body as I scrubbed away layers of sweat and dirt. Meanwhile, outside my shower stall, the ladies continued to talk and gossip about husbands and extended work shifts while they undressed and entered their own shower stalls. I listened in on their conversations, trying to judge how many of them were in there. Five? Maybe a few more? When should I make a run for it? Ivan hadn’t been very specific. I bit my lip as I scrubbed my hair for the fourth time.
A few minutes later another group of people entered, and I could tell by the giggles and squeals that this crowd was younger. Peeking out of the corner of my curtain, I saw a few girls around my age shoving grey uniforms into lockers. Making a quick mental note of which lockers they used, I ducked back behind my curtain and rinsed the last of the soap out of my hair, and twisted it into a knot on top of my head. The girls entered their own showers, and I turned mine off, wrapping the threadbare towel around myself. I smiled a little at the familiar scratchy feel of it. At least some things about North and East Compound were alike.
I shoved my soggy blue uniform and boots under my arm. There would be questions if they were spotted, but a lifetime of conserving resources wouldn’t let me throw them away. The boots especially were the difference between life and death topside, and if I survived this, I was going to want them. A quick glance out of my shower revealed the room to be empty, everyone occupied inside their own curtained shower stall. I went for it. Darting out of the shower, I weaved my way through the minty-smelling steam that filled the room and raced on silent feet to the lockers. I pulled the closest one open. Inside was a dirty crumpled uniform as well as a folded and neatly pressed uniform. I was about to snatch the clean one, but grabbed the dirty one at the last second instead, reasoning that it wouldn’t be as easily missed. The faint odour of sweat clung to its wrinkled folds as I pulled it on and zipped it up the front. It was a little baggy and the legs were at least an inch too long, but it would have to work. Opening the next locker, I found two more discarded and dirty uniforms and grabbed them too. Maybe one of them would fit a little better than the one I had on, and Chaz could have this one.
I was about to go when I noticed the neatly placed compound-issued shoes on the bench next to the lockers, the same dull grey as the uniforms. How could I have forgotten shoes? One pair went on my feet and I grabbed another two pairs, then beat a hasty retreat out the door, my arms full.
A few moments later I was back in the dim tunnel heading towards
our hideout, and I allowed myself a shaky sigh of relief. I’d made it. And to top it all off, I’d got a shower out of the deal. One or two people passed me as I walked, but dressed in my new grey compound uniform, I didn’t even get a second glance. Minutes ticked by, and I began to worry that I’d missed our hidden door. It was, by its very nature, hidden, and I hadn’t paid particular attention to its location when I’d left with Ivan that morning. When I spotted the helicopters and the landing pad in the distance, it confirmed I’d gone too far. Turning around, I headed back down the tunnel. It was getting more crowded now. How was I going to get into our hideout unnoticed? Walking as close to the side of the tunnel as possible, I used my fingertips to brush across the smooth concrete, feeling for the lip of the door, painfully aware of the stolen uniforms under my arm only partially concealing the dripping blue lab uniform and my boots.
Finally, I spotted a familiar-looking scratch in the concrete floor I’d noticed earlier that marked our hideout’s entrance just as my fingers hit the slight edge of the door, and I froze as I heard the sound of running feet coming from behind me. Whirling, I saw five marines charging from the helicopter bay, one of them shouting into a radio. In the distance a faint alarm sounded, and my breath caught in my throat as panic wrapped its icy fingers around my neck and squeezed. It was as though the very air had frozen in my lungs, leaving me rooted to the spot as I watched them race towards me. And for a second, I was back at North Compound again, face-to-face with an electrified gate. I’d been just as trapped then as I was now, staring down a different tunnel with no hope of my best friend saving me this time. He would never rescue me again. In that instant of terror, I missed Shawn with a ferocity that made everything inside me twist painfully. I glanced around at the pipe-riddled walls of the tunnel wildly. Opening the hidden door behind me and condemning Todd and Chaz wasn’t an option, so I was going to have to make a run for it. But where? A second later, the marines ran right past me. It took me a moment to realise it. Stunned, I turned to watch them pass. Not one of them even looked at me.