The Lost Code (2 page)

Lilly scowled at him and looked past us. “Hey, Ev!” she shouted.

Another CIT, Evan, turned in our direction. He brushed the mop of white-blond hair from his eyes and squared a set of shoulders that made Jalen’s look like beginner models. “What’s up, Lil?”

Lilly pointed at Jalen. “Put this kid in the box for me, ’kay?” We’d already learned that the box was the square of shade beneath the wooden lifeguard chair. “Start walking, scrub,” she said, glaring at Jalen. “Enjoy your time with the other babies.” The little campers were playing on the beach all around the box, running and squealing and throwing sand.

“Whatever,” Jalen muttered. “This is stupid.”

“Hey! Don’t make me ask Ev to hurt you,” said Lilly, “’cause he’ll do anything I say.”

Jalen looked like he had another comeback, but then thought better of it. He trudged off toward shore.

“Have fun!” Lilly called after him. She turned back to us. Everyone was dead silent now. “You okay?” she called to Beaker, who was dragging himself up onto the dock while we all watched.

“Fine,” he said like he wasn’t.

Lilly flashed a glare at Leech, then looked at me. “So, you’re gonna be all right with this?” She waved her hand, indicating the water.

“Yeah,” I lied, trying to sound confident.

“What’s your name?”

“Owen Parker.”

Lilly grinned. “I’m not your math teacher. You don’t need to give me your whole name.”

“Sorry.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. Her eyes were a mystery behind her sunglasses, and I figured she thought I was a lost cause, except then her gaze stayed on me and her smile remained and I felt like it was suddenly really hard to stand there and not do something stupid like try to say something funny, or throw myself into the lake.

I wondered if maybe I already loved her, in that at-first-sight kind of way that was the only kind of love I really knew. The kind you could just have without ever actually telling someone, without them even knowing you. The kind that was perfectly safe, that you didn’t have to do anything about.

Her gaze left me, and I looked away and found Leech staring at me with a squinty sneer like now I was on his list for what had happened to Jalen.

“So, where were we?” said Lilly. “Right: the test. It’s pretty simple. Five minutes treading water, then freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly, two laps each. To be a Shark, your form has to be perfect. Got it?”

We all nodded slightly. Yes. Perfect form. Since Lilly had led us out to the end of the dock, I’d noticed everybody trying to stand with better posture and constantly checking their hair. I had been, too, though I’d tried to do it less.

“All right, then,” said Lilly. “In you go.”

We lined up and jumped off the dock. The water was a shock, cold wrapping around me, seeping in, and it had this weird, slightly tangy taste, a little bit like putting your tongue against something metal. It was different from the chemical flavor I remembered back at the Hub pool.

We spread out to start treading water.

Lilly held up a stopwatch from around her neck. “Go.”

I started kicking my feet, circling my arms and thinking,
Come on, you can do this
, but I already felt the cramp beginning. And yet, when Lilly blew her whistle, my head was still above water.

“All right, not bad, guppies. Now swim over and start your laps.”

I grabbed the side of the dock and tried to will my stomach to relax.
You should get out, now
, I thought. But I didn’t.

“Next,” said Lilly. Three at a time, we pushed off and started the freestyle. And again, somehow I got through those laps, and the backstroke, and even the breaststroke. I could feel my side cinching tighter, but amazingly, even though I was sinking too deep with every stroke, I was almost there.

But in the end it was the butterfly, the strange and inexplicable butterfly, with the weird kicking where both feet stayed together and the lunging with the flying arms that did me in. Why did we even have to swim like that? It was like a test to weed out the weakest. I kicked, I lunged, my side failed, and down I went, to my quiet, dark tomb.

I blinked, feeling the pressure of deep water on my eyes, the ache in my ears, the cold of water in my nose and throat, the heaviness of liquid in my lungs. Everything numb. There was a distant whine, like of machinery, and the faint warble of voices far off on the surface.

