by Laura Martin
“Shawn?” I asked as I put a worried hand on his shoulder. “What is it? The marines kept going down the tunnel. It’s OK.” When he didn’t respond, a surge of worry washed over me. Had he been hit with a stray bullet during our run across the station? Was he losing blood? Why else would he look like he was about to faint?
“Shawn, say something,” I commanded. “You’re scaring me.”
“Sky?” said a low voice from behind me, and I froze, the blood draining from my own face in a dizzying rush that had my knees buckling. Shawn grabbed my elbow to steady me as I shut my eyes, not willing to believe that what I was hearing was true. It couldn’t be.
“Sky?” the voice spoke again, and I turned slowly to meet the familiar blue eyes of my dad.
I stared at my dad in shock. His face was thinner than I remembered it, the cheekbones standing out like sharp cliffs in his narrow face. Blue eyes the colour of the sky at twilight looked at me in astonishment, earnest and wide set and achingly familiar. Two fat tears slid down his cheek to splash onto the floor, and he made a choking noise that was half my name and half a sob.
I don’t remember doing it, but suddenly I was across the room and in his arms. Bending his head, he buried his face in my hair and cried. This can’t be real, I thought even as I inhaled his familiar smell of lab chemicals and soap. Right when I’d given up, resigning myself to the fact that I’d never see him again, I’d found him.
“So …” Todd said from behind me, “I’m guessing this is your dad?”
“Of course it is,” Chaz said. “Don’t you recognise him from the tape?”
“Shhhh,” Shawn hissed. “Give them a second.”
“We don’t have a second,” Todd groaned in exasperation. “Or did you forget the pack of marines on our tail?”
“I didn’t,” Shawn said. “Sky said they ran past us.”
“But they’ll be back,” Todd pointed out. “And this place is obviously not a prison. Which means my mom and everyone else in the Oaks is still locked up somewhere.” The disappointment in Todd’s voice pulled me back to reality. He’d expected to find his family on the other side of the door, not mine.
My dad stepped back then, wiping at his still-streaming eyes. “It is a prison,” he said to Todd, “mine.” As though his words had triggered something, he grabbed my shoulders, his face suddenly etched with fear. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “How did you get past the armed marines outside?”
“There weren’t any,” I said.
My dad’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Impossible,” he said. “There is a twenty-four-hour guard posted at the marine’s station entrance as well as outside that door,” he said, gesturing to the door we’d just come through.
“Well, we met the ones at the entrance,” Chaz said, grimacing. “But the ones outside your door were probably relocated because of the dinosaurs.”
“Dinosaurs?” my dad asked. “What dinosaurs?”
“The ones Sky let into East Compound,” Shawn said. “Oh, and there’s the one she’s toting around on her back.” My dad blinked in surprise and glanced at my back, where Sprout was snoring softly, apparently sound asleep inside my quiver.
“I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “Has the Noah captured you?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. Although not for a lack of trying on his part.”
“Why?” my dad asked. “Did you find my message? Were you able to deliver it to Ivan or Boznic?” Before I could reply, he’d paced away, shoving his hands into his hair in frustration so it stood up in familiar crazy tuffs. I’d forgotten that he used to do that. Except now his chestnut hair was shot through with streaks of grey at the temples. “Of course you found it,” he said, more to himself than to us. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here, and the Noah wouldn’t be after you. But you couldn’t have found Ivan or Boznic. They never would have let you come alone, or come at all for that matter. I never wanted you here in this kind of danger. Never.”
“Dad?” I said nervously.
“I’m sorry,” he said, striding back to us. “I’ve been talking to myself for too long. I’m out of practice. I just never thought I’d see you here. Or see you at all, for that matter. The boy said the marines are after you? Explain.”
“We don’t have time,” Todd protested.
“He’s right,” I said, turning to my dad. “There isn’t a lot of time before the marines figure out where we’ve gone. We need to get out of here.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” my dad asked. “This is a prison. You can’t get in or out.”
“I can,” Shawn said. Holding up his port, he quickly walked to the small holoscreen beside my dad’s door and got to work. I turned to my dad, the questions I’d been dying to get the answers to for the last five years burning in my chest with such a fury I couldn’t hold them anymore.
“Dad,” I said, drawing his attention away from Shawn. “What happened five years ago? How did you end up here?” I asked, unable to keep the hint of accusation out of my voice. Glancing around, I took in here for the first time. The room was bright and white, with a slight chemical smell to it, and lined with shelves filled with tiny plastic petri dishes and glass beakers. A long well-lit table ran down the middle of the room filled with microscopes and other scientific equipment. It was a lab, I realised. Very similar to the one my dad had worked in back at North Compound. The thought of North Compound had me turning back to him.
“I was found out,” he said simply. “I stumbled upon that file detailing the Noah’s plans, and the marines were tipped off almost immediately that someone had stolen confidential government information.”
“How did you do that?” I asked. “Find the video of the Noah, I mean.”
