Laura Martin - Edge of Extinction

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?”