Edge of Extinction

I woke up a few days later to the sound of a lock pick working at my door.

I got out of bed and shivered in the damp chill of the room as I hurried to let Shawn in.

“Go away,” I moaned, when I opened the door to see him standing on my doorstep, way too alert and happy for this time of the morning. “I’m going to tell the guardians I’m sick today and skip school.”

“And give up spending your birthday with me?” he asked, pretending to be hurt. “Never. Besides, we don’t even have first period this morning.” When I just stared at him blankly, he sighed in exasperation. “Why are you giving me that look? Because you forgot it was your birthday or because you forgot about the compound-wide assembly?”

I smacked my head.

“So both,” Shawn said. “Impressive. Even for you.”

“You are the only one who cares about birthdays,” I grumbled. “I do my best to forget about mine.”

Shawn grinned crookedly. “Congratulations. You succeeded.”

“But I can’t believe I forgot about the assembly,” I groaned as I hunted around my room for my towel and soap. “They’ve been announcing it for days!”

I bolted for the bathroom. Five minutes later I was showered and dressed and back in my room. Shawn sat on my bed staring at his feet like they were the most interesting things in the world, and I paused for a second in my doorway, studying him. There was something off about his expression, and in my fog of sleepy shock over the forgotten assembly I hadn’t noticed before. Shawn had always been horrible at secrets, and it was obvious in the worried lines of his forehead and crooked set of his mouth that he was hiding something.

“OK, spill it,” I commanded. “You’re hiding something. What is it?” He looked back down, nervously pulling at the fraying edge of his grey uniform sleeve. Finally he sighed and looked up at me with worried blue eyes. “It’s big.” He glanced back down at his sleeve, and I gritted my teeth impatiently, wishing I could yank the truth from him. “I just wanted to do something nice for your birthday, and then I found something.”

Hope surged in my chest. “Did you find something about my dad on the scan plug after all?”

He shook his head. “No.” A frown twisted his lips, and I knew he was lying. When I just stared at him, he looked down at his hands guiltily. “And yes,” he mumbled.

“Yes?” My heart slammed to a startled stop in my chest. Had he really just said yes?

“But it wasn’t on the scan plug,” Shawn added quickly. “It was in this.” He held up my dad’s compass, and I snatched it from his hands.

“How did you get this?” I searched my memory, trying to remember the last time I’d looked at it. I’d assumed it was resting in its hiding place above my head, safe and sound in my journal.

“Remember when I was looking at your journal the other day? Well, I kind of borrowed it. I had this idea that I would fix it for your birthday.”

I glanced down at the face of the compass and gaped in surprise to see that the little arm was no longer stuck; now it swung back and forth, finally settling to point north.

“Shawn,” I gasped, “this is incredible.” I looked up at him in confusion. “But I don’t understand. Why did you think you could fix it? You’ve tried before. Remember? Right after I moved into the Guardian Wing.”

He nodded in agreement. “Right. But I’ve learned a lot since then. So I thought I’d take another crack at it. And, well, I managed to get the back off it this time. That’s what stopped me the last time, remember?”

I nodded, recalling a seven-year-old Shawn sweating as he tried to unscrew the back of the compass. I’d finally stopped him, afraid he would break it.

“You said you found information about my dad?” I prompted.

“I did.” He sighed. “And to be honest, I kind of thought about throwing it away and not showing you.”

“Shawn!”

He held up his hands in defence. “I didn’t throw it away.”

I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw popped. “You need to explain, and explain quickly.”

“I got the back off, and this was inside,” Shawn said, pulling two small pieces of folded paper out of his pocket. My hands shook as I took them from him. Not really believing that this was happening, I unfolded the first one to reveal my dad’s handwriting.

Sky,

It is my greatest hope that you never find what I’ve hidden inside my compass. That I will have fixed things and returned to North Compound to be with you long before your eleventh birthday, which is when I’ve programmed the port plug to reveal itself. Even at eleven, you will be young to do what I need you to do. But time is running out, and there is no one else I can trust.

If you are reading this, I’ve failed, and you need to deliver the port plug I’ve hidden in my compass to another member of the Colombe. Ivan is the closest to you, but I don’t know where he is these days. The other member is further away, but I know his location. I have marked it for you on the map. The plug is an exact copy of the one I carry with me. The Noah’s people haven’t yet discovered the security breach that allowed me to steal the information contained on these plugs. Information that could forever change the fate of the human race. When they do, I’m going to have to flee, and it will be too dangerous to take you with me. I always thought that I wouldn’t put you in danger for the world, but it turns out that, for the world, I will. Good luck, Sky. Know that I will love you always.