My dad shrugged. “I’d been keeping tabs on the Noah’s correspondence ever since I was transferred to North Compound. The Colombe was gone, but I hadn’t given up hope that things could change. That people and dinosaurs could one day inhabit the topside world, just like Ivan and your mother talked about. I’d spotted the file months before I actually managed to get it open, but when I did I knew that I had to do something. Unfortunately, with the marines on my tail, I had less than twenty-four hours to formulate some kind of plan.”
“And that plan didn’t include me,” I said flatly. I had to know why I’d been left behind.
He shook his head sadly. “It was the best I could do. I barely had enough time to get together what I would need to make the trip to find Ivan or Boznic, and on top of that, I knew I couldn’t leave you without an explanation.”
I swallowed hard. “But you did leave me without an explanation. I risked my neck checking the topside maildrop for years, hoping to get some clue about what had happened to you.”
He flinched at my words. “You were so young, Sky.” There was a definite note of pleading in his voice now. “How was I supposed to explain a secret organisation and nuclear warfare to you? You were still afraid of the dark, for goodness’ sake!”
When I didn’t say anything, my dad sighed in resignation. “I did what I thought was best. There was no way I was going to take you topside so young. You weren’t fast enough or strong enough. Besides, I fully intended to come back for you after I found Ivan or Boznic.”
“But you still put that message for her in your compass,” Shawn pointed out, glancing over his shoulder, from where he was busily working on the wall’s holoscreen.
“I did.” He nodded. “I knew there was a chance I wouldn’t make it back. So I used a prototype mechanism I’d been developing inside my old compass and prayed you’d find the journal before the marines did.”
“That prototype didn’t work,” I said, unable to keep the edge out of my voice.
“It didn’t?” my dad asked, sagging in defeat.
“If it wasn’t for Shawn, I’d never have found it,” I said. “And, by the way, it wasn’t even really a message. It was a note that made no sense and a map to the middle of Lake Michigan. Couldn’t you have at least
hinted about what was down there? And you never told me about Ivan! Why didn’t I know I had a grandfather? And what about people living topside? Or Mom? She was murdered, Dad. Murdered.” I was breathing hard; tears of frustration slid down my cheeks as years of pain and anger rolled through me.
“If the marines had got hold of that note instead of you, it would have put Ivan and Boznic’s entire operation in danger,” my dad explained. “I needed to give you just enough to get there, but not enough to endanger them.”
I knew he was right. Of course he couldn’t endanger Ivan or the Lincoln Lab, even though I wished he’d been able to leave me more of a clue. A tear slid down my face, and I gave him another hard hug.
“How much longer?” Todd called to Shawn impatiently.
“Give me a minute,” Shawn said. “This is harder than I thought it would be. They programmed a different code for getting out than getting in.” He shot my dad an admiring look. “They weren’t taking any chances with you.”
“But how did you end up in this place?” Chaz asked my dad, glancing around. “And what is this place?”
“It’s a lab,” my dad explained. “I was captured less than five hours after escaping North Compound. I’d been attacked by a pack of eotyrannus and had climbed a tree to get away. The marines were able to find me using an old tracking chip that was implanted without my knowledge on the day I was transferred to North Compound. Instead of killing me, or bringing me back to North, I was transported here.” He gestured around himself. “I was the top biologist and DNA specialist in the compounds. And considering what the Noah was planning, they couldn’t afford to kill me. So I’ve been here ever since. Kept under lock and key, not allowed to talk to anyone.”
“DNA specialist?” Todd asked, shooting me a questioning look.
“I have been cataloging and saving the DNA of every topside plant, animal, fungus, and bacteria that I could get my hands on,” my dad explained. “If the Noah does wipe out the topside world, it will be with my work that he is able to rebuild at least part of it.”
“But Boz said the Noah’s plan would do irreparable damage,” Chaz cut in.
“Oh, it will,” my dad said. “It will be thousands of years before evolution can bring back a sustainable ecosystem; unfortunately, by then, the human race might not be part of it anymore.”
“I hate to interrupt,” Shawn said, trotting back to us. “But I got the door open, and we might not be part of the human race much longer either if we don’t get out of here before those marines come back.”
“I don’t know how you ended up here!” my dad protested. “You met Ivan?” He turned to Chaz. “And you mentioned Boznic. And how did you end up letting dinosaurs into the compound?”
“There isn’t time,” Shawn apologised, already pulling us towards the door. “Do you know where the control centre is for the bombs?”
My dad nodded. “The same place the control centre is for the entire compound. But why do you need to get there?”
“We can explain on the way,” Chaz said anxiously. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Todd said. “What about my mom?” He turned to my dad. “If this is a prison like you said, then maybe you know where other prisoners are kept?” He quickly explained about his village and my dad listened, his face focussed and intense. I’d always loved that about him, the way he listened with every fiber of his being. It made me want to hug him again, but I knew we didn’t have time.
“I might know where they are being kept.” He nodded. “If I’m right, it’s on the way to the command hub.”
Shawn peered out at the empty tunnel. A second later he gave the signal that it was safe and disappeared. Careful to shut the door behind us, we headed down the far tunnel at a run. My dad took the lead, and after only a minute he turned right, and we weaved our way through increasingly narrow corridors. While we moved, we did our best to catch my dad up on everything. It wasn’t easy. So much had happened. It didn’t help that he kept interrupting us with questions. When I got to the part about how I’d let a herd of pentaceratops into East Compound, he laughed out loud, shaking his head. A minute later we skidded to a stop outside a large metal door.
