The Lost Code (3 page)

I pushed through the director’s door. There was a wide desk on the far side of the room, a tall black chair behind it, and two fabric chairs in front. The desk was antique, but its top had been replaced with a glass table monitor. Files glowed on it. On the wall behind the desk, a bulletin board was covered with maps that looked like they were expertly hand-drawn, showing intricate coastlines and mountain ranges. I wondered if the director had drawn them himself.

There was a large fireplace in the left wall, built from giant gray stones that were scarred by black soot. The head of something I was pretty sure had been called a bison was mounted above it. Along the right wall were high shelves of frayed books and a leather couch. The room smelled like soot and pine, a scent I vaguely remembered from my clothes and sheets back during the Three-Year Fire, which erased the last forests of the American West. It had started when I was four, and during the middle year and a half of it, we barely saw the sun.

The wall behind me was covered with framed photos on either side of the door. They were all-camp photos. Each one had a year beneath it. The earliest ones were in black-and-white, then they switched to faded color. Groups of wild-haired boys and girls. Not much separated the decades, except the size and color of the kids. They went from skinny and mostly white to chunkier in the middle, with more varieties of skin color. Then, in recent photos, the kids got thinner again. And in the last few photos they were no longer sun-bronzed, their skin instead tinted purple by NoRad lotion.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” A man was peering through the door. He stepped in and extended his hand. “I’m Paul. I’m the director. And you . . . You must be Owen.” He said it almost like I was a celebrity or something.

“Hi,” I said, shaking his hand. It was cool, the skin smooth-feeling.

He was a little taller than me and old, maybe in his fifties. Like Dr. Maria, he was dressed retro, I guess like the director of a summer camp would have been, in jeans and a blue button-down shirt and a black vest with the overlapping
E
-and-
C
EdenCorp logo embroidered on it. Everything was relaxed except for a striped tie that was done up tight, the knot perfect. He had wavy gray hair and a thin face, lots of freckles and dark spots on his tanned skin from time spent in the sun.

The only thing about him that was modern were his square, black-rimmed glasses. Their lenses flickered in a tinted shade that indicated Rad protection. I was pretty sure that the tint could be turned off on glasses like that, or at least lightened, but Paul still had it full on, even though we were indoors, and so I couldn’t see his eyes. He seemed to be smiling, but the glasses made the smile strange, incomplete.

He closed the door and pointed to the photos. “Almost two hundred years of campers have come to this very spot—well, not counting the fifteen-year break while the dome was being built.”

“Oh,” I said.

“They used to call it Camp Aasgard,” Paul continued. He spoke in a low voice, all his words flat and even. “It had a whole Viking theme because of the archaeological finds near here. Lake Eden actually used to be part of Lake Superior, before the big lake receded. Imagine, Vikings right here.”

“That’s pretty cool,” I said, thinking that it was. It was interesting to me to try to imagine a place like it looked to the people who came before, like how Yellowstone used to be full of people just driving around in big homes on wheels, peering into the trees looking for animals, not a care in the world.

“Indeed,” said Paul, and it seemed like my interest excited him a little. “They apparently traveled up the waterways from the Atlantic, and also down from Hudson Bay. Most people don’t know that,” he added mildly. “But most people don’t know most things.”

“Huh,” I said, and saw that all the photos to the left of the door had
Camp Aasgard
in funny letters above the photo, with Viking hats on either side. The photos to the right of the door said
Camp Eden
.

“And that’s not all,” said Paul. “If that kind of thing interests you, then Eden has some other surprises.”

“Like what?” I asked, still interested but also trying to sound polite.

“Well, for starters, there are copper mines in this region that are over ten thousand years old,” said Paul. “It makes you wonder: Who was here, back then, and what were they up to? I find those kinds of questions most intriguing.”

“Wow.” There were old towns out by Hub, all abandoned, but that stuff was only about forty years old. You could still picture the people being there, like ghosts, living the pre-Rise life with cars and lawns and stuff. Our life was mostly underground, but it was still similar. We still had technology like video channels and subnet phones and electric lights at least some of the time, and even some of the newer stuff, like holotech.

