Edge of Extinction

“No fire,” I scowled, taking back my port. “Just another stupid work detail.”

“Work detail is a character-building experience,” he said sarcastically.

“Then why don’t you serve it for me if they’re so great?” I asked.

“Because my character is already flawless,” he grinned. “It would be a waste of our compound’s precious resources.”

I gave him an elbow to the ribs as we headed towards science class. We paused in the hallway to let the kindergarteners totter past us on their way back from the library. Shamus waved at us shyly and I noticed Toby Lant slumped at the back of the line, his head down. He had the greasy, unwashed appearance of a kid whose parents didn’t keep track of how often he bathed and a hollow look that I’d seen in the mirror a bit too often. My heart hurt for him, even if he had been bullying Shamus.

“Do you have a lunch ticket?” I asked Shawn as we watched the kids’ progress down the hall.

“I have my pack for the whole week. Why?” I snatched the entire pack from him before he had them halfway out of his pocket and hurried over to crouch by Shamus. Tucking the lunch tickets into his hand, I whispered in his ear. He smiled nervously at me but nodded. After a quick ruffle of his hair, I hustled back to join Shawn.

“Why did you just give Shamus my lunch tickets? Not that I’m complaining, but I was planning on eating at some point this week.”

“I don’t think you’ll starve to death,” I grinned. When Shawn had stopped growing at five feet one inch, he’d decided that what he lacked in height he could make up for in bulky muscle. I doubted that a few missed meals would affect him. “Besides, you know your aunt could get you more. Just tell her you lost them. Shamus needed to buy lunch for his new friend, Toby.”

“Does Toby know he’s Shamus’s new friend?” Shawn asked. I shrugged. I would have given Shamus my lunch tickets, but I had lost those last week for not reporting to work detail on time.

Shawn must have understood, because he didn’t say anything else about it as we ducked into our science classroom. This was my favourite class of the day because the room had a domed skylight ceiling. Of course, the Plexiglas of the skylight had been patched, repaired, barred over and reinforced in so many places that it didn’t really afford much of a view of the outside world any more, but the natural light still managed to filter through, and it was a relief after the harsh fluorescents. Humans weren’t meant to live their lives underground, and sometimes my skin practically itched for the sunlight.

Soon, though, even this little piece of the outside world would be taken away when the workers began concreting over the glass. Noah had insisted that we fortify all topside surfaces. This new decree seemed silly to me. The dinosaurs had never penetrated the barrier that separated our world from theirs, so why waste the resources? Unfortunately, no one asked my opinion on the matter, especially not the most powerful man in the world.

I glanced around at the rows of plants lining the walls and frowned. They would all be dead soon unless we brought some grow lights up from the farming plots. The rest of my class filed in, all eight of them. Professor Murphy moved to the front of the room to begin trimming back a fern whose leaves reminded me of Shawn’s hair – floppy and out of control. Shawn sat down beside me and slid a bag of crackers on to my desk. He knew that I’d have skipped breakfast in order to make it out to the maildrop. When I went to thank him, I saw that he was working furiously on the homework from the day before. The crackers had the slightly chemical taste that most compound food had, but I savoured every one, especially now that Shawn’s lunch tickets were gone. As the class began, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have resorted to stealing lunch tickets if I hadn’t had a best friend who was willing to share.

Shawn and I once joked that the entirety of our education in North Compound could be summed up into two lessons. Lesson one was some variation of a history lesson about how the human race had found itself living in underground compounds. Today’s English lesson with Professor Lloyd had fallen under that heading. Lesson two was how to actually survive in the compound. Professor Murphy’s lecture landed squarely in the second category. She started discussing the finer points of artificial turnip germination and I zoned out immediately. Since the majority of the supplies and food for the compound were generated within the compound, lessons like this were common, but I just couldn’t get excited about turnips. From the way Professor Murphy kept stifling yawns, I had a feeling that she felt the same way.

Seven hours later, when the last bell of the day finally rang, I made my way through the crowded south tunnel to find Shawn. Being crowded was a good thing. North Compound had started off with just twenty survivors. Luckily the immunity that had saved those original twenty from the Dinosauria Pandemic seemed to pass on genetically in most cases, so our population levels were slowly climbing. I think we were at ninety-five last I’d heard. After years of teetering on the edge of extinction, the human race was making a slow but steady comeback.

