by Laura Martin
“Shawn,” I said slowly, pulling my leg off the desk and staring at him. “What’s going on?”
He sighed, suddenly looking exhausted. His golden hair was matted with sweat and clung to his head in twisted ropes.
“Do me a favour?” he asked without looking at me.
“What?”
“Don’t hate me after I tell you this,” he said, glancing up quickly before returning his gaze to the floor.
“I’d never be able to hate you,” I said, feeling the truth of that statement in my bones. Shawn and I had grown up together. He was more family than friend, and there was nothing he could say that would change that.
“I hope not.” He sighed; then he looked up at us, his face drained of all colour. “You know how we haven’t been able to figure out how the Noah was tracking us? How the marines managed to follow us to the Oaks and Ivan’s?” I nodded, feeling numb. “That was all my fault,” he said. “I’m the tracker they were able to follow.”
I felt numb. Too shocked by Shawn’s words to move or respond. Todd had no such problems.
“What?!” he roared, and without further warning, he’d launched himself across the room at Shawn. Shawn threw up his hands just as Todd tackled him, sending the desk crashing to the floor as they both tumbled across the concrete. The baby dinosaur squawked in fright and came running to cower behind my legs. Within moments, Todd had Shawn pinned and was pounding on him with his fists, yelling about his village, his mom, and Roderick.
“Stop it,” I cried, lurching forward to pull them apart. Todd just batted me away and went right on whaling on Shawn, who I realised was doing nothing to fight back. He lay there, arms thrown protectively over his head, taking every blow Todd gave him. “Help me,” I yelled at Chaz in desperation.
Together we managed to pry Todd off Shawn. For a second, I was worried that Shawn had been knocked out cold because he didn’t make a move to stand up. Todd ripped himself from Chaz’s hands and moved to jump on Shawn again. Maybe it came from a lifetime of looking out for Shawn, or maybe it was seeing him lying on the ground like that, but before I even realised I was doing it, I had my bow and an arrow in my hand and pointed at Todd. He froze, shock and betrayal on his face as he stumbled back, arms thrown instinctively in the air.
“How can you possibly stand up for him?” he growled. “Think about it. My village, Roderick, the lab, Ivan’s place … he’s been telling that Kennedy guy exactly where to find you this entire time.”
My resolve wavered as I let Todd’s words sink in. Turning back to my traitorous best friend, I said quietly, “Shawn, you’d better start talking.”
He sat up, grimacing at the effort as his nose dripped blood onto his torn uniform. His right eye was already beginning to swell as a dark purple bruise spread across his cheekbone. “It was an accident,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “But I totally deserved that.”
“And we deserve an explanation,” I shot back.
“I never meant to hurt anyone,” Shawn said.
Todd snorted in disbelief, and I glared at him.
“My aunt asked me to test something out for her,” Shawn went on as though he hadn’t heard. “Months and months ago, back at North Compound. It was this emergency tracking prototype they were working on developing for the marines. It was tiny, no bigger than my pinkie nail.” He held up his finger to demonstrate the size and then shook his head in disgust. “I agreed to help. It sounded cool. It was implanted in my upper arm, and they were able to track my movements throughout the school day. It was going to help the marines locate one another in an emergency, so it was all for the good of the compound. I thought I was doing something really great, you know? I even helped them untangle some of the coding so it functioned better on the marines’ ports.”
“So when I met you, you knew you had a tracking device!” Todd growled.
“I did,” Shawn said, hanging his head. “But I thought the tracker had been disabled months ago, once they were done with the testing. And even if it hadn’t been disabled, it was only supposed to work within a mile radius of the compound. It should have been completely useless within minutes of Sky and me making it topside.”
“But it wasn’t,” I breathed.
Shawn shook his head. “No. Although I didn’t know it at first. I’d completely forgotten about it until the marines showed up at Todd’s village. Then I convinced myself that it was just a fluke. We were only a day’s travel from the compound, and it was totally possible that the Noah would have already known about his village. But then when the marines arrived at Ivan’s, I knew,” he said, shaking his head. “There was no way that could have been a coincidence. Do you remember how I asked you for a knife the night after we escaped Kennedy and his marines?”
I nodded, vaguely remembering. None of us had had one, having lost them in the scuffle with Kennedy and his marines.
Shawn yanked up the sleeve of his shirt, showing a jagged cut on his shoulder, just beginning to heal.
“I wanted to slice the tracker out, but I couldn’t figure out how without a knife. Finally I got desperate and used a sharp rock. I destroyed it two days before we got to the lab.”
I sank down heavily onto the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me about all this?”
“Well, initially, because my aunt told me not to. It was a top-secret government project, and I guess I let that go to my head. And then, to be honest, I completely forgot about it in the chaos of going topside. That is, until Todd’s village.” He looked at Todd, who was still fuming, arms crossed. “I can’t even begin to apologise for that. It is completely, one hundred per cent my fault.”
“It’s not,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s mine. I’m the reason you were there in the first place.”
“It’s both your faults,” Todd growled.
Chaz tilted her head to inspect Todd. “Tell me, Todd, if they hadn’t shown up at your village, what would you be doing right now?”