“Then there’s our own little archaeological study right here.” Paul pointed at the camp photos. “The world outside has changed so much, as I’m sure you’re well aware, but life in this spot has endured. Just a bunch of kids smiling, enjoying life. It’s nice to know that’s still possible. . . .” He turned toward his desk. “If you do what it takes.” He sat down in his chair and motioned to me. “Have a seat.”

I sat. Paul had put his fingertips together and was gazing at me, but didn’t say anything right away. After a few seconds, I wondered if he was waiting for me to say something. He was so still, just sitting there. It bothered me that I couldn’t see his eyes. I started to feel weird, like I was being examined.

“Dr. Maria told me to come see you,” I finally said.

“Yes,” said Paul. Another second passed, just staring . . . but then he sat up and twisted around. He picked up a metal pitcher and cup from a cabinet behind him. The pitcher’s sides were foggy with condensation. “Bug juice?” he offered.

“Sure.” The bug juice was just fruit punch. Typical powdered juice drink, like we’d have back at home. There were more flavors here, though, each a different bright color, and they sorta tasted different, but really all just tasted in the end like bug juice. I’d had this one before. It was purple and called Concord Explosion. I heard one time that a Concord was a type of grape, but they took the word
grape
out of the name because they didn’t actually use any real grapes in it anymore, and maybe it didn’t even really taste like a grape—not that I would have known, since I’d never had one.

Paul handed me the cup. I took a sip. More tangy than sweet. Still kinda the same as all the others. Fine, though.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t mention it.” His face became motionless again. Smiling maybe, sort of. It was impossible to tell with those glasses.

Then he leaned forward again and swiped at the glass monitor top of his desk. Files slid around. “So, Owen, the main reason I wanted to see you was to say that I am truly sorry about what happened to you today. Everyone here at Camp Eden is glad you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Apparently.” Paul was studying a file. It looked like a chart of numbers. “Your tests all seem normal, even”—his finger touched the file and part of it zoomed in, but since it was upside down, I couldn’t quite make out what it said—“
better
than normal. You have noticeably high levels of hemoglobin.”

“Is that weird?” I asked. I didn’t remember ever hearing that in past doctors’ visits.

Paul didn’t answer right away. He kept reading, files flicking across his glasses. Then he sat back and stared at me again. “No,” he said, “totally within the expected range. And you feel normal other than those neck wounds?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good. Well, you can rest assured, we spoke to the lifeguard who lost track of you. Made her aware of her error.”

“It wasn’t Lilly’s fault,” I said immediately. “I got a cramp.” I didn’t want Lilly to get in trouble over this, over me.

“Right,” said Paul. “And to be fair to young Miss Ishani, she hadn’t been informed of your condition.” Paul ran a finger over another file. “A hernia. . . . Again, my apologies. This information should have made it to the lifeguards.”

“I wanted to be a Shark,” I said.

Paul nodded. “Of course you did. And I like your spirit. Not afraid to take a risk to get what you want.”

I wouldn’t have described myself that way.

Paul tapped at the monitor again. “I spoke with your father and let him know what happened, and that you were fine. He seems like a nice man.”

“Yeah,” I said. I wondered if Dad was worried, and for a second I thought,
Serves him right.
It was his idea to enter me in the drawing to come here. He kept saying how a month at Camp Eden was a month I didn’t have to spend scraping by out at Hub, a month when I didn’t have to help him with his breathing issues, the nebulizer packs and the beige phlegm that never seemed to get all the way down the drain, a month when I could have fun like people used to. I hadn’t really wanted to apply, but I saw how much he wanted me to, and besides, the odds of actually winning were terrible. Except then I won.

“You two get along well?” Paul asked.

“Mmm.” I nodded. We did. “We don’t talk much,” I said, “but not in a bad way.”

Paul seemed to smile again. At least his mouth widened. “Fathers and sons often don’t,” he said. “Sounds like he doesn’t put much pressure on you, though.” Paul’s smile faded. I wondered if he was thinking about his own dad.