Now that it was too late, all I could think was that it really stunk to be dead. It was just unfair and stupid, and I hated it. I hadn’t even wanted to come to this camp in the first place! But I’d gone along with it, and now this was what I got.

Darkness crept into my vision, like a fog over everything. The technicians were checking the monitors one last time.
That’s about it, then
, said one, watching my heartbeat slow to a stop.

The surface began to dim, fading to black.

Good-bye, Lilly
, I thought.

Shut it down
, said the brain technician.

Nice working with you
, one said to another, shaking hands.

They flicked off the light switches, closed the doors. Everything went dark.

For a while.

Then there was a small light in the distance. It was pale blue, struggling through the murk.

Owen.

Yeah?

The light seemed to pulse. Maybe this was the final message from my dying mind, the one you were supposed to think was the light at the end of the tunnel. Or maybe it really was that light. Maybe I was about to lift up to heaven, or be picked up by the vultures who brought the dead into the embrace of Heliad-7, that sun goddess they worshipped in the South.

But this seemed more . . . actual. Like my eyes were really open, and that light was slithering around in the green water above me. It had a long, fluid shape, almost like it was alive.

You are not at the end
, it said.

I’m dead
, I thought back.

No. This is just the beginning.
It sounded like a girl.
Find me. In the temple beneath the Aquinara.

The light moved closer. It seemed to have features. A face. Maybe a beautiful face . . .

Temple?

What is oldest will be new. What was lost shall be found.

What?

Find me, Owen. . . .

The light faded.

Black again.

For a while.

Hey, Owen. . . .

Who are you?

“Owen.”

I opened my eyes. Blinding daylight. Cold was now warm. The squish of the lake bottom had become hard, coarse sand; the press of water now the nothing of air.

I was lying on the beach, the campers crowded around me.

And that calm feeling of an ending ended with a huge, awful cough. Water erupted out of my body, burbling out of my mouth, a brown swirl of lake water, vomit, and phlegm, spilling onto my chest and down to the sand.

There was Lilly. She had her hands in a fist on my sternum. Her head was lifting away like—

CPR
, I thought, which meant her mouth, and my mouth—

Stop thinking about that! What about how you’re not dead?

But it was weird: the fact that I wasn’t dead didn’t seem like much of a surprise. I sat up. Everybody shuffled back. Muck from my insides dripped down my chin. It smelled sour, hot.

“Let me through,” an adult voice called from beyond the kids.

I looked down at myself. There were long, tan plants still wrapped around my legs, my arms. I saw now that they ended at little plastic bases. Fake. My body was covered with splotches of mud and the spray of lake puke across my abdomen.

I fell back on my elbows. Tried to speak, but my voice just croaked at first, like a reptile. “Whu . . .”

Lilly leaned close to me. Her wet braid brushed across my arm. “Don’t try to talk yet.”

But I had to. I hacked up another slick of water and phlegm. “What happened?” I asked.

“You—,” Lilly began, but now the sea of kids parted and my counselor, Todd, appeared. Behind him was Dr. Maria, the camp physician.

“Okay, let us in.” They flanked me.

I looked at Lilly. Her gaze was still so odd. . . . Then she quickly leaned in. “No matter what happens in the next couple days, don’t tell them anything. Especially not how long you were down there.”

“What? How long I—,” I said.

She leaned even closer, her lips brushing my ear, pressure of her warm breath into my ear canal. “You were on the bottom for ten minutes.”

“Ten?” I croaked. “But how—”

“Excuse us, Lilly.” Dr. Maria knelt beside me.

“Don’t worry,” Lilly whispered. “This is just the beginning. Trust me.” She pulled back and stared at me.

This is just the beginning.
I focused on her eyes. Sunglasses gone, they were pale, sky-blue disks woven with threads of white. I nodded to her. I would trust her.

And then Dr. Maria was leaning down over me and Lilly was pulling away and the SafeSun made me squint and I coughed out more water.

“Just lie back, Owen,” said Dr. Maria. She held a small rectangular electronic device above me. It had a single glass dot that started to glow green as she moved it closer to my face.