Dad

I put the paper down and stared at Shawn for a second, feeling numb. Then I lurched to my feet, ran for the waste bin in the corner, and puked. My head pounded as I emptied what little I had in my stomach. When I was done, I wiped my mouth and walked over to pick the paper back up. It was circular, its edges roughly cut, and I would bet anything that it fit perfectly into the missing circle of my journal.

Shawn looked at me in concern. “Well,” he said after a minute, “that wasn’t exactly the reaction I expected. Are you OK?” I didn’t say anything as tears started sliding silently down my cheeks.

“Hey,” Shawn said, sounding a little alarmed as he put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “It’s OK.” And then I punched him. Hard.

“You were going to throw this away?” I cried. “How could you even think about doing something like that to me?” He alone knew how many hours I’d dedicated to discovering just what had happened to my dad.

Shawn winced and rubbed the shoulder I’d punched. “There it is.”

“There what is?” I snapped.

“The reaction I expected. Actually –” he rolled his shoulder – “I thought you’d go for my face.”

“Don’t tempt me,” I muttered as I reread the letter. I was confused. After five years, I’d hoped for more than a few hastily scrawled sentences. I read it a third time. And then a fourth. My dad had put some kind of timed mechanism inside the compass, but the mechanism hadn’t sprung open on my eleventh birthday like he intended it to. And today was my twelfth birthday. If Shawn hadn’t decided to tinker with my compass, I wouldn’t have found the letter at all.

“Why didn’t the timer work?” I asked, looking up at Shawn.

He shrugged. “Something had to have come unlatched on the inside for me to be able to open it now.”

I glanced back at the note and then up at Shawn. “Who do you think the they is he talks about? Who was after him?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. He didn’t make them sound very friendly.”

I nodded, considering. Then I waved the piece of paper in his face. “Do you know what this means?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” Shawn said, and there was something odd about his expression. I ignored it as a heavy weight eased off my aching heart.

“It means he left for a reason,” I whispered, brushing away the tears that clouded my vision. “He had to leave me behind.”

“You thought he wanted to leave you behind?” Shawn asked.

I shrugged. After five years of thinking and rethinking, dissecting every memory of my dad I could recall, of sitting through an assembly where he’d been declared a traitor, I wasn’t sure what I had thought any more.

I carefully unfolded the map. My dad had drawn a meandering path from the compound up to a small red circle located in the middle of Lake Michigan. North Compound was located in what used to be Indiana. I studied the route curiously. I knew the places on the map by name only. There had been a few history lessons in school on the surrounding topside landscape, but they were nothing but fuzzy memories now. What was the Colombe he’d mentioned? And what was a member of it doing in the middle of Lake Michigan? The note created way more questions than it answered, and I felt a surge of frustration.

I glanced at Shawn. “What port plug is he talking about?” Shawn took the working compass off the bed where I’d dropped it in my haste to read the notes. Pulling out a small screwdriver, he opened the back. I watched in amazement. I’d tried that same manoeuvre about a hundred times with no success. He handed me the back of the compass, and I looked inside.

My dad had used a piece of waterproof tape to adhere a port plug to the inside. Info plugs were used to store data outside of a port, and most of them were cylindrical, much like old-fashioned pills used to be. But this one was exceptionally tiny, no bigger than my thumbnail, and much too small to fit in a regular port screen. It seemed so fragile I was afraid to pry it off the cover.

After I examined the plug, I turned my attention back to Shawn. His face was pale and drawn.

“He wants me to leave North Compound,” I said, feeling stunned as this piece of information finally got past the pure adrenaline of reading my dad’s note.

Shawn shook his head. “You can’t do that. No way, no how.”

“That’s why you didn’t want to show it to me?” I realised. “Because you knew I’d want to leave?”

“No,” Shawn said carefully, as though he were explaining this to someone Shamus’s age, “because I didn’t want my best friend to get eaten alive. No one survives topside, Sky. You know that. What your dad asked you to do is crazy.”

I didn’t want to admit it to Shawn, but I thought it was crazy too. I picked the note back up and read it again. Why couldn’t he have included more details? Would it have killed him to tell me what I was up against?

I looked at Shawn. “Whether I go topside or not really isn’t your decision.”

A strange expression crossed his face, and he stared at the wall, deliberately avoiding eye contact. “You can’t leave.”

“I can.” I was already thinking of all the supplies I’d need to get my hands on in order to survive topside. There it was, that oxymoron again: surviving topside. I swallowed hard. Could I really leave the safety of North? I glanced back down at my dad’s familiar handwriting and squared my shoulders stubbornly. I’d spent the last five years of my life wishing for answers to my dad’s disappearance. Now that I had them, there was no way I was going to let my dad down just because I was scared of living without two feet of concrete above my head.

“Your dad’s not there, you know,” Shawn said, and I snapped my head up to look at him.

“What?”