“I’d be home,” he snapped. “My mom would be safe and so would everyone else.”
“Right.” Chaz nodded. “And in a few days or weeks when the Noah drops his nuclear weapons? What then?”
Todd sagged visibly, and his anger seemed to drain out of him as he sat down heavily on the bed next to me. Chaz turned back to Shawn. “I’m not letting you off the hook. You should have mentioned that tracker long before now. And you still need to explain how you ended up here.”
“I’m so sorry,” Shawn said, shaking his head.
“Stop apologising and talk.” Chaz frowned. “You said yourself that we didn’t have long here. I’m not sure about you, but I have no desire to run into those marines again.”
“Right,” Shawn said, straightening up. “Do you remember when we were in the elevator?”
“How could I forget,” Todd mumbled. “It’s literally the stuff my nightmares are made of.”
“Well, I’m not sure if you know this. But Schwartz was working for the Noah,” Shawn said, his face twisted in anger. “Communicating with him and everything. He’s the one who told them that we knew about the Noah’s plan. It was just dumb luck that we ended up being in that wing of the lab when the bombs hit.” When none of us reacted, he glanced around in surprise.
“We knew that,” I said.
“OK,” Shawn said, looking a little unsettled. “So, one of the Noah’s guys must have told him about me, the tracker, and who my aunt was, because when those doors opened, he grabbed me. The next thing I knew, I had this hose thing in my mouth, and I could breathe.”
“So that’s what Schwartz was working on in the elevator,” Chaz cried. “It was a Water-Gil. It must have been one of the new prototypes he’s been developing for underwater observation.” When the rest of us just looked clueless, she sighed in exasperation. “They let you breathe underwater.”
I thought back to those terrifying moments in the elevator and vaguely remembered that Schwartz had been messing with a small black box right before the ele
vator doors had opened.
“Whatever it was, it allowed me to breathe, and I had no choice but to swim next to Schwartz until he surfaced. And when we did, you guys were nowhere in sight. A helicopter picked us up almost immediately, and I was brought back here. The worst part was that Kennedy congratulated me. Said I’d done a great service for the human race by helping them track you.” He sniffed, his face bright red with shame. “It was awful. I let him know exactly what I thought about the Noah’s awful plan, and about tricking me with that tracker.” He shook his head. “I thought you guys were dead, and I had nothing to lose. So they locked me up in here,” he said, gesturing around. “And I’ve been in here ever since.”
“But you aren’t locked in now,” I said, glancing at the door nervously.
He shook his head. “The coding system for the door locks here were super easy to crack. I also had this,” he said, holding up his old familiar port screen from North Compound. I gaped at it in surprise. How had it survived the bombing?
Seeing my glance, Shawn shrugged sheepishly. “I had it in my pocket that day, and since it had a waterproof case, it survived. The marine who searched me saw that it was drenched, figured it was busted, and let me keep it. It’s how I heard the Noah’s announcement about you guys and hacked in to find out about Ivan. Up until then, I was just lying around here feeling pretty awful about myself and trying to figure out how to stop the Noah on my own.” He shrugged. “You know, to make your deaths have some meaning.”
“And did you come up with anything?” I prompted, thinking of our own feeble plan to use Boz’s last lone plug.
“Sort of,” he said, perking up. “I think I was able to get a message out to the Lincoln Lab.”
“You what?!” Chaz cried. “How? Did anyone respond? Do you know if there were any casualties besides the conference wing?”
Shawn shook his head. “I didn’t get any response.” Chaz sagged visibly, disappointment etched in her every feature. “But,” Shawn said hurriedly, “that doesn’t mean no one survived. I had to use the same program Schwartz used to betray the lab to the Noah. They might not trust anything coming from that signal if they figured out it was Schwartz who betrayed them.”
“What did you send in your message?” I asked.
“The basics of the Noah’s insane plan.” Shawn shrugged. “I realised that there was a good chance that none of the survivors would know about it; Boz kept things pretty top secret. I also sent them a map of East Compound with the Noah’s headquarters circled.”
“You know where his headquarters are?” I asked.
“I think I know,” Shawn corrected. “I’m not positive. If you guys hadn’t shown up, I was going to try to break in myself tomorrow.”
“What’s at his headquarters?” I asked eagerly.
“No idea,” Shawn said. “But I figured I’d start smashing stuff and hope I managed to damage something important before I got caught.”
“We still have one of Boz’s plugs,” I said. “It survived the elevator. Maybe there is something there that controls the bombs that we could use it on?”
“It’s worth a shot,” Chaz said. “Besides, if there isn’t, we can always fall back on Shawn’s plan and start smashing stuff.”
Todd nodded approvingly. “I like that idea.”
“The headquarters aren’t the only thing I found,” Shawn said, shooting Todd a wary look. “I think I know where the people from your village are too.”
“Really?” Todd said, jumping up so quickly the bed almost toppled over. “Where?”
“The same place as the Noah’s headquarters,” Shawn said. “Grand Central Terminal.” Before I had a chance to ask what that meant, Shawn’s port buzzed. We all stared at it like it was a snake that might bite. Shawn quickly swiped his screen. When he looked up, his face had lost all colour.