I closed my eyes against all the brightness and my head seemed to come unglued and everything faded out again.

THERE WAS MORE DARKNESS, AND THEN I HEARD VOICES
.

Fragments of a broadcast:

Good afternoon, this is Teresa Alamos. Turning now to the latest EdenNet news . . .

New images from EdenCentre of the fires sweeping the French Desert . . .

Fighting continues on the American-Canadian Federation border, as the Nomad Alliance has mounted new coordinated efforts to breach defenses at the sixtieth parallel and cross into the Habitable Zone. . . .

The latest report released by the Northern Federation Climatology Council indicates that the rate of sea level rise lessened slightly this past year. The study shows that the reasons are simple: there’s not much ice left in Greenland, and after the big ice-shelf collapses that we saw in Antarctica, the main continental ice appears to be remaining stable. Still, though the worst of the Great Rise seems to be behind us, its aftereffects continue to wreak havoc, especially in Asia. Today, EdenEast is reporting more violence on the edge of the People’s Corporation of China, just north of the current shore of the Indian Ocean. Salt intrusion continues to ruin farmland in the region, causing still more suffering for the half-billion remaining climate refugees from the former subcontinent. And an outbreak of a lethal new strain of Supermycin-resistant cholera-D is sure to worsen the situation. . . .

Now voices from close by, speaking quietly.

Dr. Maria: “He seems to be recuperating fine.”

And a man’s voice: “Have you determined exactly what happened?”

“From what his cabin mates said, it had to be at least a few minutes, if not more. He definitely drowned, but I ran an mPET scan, and his brain activity seems fine. I think we dodged a bullet.”

“What about the physical injuries?”

“Just the neck lacerations that—”

The man cut her off. “Right. Sounds good. I’ll read the report. Send him to me when he’s feeling up to it. Thank you, doctor.”

For local climatic conditions, let’s get a report from Aaron Cane, chief of operations up in the Eagle Eye observatory. . . .

Thanks, Teresa. Well, more of the same from up here. Today’s external temperatures are topping out at forty-six degrees Celsius, and that’s likely only the beginning of what July has in store for us. Doesn’t sound like too much fun for humans, but as you can see, the pronghorn in these shots seem to like it just fine.

My eyes finally opened, and I found the screen in the corner of the room. The face of Aaron Cane, youngish-looking with thick-rimmed glasses and short black hair, was replaced by an outdoor view. The camera zoomed down the outside of the dome wall, its surface streaked with tan dust and black solar burns, then out over the concentric rings of thousands of gleaming solar panels to the barren, cracked earth beyond. A herd of pronghorn roamed on the flat wasteland, grazing on bits of grass underneath ledges of gray shale rock, oblong sections of upturned pavement, crumbled house foundations, and the picked-over carcasses of cars. The only smooth line among the fractured topography was the curved path of the MagTrain tunnel roof, its snake back punctured now and then by boxy air vents.

Pretty creatures, but not the ones your great-great-grandparents used to hunt here in Minnesota.

Turning to solar monitoring, it looks like we’ve got calm conditions for the next few days, so I expect UV Rad levels to be holding steady. Dome integrity is still rated at eighty-six percent, but we’ve got a deteriorating ozone forecast for the weekend, and we can likely expect elevated Rad levels and maybe a half percentage point off the DI, though RadDefense says they’re in the process of replacing two of the OzoneSim panels, so maybe we’ll hold steady. That’s the report from up here.

My eyes fluttered shut and I lost track of things again.

Owen . . .

Dark water, something curling in the shadows, flickering blue . . .

Find me. . . .

“Owen.”

I looked up to find Dr. Maria leaning over me. “He’s back,” she said with a smile that felt friendly. She had long black hair that was streaked here and there with gray. It was held back in a clip. She wore a classic white lab coat over a collared flannel shirt and jeans. The outfit was retro, pre-Rise, even with an unbuttoned collar so that her neck was exposed. A doctor out at Hub would be wearing the standard LoRad pullovers and pants, which were dark colors with shimmery surfaces that reflected sunlight. The neck would be zipped high, the wrist cuffs tight, but here inside the safety of the dome, retro was part of the look of the camp, and apparently you could relax a little.