“You think your dad’s there,” Shawn accused. “In the middle of Lake Michigan.” I stared at him a moment, stunned. I’d almost given up on the idea of ever seeing my dad again, and had told myself that I would be content if I just found out why he’d left. I realised now that I’d been lying to myself. Shawn had just called me out on a hope so deeply rooted in my soul that even I hadn’t realised it was there.

“It’s possible,” I whispered.

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Shawn snatched my dad’s letter from my hands. “If he’d made it, he’d have come back for you. It says so right here,” he said pointing.

“Even if my dad’s not there, whoever is there might have answers or an explanation for why he left.” I snatched the map and the note back from him. “If you want me to admit that my dad’s probably dead, you’re wasting your time,” I muttered.

“No,” Shawn said slowly, “I’m not trying to do that. You’ve been in orphan denial since the day we met. It’s just that, if he couldn’t do it, what makes you think you can?”

“Because I’m not going to let him down. Whatever is on that plug was worth abandoning me for, and I want to know – I need to know,” I corrected, “what’s on there.” When he didn’t say anything, I folded up the map and note and placed them in the back compartment of the compass, using my fingernail to screw it shut again. Realising that there was no way I was going to let this thing ride around in my journal any more, I looped one of my old shoelaces through the small ring at the top of the compass, creating a makeshift necklace.

“What you are suggesting is insane,” Shawn said, sounding a little defeated.

I slipped my compass over my head and tucked it in the front of my shirt. “I’m going, Shawn.”

“We’ll see,” Shawn said, and there was something about his tone that made me look at him sharply.

“Shawn, what do you know that I don’t?” Just then the bell rang, signalling that we were going to be late if we didn’t hurry.

“We need to go,” Shawn said, grabbing his bag and standing up. Everything in me wanted to skip the assembly. To stay back and reread my dad’s note again, to plan out how I was going to get my hands on the supplies I would need. It was going to take weeks of careful planning, a thought that made me itch with impatience. According to my dad’s note, I was already a year late delivering whatever was on that plug. But I dutifully picked up my own bag and followed Shawn out of the door. If I wasn’t at the assembly, a marine would investigate to find out why. And the last thing I needed right now was an investigation. As we hurried towards the assembly, I couldn’t help but replay Shawn’s words in my head. No one survived topside. I could only hope that I was about to prove him wrong.

If you cut North Compound right down the middle and pulled it apart so you could see its guts, I think it would look a lot like an anthill. At least, that’s how it had looked when I’d sketched it in my journal. Tunnels and small rooms made up most of the structure, but in the centre of North Compound was the assembly hall. A small stage stood at one end of the room, but instead of chairs, the floor sloped upwards so that the citizens could stand and still see the platform. Shawn and I made it to the assembly doorway just as the last and final bell rang out throughout the compound. The marine at the door, Sergeant Novak, gave us a disapproving look, but I saw that he checked us in as present on his port. We flashed him grateful smiles and slipped inside to stand at the back of the crowd.

“If that had been Kennedy,” Shawn whispered, “we would have had work detail for a month.”

I nodded, my mind still preoccupied with my dad’s note. Everyone fell silent as the microphone at the front crackled and screeched.

The five compound council members filed on to the podium and sat down on the low metal bench. Shawn’s aunt was one of three women on the council, and I saw her scanning the crowd. She smiled when she saw Shawn, but that smile slipped a little when she spotted me standing next to him. Council member Wilkins, a short, compact man with greying hair and a wide, soft face, stood up and walked to the microphone, his port screen in hand.

“Good morning, citizens,” he said.

Everyone chorused back their own ‘good morning’ and he smiled at us like we were a pet that had just performed a trick perfectly. “We have gathered you all together to pass on the latest news from our esteemed Noah.” I watched him talk, wishing I was anywhere else. This Noah was just like the other three Noahs that had come before him, and at that moment, I couldn’t have cared less what he wanted us to know. Besides, all the information he was going to tell us had been uploaded to Shawn’s port a few days ago. If there had been anything important, he would have told me.

I tuned back in to council member Wilkins as he smiled broadly in my direction.

“Our Noah believes that it is his duty to ensure our safety no matter what the cost or inconvenience. As such, he is requiring that all four compounds begin the process of laying up extra supplies in the coming months.” This news was met by a nervous murmur. “No need to be alarmed. We have had supply shortages in the past when the plane hasn’t been able to make it, and our Noah believes it’s vital to our continued survival for each of the compounds to be capable of functioning independently for periods lasting up to a year.” The decree made sense. I could still remember a few winters ago when the supply plane had missed two drops in a row. We’d lost half our crop because the key valve replacement we’d needed for the watering system hadn’t been delivered, and everyone had developed a lean look as we shared and conserved what little we had until the plane finally made it through.

