فصل 5

CHAPTER 5

The days after a maildrop run had a depressing way of melting and meshing together. It was too soon for excited anticipation over the next maildrop, still four months away, and the sting of the previous drop’s disappointment hadn’t quite worn off yet. I filled my hours with work details and school and then a few more work details. Anything was better than sitting around stewing over my most recent failure. I even left my journal in its hiding spot in my ceiling, too disheartened to add to my pages of dinosaur research. So when I woke up a few days after the drop to the familiar sound of Shawn’s lockpick working at my door, the last thing on my mind was the mystery of my dad. Stiff and sore from the previous night’s work detail, I shivered as I got out of bed and hurried to let him 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. “Last night’s work detail was killer. I’m going to tell the guardians I’m sick 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 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.

“Okay, spill it,” I commanded. “You’re hiding something. What is it?” He looked back down, nervously pulling at the fraying edge of his gray 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 last week? 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 defense. “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 farther 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 okay?” 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 squeezing. “It’s okay,” 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. “It kind of did. Something had to have 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 anymore.

I carefully unfolded the map. It was one of the closely guarded compound maps, covered by a thin, almost translucent, paper. When I laid it flat, I finally understood. On the top page, over the contours of the states and lakes that used to make up the northern part of the United States, my dad had traced a meandering path from North Compound’s location in what used to be Indiana up to a small circle in the middle of Lake Michigan. 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 info plug is he talking about?” Shawn took the working compass off the bed where I’d dropped it in my haste to read the note. Pulling out a small screwdriver, he opened the back. I watched in amazement. I’d tried that same maneuver 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 realized. “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 glanced at the wall, purposefully 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 told myself that I would be content if I just found out why he’d left. I realized 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 realized it was there.

“It’s possible,” I whispered.

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Shawn grabbed 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. Realizing that there was no way I was going to let this thing ride around in my journal anymore, 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, signaling 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 grabbed my own bag and followed Shawn out 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 toward 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.