I tried to ignore the fact that none of my classmates felt the need to include me in their easygoing conversations. I was an island in a sea of chatter and laughter that I wasn’t allowed to be a part of. Some of these kids’ parents had written petitions to have me banned from attending school altogether. Luckily for me, all those petitions failed. In a community grounded on principles of collaboration and equality, even the daughter of a traitor was owed an education. I wouldn’t want to be part of their stupid conversation anyway, I thought as I ducked my head and made my way into the library to find Shawn.

A library hadn’t been on the original engineer’s design plans for the compound, although they’d thought of almost everything else. There were huge spaces on the bottom level equipped with water lines and grow lights to cultivate plants, a water and electrical system that could function without any outside power or input, and even a livestock area for animals like cows or pigs. But those stalls had long ago been turned into offices and storage units since, in the chaos of fleeing the topside world, no one had thought to grab any. Now the poor creatures were extinct. A cow didn’t stand a chance against a dinosaur. Which wasn’t saying much. Most things didn’t stand a chance against a dinosaur.

I found Shawn near the back of the library. A bench seat had been chiselled out of the concrete, and he sat in the nook, his port screen in hand, brow furrowed in concentration.

Sitting down beside him, I peered over his shoulder. “What are you working on?”

“My written analysis from this morning.” Shawn grimaced. “It was apparently so terrible that Professor Lloyd said he’d let me take it home to fix.”

“He posted the grades already?” I pulled out my own port screen, but before I could access the grade account, Shawn was shaking his head.

“Not yet,” he said, his face flushing a little.

“Oh.” I nodded, understanding. Shawn lived with his aunt, who was a council member in North Compound. And even though the law stated that no citizen should have more than another, that we share every resource available, somehow government officials still ended up with the best apartments, extra allotment tickets for food, and the most opportunities.

“I didn’t ask him to.” Shawn shrugged sheepishly.

“But he wants to get on your aunt’s good side, right?”

“Pretty much,” Shawn said. “I think he’s petitioning for funding for the library or something at the next council meeting.”

I leaned my head back against the cool concrete of the wall and stared up at the ceiling of the tunnel.

“I wouldn’t take the help,” Shawn said, “but if I don’t get my grades up, I’m going to be stuck with a work assignment in sewer detail.” He was right. Our grades weighed heavily in the final decision on work assignments when we turned fifteen. It wasn’t like better jobs got better pay. We all worked for free because it was our responsibility to do so, and because if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat. But the better your grades, the better the job you were likely to be assigned. Shawn really had nothing to worry about. With an aunt as high up the chain as his was, I doubted sewer detail was in his future. However, even with my good grades, I was disliked enough that it was a possibility for mine.

“It’s fine,” I said, turning to smile at him. “It’s not your fault everyone likes to suck up to your aunt.”

“I wish your aunt had transferred to North Compound instead of mine.”

“Shawn Reilly,” I said, “stop wishing fictional relatives on me. I’m fine.”

“I asked her again last night about getting you out of there, but she brushed me off and gave me the same old story about rules and regulations. It’s not fair.” I agreed, but telling Shawn that would just make him feel worse than he already did.

“It’s OK,” I said. “You deserve good things.” I’d never met anyone with a bigger heart than Shawn Reilly, and without his friendship my life in the compound would be worse than miserable.

“So do you,” he scowled, and the way it wrinkled his forehead and made his mouth pull down at the corners was so familiar that I had to smile.

“I can think of a way you could make it up to me,” I said slyly, glancing at him from the corner of my eye, “if the guilt is really eating you up inside.”

“So I take it your mail run this morning was a success?” he asked drily, putting his port screen away. Shawn knew the purpose of my mail runs, and he knew full well what I needed him to do for me. But he liked to be asked. It was small payment for asking him to break the law for me on a routine basis.

I grinned wickedly. “My best friend gave me this great scan plug, and I put it to good use.”

“How long did it take to upload?” Shawn asked.

“About five seconds,” I said.

He nodded. “Not bad.”

“Any longer and you might have had to send the body crew out after me,” I admitted.

Shawn froze. “What happened?”

“A deinonychus pack.”

“What kind are those again?” he asked, his forehead wrinkling in confusion.

I groaned in exasperation. For someone who lived in an underground compound because of the millions of dinosaurs stomping around overhead, Shawn knew next to nothing about them. He preferred to spend his time tinkering with anything and everything mechanical.

“They travel in packs, and have huge claws on their hind feet for ripping their prey open.”

“They sound like loads of fun,” Shawn drawled. “I can see why you’d want to go running around with them.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re impossible.”

“No,” Shawn countered, “I’m just not obsessive about researching the ugly things like some people I know. Let me guess, you already updated your journal?”

I kicked him hard in the shin, glancing around the library shelves to make sure they were deserted.