“Hi,” I croaked. Talking hurt.

Dr. Maria adjusted something on my neck. I reached up to find thick bandages there. The area beneath them itched faintly. The feeling surprised me. I didn’t remember hurting my neck. I started to scratch, but she stopped my hand. “Careful,” she said, “these are delicate wounds. You need to try not to touch them.” She sat back and her brow wrinkled. “So, Owen, do you remember what happened?”

I tried. Things were murky in my head. “I got a cramp,” I said. “I couldn’t do the butterfly.”

“Mmm.” Dr. Maria smiled and shook her head. She picked up a computer pad from the table beside my bed and swiped her finger over its glass surface. “I always thought that was a weird stroke,” she said. “You’d see it in the Olympics and think, Why would someone ever choose to swim like that?”

“Olympics?” I asked her.

“Oh, sorry,” said Dr. Maria. “Showing my age. Yeah, back before the Rise, there were a lot more countries, and there used to be these games where each country sent their best to compete. They tried to keep them going, but too many countries were either in chaos or too much debt. I think I was about ten when the last one happened. Anyway, they swam the butterfly. It’s weird to think that with everything that’s been lost, something so silly has lived on.” She sighed. “But, then again, that’s the goal here at EdenWest, to make everything just like it was.” I almost thought I heard a note of disapproval in her voice as she finished, but I wasn’t sure.

She held a stethoscope to my chest and listened for a moment. “Sounding good. So, any idea how you got those neck wounds?”

“No, not really,” I said.

“Maybe you got tangled in the lane lines or something, before you went under?”

I just shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

Dr. Maria pushed a loose strand of hair back behind her ear and held a light to my eye. “Well, they weren’t deep enough to need stitches, so I gave you a topical antibiotic.” My left eye went blind in the flash of white. She checked the other. “I’d like you to come by tomorrow for fresh dressings. And you really shouldn’t go in the water again until they heal, although I bet that wasn’t first on your agenda, anyway.” She smiled.

“No,” I said, smiling back. That sounded fine to me. The more I thought about the wounds, the more they itched, simmering, like the skin was cooking in there.

“Maybe something got on your neck on the lake bottom,” said Dr. Maria. “Lake Eden is supposed to be a fully functioning ecosystem—you know, real fish and leeches and things. That’s probably not what you want to hear.”

“No,” I said. I thought about the fake plants that had been on me. But that didn’t mean there weren’t real creatures too, like in an aquarium, and if I had really been down there ten minutes, like Lilly said . . .

Lilly.

I remembered her lips against my ear. What was with her? What did she mean, “No matter what happens in the next couple days, don’t tell them anything”? What exactly did she think was going to happen? I drowned, maybe got my neck munched on, and got pulled out in the nick of time. Except, ten minutes wasn’t the nick of time. Wasn’t there basically no way I should have survived that? Maybe Lilly had been exaggerating. Dr. Maria had said it was only a few minutes. Kind of a big difference, in drowning terms. But then there was something else. . . .

Find me, Owen.
That light, that voice. What had that been? Probably just some kind of hallucination, my brain tripping on a lack of oxygen.

“I think it’s okay to take this off,” Dr. Maria was saying. She bent over my left arm, where a clear tube emerged from my elbow and led up to a bag of fluid. She unhooked the line, then grasped my forearm. “You might feel a slight sting.” She pulled and the tube slid out, chased by a drop of blood. It stung, but the feeling faded quickly.

“There we go.” She placed a sticky round bandage over it. I noticed her black fingernails, which seemed a little fashionable for a camp doctor, and as her smooth, almond-colored fingers pressed against my arm, I thought of Mom. She would do things like that. The extra bit of fashion. Dr. Maria was maybe a little older. Then again, it was hard to remember. The mom in my head was from eight years ago, when she left. She’d look different now. Wherever she was. She’d never told us. For a while she’d sent letters, but they never had any kind of location or date information. And then, about three years ago, she’d stopped writing altogether.