“Here at North, we plan to do our part to help in this endeavour. As we are the primary producers of grow lights, our Noah has asked that we step up production. He has given us two months to complete this task. I am sure that none of our loyal citizens will mind putting in the extra hours in support of mankind’s continued survival.” This was met with more muttering, but no one protested. No one ever did. If the Noah said it, it was law.

I glanced over at Shawn to see his reaction to this, but he was studiously ignoring me. It made me feel uneasy. Shawn never ignored me, and he had an almost guilty look on his face. I made a note to pin him to a tunnel wall and force the rest of the story out of him as soon as this meeting was over. I wasn’t done being mad at him for not showing me my dad’s note as soon as he’d found it, but I understood why he hadn’t. The compound was all he knew or ever wanted to know. Going topside was almost equal to suicide in his book. He’d been trying to protect me, just like he’d done so long ago on my first night in the Guardian Wing.

I thought again about the note. Despite Shawn’s arguments against it, I hadn’t given up on the idea that my dad was at Lake Michigan. Maybe he’d made it there but something had happened to keep him from coming back for me. At the very least, someone there would know what had happened to him. Answers, I thought, almost giddily. I was finally going to get my answers.

“Our Noah also has concerns for our safety,” Wilkins went on. “He believes that compound entrance hatches present a weakness.” My head snapped up, and for the first time, I really paid attention to what he was saying, feeling uneasy. “In order to ensure our compound’s continued safety, we are going to be installing lock mechanisms on all compound exit hatches. General Kennedy assures me that this can be accomplished within the next day or so.” Icy dread washed over me, and I turned tortured eyes to Shawn. He gazed down at his feet, guilt written all over his features. He had known this was happening. It was why he’d given me my dad’s note instead of throwing it away. He knew that I wouldn’t be able to leave anyway. A cold sense of betrayal slid down my spine as I stared at my friend.

“This brings our assembly to a close,” Wilkins said. “Those of you involved in grow light production, please remain so we can discuss your altered work schedules.”

I followed Shawn and the rest of the crowd out of the assembly hall and into the tunnels.

I knew my face was a thundercloud, but I didn’t care. Shawn Reilly was going to get a piece of my mind, and possibly a black eye. They were locking the compound entrances. I hadn’t even had time to wrap my head around this mission my dad had given me, let alone collect supplies I needed. I was out of time before I’d even begun. If I wanted to leave the compound, I should have done it a year ago. Now I might be trapped. I grabbed Shawn’s arm to pull him down a side tunnel. From the resigned look on his face, he knew he was in for it.

“Shawn.” A voice rang out through the tunnels, and we both turned to see Shawn’s aunt weaving her way through the crowd. She had white-blonde hair like Shawn’s, pulled back in a neat bun at the base of her neck. Her compound uniform was perfectly pressed, and she glanced at my frizzy hair and rumpled appearance with disapproval.

She turned to Shawn. “I need your help for a moment.”

“Is everything OK?” Shawn asked.

“Fine,” she smiled. “One of the microphones is malfunctioning and I volunteered you to take a look at it. I’ve already alerted your teachers, so don’t worry about being late.” I shot Shawn a look that made it clear that we were going to be having a very serious discussion in the near future before he turned and followed his aunt back through the crowd.

I whirled and strode down the south tunnel towards school. I wanted to skip it with every fibre of my being, but my absence would be investigated and a work detail handed out as punishment. I would get through the day, I told myself, feeling my resolve solidify, then I would get ready to leave. If I had less than twenty-four hours to prepare myself, then I would just have to make it work. I was still going to make a run for it, taking my chances that the locks hadn’t been installed yet. I sat down in my first class of the day and swallowed hard. I was going topside.

Shawn’s words echoed in my head: no one survives topside.

I spent the first few minutes of class thinking up the many ways I was going to make Shawn pay for what he’d done, but he never showed. By fourth period, I’d given up, assuming his aunt had let him take the rest of the day off for being so helpful. She had the power to do that. It wasn’t until I was walking home from school alone that I realised that I might never see him again. I was still angry enough that the thought didn’t bother me.

When I got back to my room, I shoved my chair under the doorknob and climbed on to my bed to empty out my hiding spot. I spread my meagre belongings out on my bed. There wasn’t much. The flashlight Sean had made me sat forlornly next to my journal, scan plug and my set of lock picks. I carefully placed each item into my backpack. Opening my journal, I flipped to one of the damaged pages at the back. I had to write small and squish my words around the hole, but I made a list of supplies I would need to survive topside. It was a long list and the only place to get everything on it was the marines’ barracks. My stomach flopped sickeningly at the thought. Turning a few pages, I found my meticulous accounting of the marines’ schedule. I’d written it down ages ago when I first started my runs to the maildrop.

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