“Nah,” I said. “We just sorta do our thing.” It felt weird answering questions about my dad. I felt almost like I was defending him, or something. And I didn’t need to do that. Sometimes Dad got on my case, but we never really fought. Most nights he got home pretty late, and his breathing was always the worst then, and he’d be tired. I usually made the frozen dinners for us. I wondered what night tonight was . . . Tuesday. Pizza night with the Arctic League football game. I remembered looking ahead at the schedule and seeing that it was going to be Baffin City and Helsinki Island. Dad always missed the first half, so when he got home I’d give him a summary of the key plays. He’d have to figure it out himself tonight. I hoped he could make his dinner fine, and that his cough wasn’t too bad.

Paul checked my file. “And it’s just you and your dad, I see.”

“Oh. Uh-huh.” That comment made me feel weird, too. Like Paul was pointing out flaws. I didn’t want him to know all this stuff, but of course my whole situation was laid out for him right there on the screen. Maybe he was just trying to be sympathetic, to connect, like adults sometimes tried to do.

“There’s no contact information for your mom here.”

“We don’t have any.” Saying that caused a squeeze in my stomach. That was the feeling that thinking about Mom always seemed to create.

“My parents split up when I was about fifteen,” said Paul. “I’d seen them fighting, so it didn’t surprise me, but it was still challenging. It’s hard to accept that our parents are just people, and sometimes it’s even harder to accept who those people really are.”

“Yeah,” I said, but I felt defensive again. Sure, I had thoughts about my mom leaving, got angry about it sometimes, but I didn’t like the idea that Paul might be judging her. Then again, maybe he wasn’t. His tone was so flat, and I couldn’t tell what he meant without seeing his full expression.

We both sat there for a second. “Challenging living out there at Hub,” Paul offered.

“I guess,” I said, really not wanting to talk anymore. Maybe he was right, though. I thought about life back home. Living in an apartment in the cave complex, the fluorescent lights dimming every hour as the geothermal charge faded. School was fine, pretty normal, but only compared to what I knew. Lots of kids had asthma due to the fumes, but I actually didn’t. I hadn’t really considered my life and family to be that bad, but I guess it was, compared to things here.

Paul clapped his hands together in a sharp, flat smack that echoed in the room. “Well, Owen, these are all good reasons to finally have you here. You are exactly why I started running the drawings to invite kids from outside EdenWest to be a part of our camp.”

“Thanks,” I said, but my defensive feeling only grew. I didn’t like being one of the charity cases, the poor wastelander being given a golden chance.

“No, thank
you
,” he said, his tone level, almost like he was being sarcastic, except I figured he wouldn’t be. “Now listen,” he continued, “it may not seem this way right now, but your time at Camp Eden can really be life-changing. In fact, in your case, I’d go so far as to guarantee it.” Another smile. With each one I felt more like I wanted to leave.

“Okay,” I said.

“So . . .” He shuffled the images on his desk. “I’ve reassigned you to Craft House for the electives hour. You’ll be with some younger kids, but it will be fine. And I’ve noted exemptions in your file for any of the rituals that could pose a problem for you, like polar bear swim. We don’t want you going out there and getting damaged.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Polar bears? They’d been extinct for almost thirty years. Did Eden have one here? Maybe it had been in the Camp Eden brochure, but I hadn’t really read that. And why was he talking about me like I was some prized piece of merchandise? Maybe he didn’t mean it that way, but that was how it sounded.

“Well, that should do it.” Paul pressed his fingers together again. “Dr. Maria noted that you’re due back in for a follow-up, tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

“In that case, you can head back to your cabin now.”

I nodded and stood. Paul did, too.

“Listen, Owen,” he said. “I may be the director here, but I also want to be your friend. If there’s anything you need, or anything you’re concerned about, anything at all . . .” He stepped around the desk and over to me. “You’ll come to me first, won’t you?”

“Um, sure,” I said, just trying to end the conversation.

“Especially,” said Paul, and then his voice lowered to almost a whisper, “about these . . .” He reached out, his fingers extending toward the bandages on my neck. They grazed the fabric gently. The wounds seemed to ignite with simmering itching, and I flinched and stepped back.