“Okay,” said Dr. Maria. “I think we’re good to go. If you promise to keep your hands off those neck wounds, I can release you to your cabin.”

“I can’t stay?” I imagined my cabin mates leering at me from their bunks like waiting predators as I walked in, ready to harass their little drowned Turtle.

Dr. Maria fixed her hair again and sighed. “Sorry, Owen. They’re a tough bunch, I take it.”

“Sometimes.”

“Well,” Dr. Maria continued, “the first few days of a session are always the hardest. A lot can change in a month. You’d be amazed the kids who end up as friends by the time a session’s all over.” She tapped on her computer pad. “Oh, once you’re dressed, the director would like you to stop by. End of the hall. See you tomorrow, okay?” She smiled and stepped out.

“Okay.”

Someone had brought over my shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers. I got out of bed and started taking off my hospital gown. My chest hurt, my ribs aching with each breath I took. My right side, the cramp side, was still sore. I ran a finger over the pink, four-centimeter scar from my hernia operation, just below my waist. Its warped skin was raised, smooth.

There was a mirror in the corner, and there was my uninspiring self, skinny, a child of the rations, nothing like these Eden kids, but also nothing like the kids you saw camped out on the ACF border. I may not have had much muscle, with clavicles and ribs kinda showing, but you weren’t seeing shoulder sockets and hip edges. Having a father who worked for the Hub’s geothermal heat company meant there was enough food. His genes, not hunger, were more the reason I was skinny. That and the fact that the things that gave you real deltoids or pectorals were also the things I never seemed to be any good at.

Dad would say to me, “You could always work out more at the school gym, or join the cave-diving team.” I knew he meant well, and he was probably right. I could probably get some better muscles if I tried, but it seemed like it would take forever—almost like, to get some sort of physique, you already had to
have
a good physique. And I never felt farther from having one than on that mandatory school day when everyone had to put on a skintight neoprene slick suit like the cave divers wore and try the sport. I hated being on display like that. Being in a bathing suit this morning had been just as bad. I might as well have been a different species from someone like CIT Evan, who got a single-syllable nickname from Lilly.

I got my clothes on, being careful as I pulled my T-shirt over my neck. The bandages looked like a neck brace. I grazed my fingers across them, and just that slight attention seemed to ignite the itching underneath. My nails started scraping around the bottom edge, digging up under the soft fabric, desperate to scratch.
No, stop. She told you not to.
I pulled my fingers out. The tips were shiny with blood. I wiped them on my gown, leaving streaks. The itching increased, pulsing in waves. I tried to ignore it as I left the room.

Outside, the hall was painted a cheery peach color. Framed black-and-white photos of pine-forested hills hung at regular intervals on the walls. There were five other clinic room doors, all open. I heard Dr. Maria speaking softly in one of the rooms, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. To the left, the hall ended at a solid red door with a keypad lock. It looked odd and modern compared to everything else around. Kind of like seeing the panels of the dome from underwater, a glimpse backstage. To the right was an antique-looking brown door with a square frosted-glass window. I headed through it, into a dark room with warped, wood-paneled walls.

There was a door in each wall, each with a similar window. One led outside. The others had gold, stenciled lettering that read
OFFICE
and
DIRECTOR
. The one I’d come out of said
INFIRMARY
. There were cracked leather chairs in the corners, and coffee tables piled with old paper magazines.

It was like being in one of those exhibits that you’d find in the history museum back in Yellowstone, the ones that explained about the United States pre-Rise, before the War for Fair Resources when the United States invaded Canada and created the American-Canadian Federation. That name was supposed to sound peaceful, like the two countries had happily joined forces, but my dad said the name was a lie. The invasion and occupation had really been bloody and terrible.