“This is the only place large enough to keep thirty-plus people,” my dad told Todd. “It’s the holding cell I was brought to when I was first captured, and it’s had three armed marines standing guard outside it for a week.”
“This has to be them, then,” Todd said, jumping for the door handle. It was locked. The sound of shouts and running feet came floating down the tunnel behind us, and my heart lurched. The marines were heading this way.
“Can you get the door open?” Todd asked frantically, turning to Shawn.
“I think so,” he said, already consulting his port.
I stared anxiously down the tunnel that would lead us to the command hub, feeling torn.
Todd saw my glance and nodded once, as though he’d read my thoughts. “You guys keep going,” he said, putting an arrow to the string and turning to face the tunnel we’d just left. “Shawn and I will follow with the rest of my village if we can.” Shawn jerked his head up, looking like he wanted to argue, but one glance at Todd’s face had him turning back to his port.
“But—” I began to protest.
“Just go,” Todd said as the noise of approaching marines got louder. “Saving my mom won’t do us any good if you don’t stop the Noah.”
Knowing a lost battle when I saw one, I quickly pulled all but two of my remaining arrows out of my quiver, thankful that the marine who had broken Todd’s arrows hadn’t managed to do the same to mine. Sprout woke up with a startled squawk, but quickly resettled.
“Todd,” I called, “catch.” He deftly caught the arrows and jammed them in his own quiver. Whirling, I signalled for my dad to lead the way. He did, Chaz and me at his heels. The last thing I saw before the curve of the tunnel hid them from sight was Todd letting loose an arrow as the first marine appeared around the corner.
We followed my dad at a sprint as he led us towards East Compound’s command hub. Shawn had been right; it was located in one of the old utility rooms.
“Do you think it matters which port screen we put this plug into?” I asked my dad.
My dad shook his head. “I don’t know. Putting it in any of the ports in the command hub will do some damage. We can only hope it’s enough. Do you have the plug ready?”
“It’s inside your compass,” I said, stopping all of us momentarily as I fumbled to unscrew the back. I gingerly removed the plug and handed it to my dad.
“Good.” My dad nodded, but instead of turning to run again, he hesitated, looking back and forth at me and Chaz. “If I asked you to do something for me, would you?”
I blinked in surprise. “What?”
My dad exhaled hard, and I could tell that I wasn’t going to like what he said next. “Will you stay back where it’s safe? We passed a storage closet a minute ago where you two could hide. I’ll go on ahead and do this? Then I’ll come back for you.”
“Not a chance,” I snapped, and Chaz shook her head. “Give me back that plug.”
“Sky,” he pleaded.
“No,” I hissed. “You may have been able to leave me behind five years ago, but you will not do it again. I’m not sure if you understand this, but I made it here on my own. I faced dinosaurs and sea monsters and marines, and I am going to see this through. Now give it here.” I paused. “Please,” I added.
I waited for my dad to argue. Instead he pressed the tiny port plug back into my hand, curling my fingers around it as he looked into my eyes as though reading something there.
“I guess you’re not the little girl I left five years ago,” he said.
“I’m not,” I agreed.
“I can’t decide if that makes me proud or sad.” He sighed. From behind us came shouting and gunshots. Apparently Shawn and Todd were putting up a good fight. Pushing aside my worries for my friends, we took off running again. The tunnel was getting pr
ogressively better lit, and goose bumps broke out along my neck. We were close. I tightened my grip on my loaded bow, painfully aware of the quiver that carried only one more arrow and a very disgruntled baby dinosaur.
A moment later, the wall on our right transformed from smooth concrete to clear glass. On the other side of the glass was a circular room. Spread out in a wide arc were workstations, each with complicated-looking port screen setups. They all faced the far wall, where twenty huge monitors displayed rotating images of East Compound. Some simply flashed from empty subway tunnel to abandoned subway platform, but others showed pentaceratops methodically ramming into the side of a black helicopter or condorraptors on the prowl. The screen in the far right corner showed a large-scale fight, and I realised it was the marines battling the people of the Oaks. I recognised four of the villagers who had managed to pin a marine down. Ivan flashed onto the screen, slamming two marines’ heads together.
“Do you see that?” Chaz said from behind me. “They found Ivan.” But I was too busy taking in the rest of the space to answer. The room wasn’t empty. Four people, three men and a woman, stood with their backs to us, facing the wall of screens as they worked busily at their ports. And standing in the centre of the room was the Noah. As though he’d heard my thoughts, he turned and our eyes met.
Suddenly my muscles seized, bringing me to a wrenching stop, frozen in midrun. The feeling of electricity coursing through my veins made me want to scream, but my jaw clenched shut involuntarily, cutting it off. The arrow I’d notched to my bow clattered to the floor and rolled away. In my peripheral vision, I saw the same thing happening to Chaz and my dad as they too were caught by some mysterious electrical force field.