“Dr Schwartz!” she yelled. “He’s testing us. Please get this thing moving, or we’re all dead.” Schwartz’s face went white, and he grabbed the cord of the motor, giving it a firm yank. The engine snarled and died. He pulled at it again, and it gave another hopeful rumble before sputtering out. The plesiosaur emerged beside us, and if I’d had the inclination to reach out a hand, I could have pricked a finger on one of the teeth that was roughly the length of my forearm. What had Chaz called it? Pretty Boy? What a stupid name for one of the ugliest creatures I’d ever seen. It sized us up before bumping its head into the boat again, making it tilt violently. Its message was clear. It was going to toy with us first, terrify us, before swallowing us whole.
“Dr Schwartz!” Chaz yelled, going for her tranquiliser gun.
“Saying my name isn’t helping,” Schwartz snapped. “And don’t shoot it. It’ll drown if we tranquilise it.”
“Good! Drown it!” Todd shouted, but Schwartz ignored him as he gave the cord another yank. This time the engine spluttered to life. He cranked the handle, and we shot off across the water, the shoreline shrinking behind us as we headed towards the middle of the lake. Pretty Boy submerged again, and I waited for it to reemerge and chase us. It didn’t.
I sank down beside my soaked and shivering friend. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. The words sounded pitiful. Shawn had almost just been shot, drowned, and fed to a monster. Sorry didn’t really cut it.
“What was that thing?” Shawn gasped, his eyes not leaving the spot where Pretty Boy had disappeared, and I realised that in the struggle to stay afloat Shawn hadn’t seen the monster approaching.
“I have no idea,” Todd said. “But I’m pretty sure it’s the reason my mom said to never swim in Lake Michigan.” Shawn’s face went green, but before I could ask him if he was OK, he’d crawled awkwardly to the edge of the boat and puked. Not wanting to lose him overboard again, I grabbed the back of his drenched tunic with my still-bound hands and held on until he finally flopped back onto the floor of the boat, his eyes shut.
I bent over him, worried. “Shawn?” I asked, not sure if I should ask if he was OK. Clearly he wasn’t. Not that I blamed him.
“He’ll be fine,” Todd said. “Just give him a minute.” I nodded, unconvinced. Just then my canteen rolled against my foot and I looked down to see the contents of my pack scattered across the floor of the boat. Every now and then the wind would catch a packet of dinosaur jerky or a pair of socks and send them flying into the lake. My journal lay in the corner by Schwartz’s foot, its pages damp and flayed open in the wind. Eyeing Schwartz to make sure he wasn’t looking, I grabbed it and slid it into Todd’s still-intact pack. Todd saw what I was doing, and when Schwartz’s back was turned, we collected what little supplies were left and tucked them all into Todd’s pack. Shawn continued to sprawl on the bottom of the boat, showing no intention of moving despite the bumping and jarring he was getting as the boat skipped across the choppy waves.
“We’ll interrogate them back at the lab,” Schwartz called to Chaz, shouting to be heard over the slap of the boat’s hull on the water.
Todd leaned in so only Shawn and I could hear him. “What lab is that Schwartz guy talking about?” he asked. “Lake Michigan is huge. I doubt this thing has enough gas to make it across the entire lake.”
“The lab is in the middle of the lake,” Chaz said, making us jump as she crouched down in front of us, her giant black tranquiliser gun slung casually over her shoulder.
I unconsciously clutched my compass. Maybe the lab was what my dad had wanted me to find? After all, he had marked the centre of the lake as the location of a member of the Colombe, and how many things could be in the middle of a lake? The Colombe was the secret organisation my dad and mom had founded in an attempt to bring people aboveground again. My grandfather, Ivan, had explained that after the Noah had discovered the organisation, a few had escaped. Was one of them hiding in this mysterious lab? Five years’ worth of questions burned hot inside my chest, but after what had just happened to Shawn, I was worried that I wasn’t going to like the answers I got.
“Home sweet home,” Chaz crowed later when Schwartz cut the motor down to a crawl. She stood up and stretched, a wide grin on her face. I glanced around in confusion. Surrounding us on all sides was a seemingly never-ending expanse of rolling waves with no land in sight. What was she talking about?
“Are you sure you should stop here?” Shawn asked, sitting up for the first time to peer nervously at the surrounding water. He hadn’t spoken since he’d thrown up, and his voice still sounded shaky. Not that I could blame him. The image of Pretty Boy swimming towards my best friend was one I wouldn’t be forgetting anytime soon. It had been too loud to do any talking on the trip, and we’d spent what felt like an eternity huddled together on the floor of the boat trying to stay warm as the wind sliced right through our wet clothes.
“Of course I’m sure,” Chaz said. “Get ready to duck.”
“Duck?” Todd asked, glancing up at the sky. “I thought those went extinct years ago.”
Chaz snorted. “They did. Sorry, I meant duck your head. I forgot how hard it is for people to spot the boat dock the first time. Look dead ahead. See where those waves are crashing sort of funny?” I followed her pointing finger and blinked in surprise. About ten feet in front of us the waves were behaving oddly, seeming to hit an invisible object before careening back in the opposite direction. I squinted and then jerked back in surprise when my eyes finally made sense of what they were seeing. Rising from the water was a gigantic mirrored bubble, ingeniously camouflaged with reflective glass so that it melded with the shifting waves of the lake. If I hadn’t known exactly where to look, I could have passed within a foot of it and missed it. Before I could marvel anymore, our boat slid into a small circular hole in the side of the bubble, and into a network of floating wooden docks that spiraled out from a circular centre deck like the spokes on a wheel. Tied to the docks were other small boats like our own, as well as a few larger ones, but the most prominent feature of the entire space was the large glass box on the centre deck. The sound of the water lapping against the walls of the bubble echoed around us as Chaz tied up the boat, and we all got out.
“What is this place?” Todd asked.
“Entrance C,” Schwartz said briskly, leading us towards the glass box, where he pushed a few buttons on a side panel. Moments later a glass elevator emerged, dripping. It seemed so out of place surrounded by the water and waves.
“So this lab?” Shawn said as the doors slid open. “It’s …?”
“At the bottom of the lake,” Chaz grinned. “The place was built as a top-secret testing facility pre-Jurassic domination.”
“Jurassic domi-what?” Todd asked.
“Jurassic domination is the term we use for when the power shift occurred after the pandemic that decimated the human race,” Schwartz said stiffly as he grabbed my upper arm and manoeuvered me roughly into the elevator. Todd and Shawn followed with Chaz right behind. The elevator was cramped, and I found myself pressed against the cool glass wall, my bound hands smashed awkwardly in front of me. My wrists ached, and I twisted them in an attempt to ease the pressure without much success. Still being tied up seemed redundant at this point. We had nowhere to run, and after what had happened to Shawn, none of us was going to attempt to escape by swimming. Although I wasn’t so sure I’d make a run for it even if I had the opportunity. Schwartz and Chaz were my only shot at getting some answers, and after coming this far, I wasn’t going to leave without them. The elevator doors slid shut, and with a soft hum we were sinking. The docking area disappeared and the dark blue of Lake Michigan enveloped the elevator shaft.
Schools