“We have to go,” he said, “now. Kennedy and the marines are heading right for us.”
“How do you know?” Todd asked suspiciously.
“Because my port is still intercepting their communications. That’s why,” Shawn snapped as he moved quickly around the room, shoving things into a bag.
“Where are we going?” Chaz asked.
Shawn threw his bag over his shoulder. “I already told you, Grand Central Terminal. Well, actually, underneath Grand Central Terminal. I’ll explain more once we’re on the move. We’ve already stayed here too long.” He glanced at me uncertainly. “Can you run?” he asked.
I stood, forcing myself not to wince, and nodded. Convinced, he turned towards the door. Todd followed, but not before snatching a handful of arrows out of my quiver and shoving them in his own. I didn’t argue. Of the two of us, he was by far the better shot. Turning towards the door, I was brought up short by an indignant squeak as the tiny dinosaur came rushing out from under the toppled desk to skid headfirst into my injured leg. The pain made black spots bloom in my vision, but I shook them off to pick her up.
“I almost forgot about you,” I apologised as she squealed indignantly at me, proving that she’d managed to get the tie off her beak at some point.
“That’s odd,” Chaz said as she stared at the dinosaur.
“What?” I asked defensively as I slid her back into my now almost empty quiver. To my surprise, she made no move to bite me again.
“Where did you find the baby pentaceratops again?” Chaz asked.
“She found me, actually,” I said. “I think she came out of a nest nearby that had a bunch of eggs in it.”
“Well, that explains it.” Chaz sighed. “She’s imprinted on you.”
“She’s what?” I asked.
Chaz rolled her eyes impatiently. “Imprinted. Birds do it, and so do some dinosaur breeds. They attach to the first thing they see after hatching. She thinks you’re her mother.”
“Well, that’s just great,” Shawn groaned from the door. “But did you two not hear what I said about the marines? They are going to be here any minute. Move!”
We followed Shawn out of the door and began to weave our way through a maze of hallways. There was a noticeable limp in my step, but the pain had settled into a dull throb. With the amount of adrenaline I had pumping through my system at the moment, I could have probably lost the entire leg and kept going. The tiny dinosaur on my back warbled and chirped as we ran. She needed a name.
“I’m going to call her Sprout,” I announced as we reached a set of steep stairs and headed down.
“Really?” Shawn asked, glancing back to eye my tiny passenger.
“Really,” I said with a look that dared him to argue with me. Sprout chirped nervously, and I reached a hand back to stroke her head to calm her. Thankfully, she didn’t take the opportunity to take off one of my fingers. Was Chaz right? Had she really imprinted on me? And what did it mean if she had? Was I supposed to be her mother now? Shaking my head, I shoved those thoughts aside. I’d worry about it if I survived the next few hours.
“How far away are we from Grand Central Terminal?” Chaz whispered as we paused for a second to catch our breath on the platform in front of the tunnel.
“Two miles through dinosaur-infested tunnels,” Shawn answered.
“And you’re sure everyone from the Oaks is at this Grand Central Terminal?” Todd asked.
“No,” Shawn said. “But it’s my best guess. I was able to hack into the system and pull up a map of the place, and nothing showed up about the Noah’s headquarters or a prison. But,” he said, holding a hand up before Todd could interrupt him, “I was also able to pull up some of the original plans of the station, blueprints from over 300 years ago when it was first built. They show a huge area set aside for the technology that ran the subways. Well, that area no longer shows up on the current compound map.”
“And we no longer use subways,” I finished for him as I started to understand what he was saying.
“Exactly.” He grinned. “My guess is everything in those rooms was salvaged years ago, leaving a huge empty space no one else
knows about.”
The sudden crack of a gunshot echoing from the tunnel we’d just left made us all jump. The marines had apparently found their way to Shawn’s room. Without saying a word, we charged down the steps into the main tunnel. Shawn took a right, and we followed at a dead sprint. We ran full-out for a good fifteen minutes before any of us felt confident enough to slow down to a brisk jog.
“So tell me about Grand Central Terminal,” Todd said, barely breathing hard. “What do we need to know?”
“The original station was built a long time ago,” Shawn explained between gasps of air, “like a hundred years before the pandemic.”
Todd whistled in appreciation.
“The outside was beautiful,” I added, remembering the pictures I’d seen of it. “It looked like something from ancient Greece.”
“We don’t really have time for a full-blown history lesson,” Todd said with a nervous glance over his shoulder.
Shawn flapped a hand at him impatiently. “I’m getting there,” he said. “Well, like fifty years or something after the original station was built, they built a skyscraper right behind it. I guess the skyscraper’s construction wasn’t so great, because during the chaos of the pandemic, it collapsed – right on top of Grand Central Terminal. But here is the really cool thing. The original structure of the station was so strong it stayed basically intact, just buried under twenty feet of concrete and rubble. I think grass and stuff has even grown up on top of the rubble, so the dinosaurs don’t know it’s down there. It’s the largest and the only aboveground structure in any of the compounds. So it makes sense that it would become the centre of government here at East.”
“But if it’s buried under twenty feet of rubble, is it really considered aboveground?” Chaz asked.