Code Name Flood. Laura Martin
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neither of us said anything, she cocked her head to the side. “That’s how you make glass. You heat sand to really high temperatures. Didn’t you know that?” All I could do was shake my head in wonder as we passed through another floor, this one made up of small apartments.
Our elevator finally bumped to a stop, and we spilled out into a gigantic lab lit with harsh fluorescents. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out into the dark murk of Lake Michigan. A few scientists glanced up from their large stationary port screens as we entered, eyeing us with interest before turning back to their work. Schwartz gave Chaz a meaningful look before striding away to meet three lab-coated men huddled around a port screen. A small yellow dinosaur that only came up to my knee scurried past us and clambered nimbly up Chaz’s leg and onto her shoulder. Chaz dug a large dead beetle out of her pocket and handed it up to the little creature. It cooed happily.
“This is Pip.” She grinned as she passed up another treat. “She’s kind of the mascot for this floor of the lab. She was supposed to get released back into the wild, but she was so darn cute they decided to let her stay.”
“What is she exactly?” Todd asked, slightly less green now that we weren’t in the tiny elevator.
“Compsognathus,” Chaz said. “It’s Greek for dainty jaw. Dr Schwartz’s team was able to extract her DNA from a bone found in Germany. He’s one of the most brilliant paleontologists we have here at the lab.” The little creature was more bird than dinosaur, and I had to admit that Chaz had a point; she was sort of cute. Vibrant yellow with blue eyes that took up most of her pointed face; she lashed her long, thin tail delicately from side to side for balance as she surveyed us from her perch on Chaz’s shoulder.
“Ecosystem or no ecosystem, I can’t believe you’re still actively bringing new species back to life,” Shawn said, his fists clenched. Oblivious to Shawn’s anger in her preoccupation with Pip, Chaz nodded happily.
“Ten new species just last year. We have an above-ground facility where we release them. It’s really amazing.”
“Amazing is not the word I would use,” Todd said sarcastically.
“Spoken like a true savage,” Schwartz said drily as he rejoined our group. He turned to Chaz. “Dr Robinson is sending a team out to tag the carnotaurs we stunned. Please accompany him. I’ll escort these three to see Boznic.”
Chaz nodded and was turning to go when one of the men in lab coats trotted up, a worried look on his face. He whispered something quietly in Schwartz’s ear, and Schwartz scowled and nodded. With a resigned sigh he turned to Chaz, who had stopped to watch this interaction. “Change of plans. Escort them to conference room B. I’ll alert Boznic and meet you there after I deal with this.” With a curt nod to the man in the lab coat, Schwartz turned and followed him at a jog.
“Looks like you’re with me,” Chaz said as Pip hopped from her shoulder and scampered away. “Which,” she said confidentially, “is kind of shocking. I’m not sure if you noticed, but Schwartz isn’t my biggest fan. He only tolerates me because he owes my dad a favour.” She stared after Schwartz’s retreating form, her forehead scrunched in thought. With a shrug, she motioned for us to climb back into the elevator. Todd’s face still had a sickly green colour to it, and I saw him give the tranquiliser gun hanging by Chaz’s side an assessing look. Not wanting him to pull anything stupid, I gave his shoulder a shove with my own, and he stumbled forward into the elevator. Shawn followed us inside, a preoccupied scowl on his face. Despite the disturbing revelation that these people were breeding dinosaurs, I couldn’t help but feel a tingle of excitement. This had to be what my dad had put on his map. It just had to be. As soon as the doors slid shut behind us, Chaz pushed a few buttons and took the tranquiliser gun off her shoulder with a grin.
“I’ll make you a deal. If you promise not to deck me, I’ll put this thing away. Makes me twitchy pointing it at people anyway.” She shuddered and slung the large black weapon onto her back. “Besides, it’s about out of battery anyway, and running away is impossible now that you’re down here.”
“What do you mean impossible?” Todd asked, eyeing the panel on the side of the elevator speculatively.
“Well, you saw how touchy Schwartz was about you guys finding out about this place. It’s because no one knows about us – not the Noah, not the compounds, not anybody,” Chaz explained. “We’re top secret.”
“I thought the Oaks was top secret too,” Todd muttered darkly, and I winced. His village had been captured when the Noah’s marines somehow tracked me and Shawn all the way from North Compound.
When I’d left the compound with nothing but my dad’s compass and a poorly drawn map, I’d never expected that the Noah would send General Kennedy and his marines after me. Why would the Noah, the man who controlled all four of the compounds, waste his time on a twelve-year-old girl? The whole idea was mind-boggling, but it was one I’d had to come to terms with.
In fact, there were a lot of things about the world that I’d had to adjust to after coming topside. For one, that people like Todd existed: people who lived outside the Noah’s control and the compound’s protection. For my entire life, I’d thought survival topside was impossible due to the dinosaurs. Now I was face-to-face with yet another example of that lie. Chaz and the rest of the people in the lab were obviously not descendants of the people the original Noah had shepherded underground over 150 years ago. Which meant that, like Todd, they’d never believed the Noah was the great saviour of the human race like Shawn and I had. It was simultaneously unnerving and exhilarating.
“What?” Todd cried, and I focussed back in on the conversion. Chaz had continued talking while I’d been lost in my own thoughts, and from the look of horror on Todd’s face, I’d missed something big.
“Like I said,” Chaz shrugged. “We’re always short-handed, and lab kids start working early. It’s not that great a job really. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a step up from mucking out stalls, but Dr Schwartz isn’t the most personable guy.”
“We noticed.” Shawn scowled. “About the time he tried to feed me to a sea monster.”
“Well, in his defence, you did hit him,” Chaz said. “I don’t think he really would have thrown you overboard.” Shawn shuddered and Chaz smiled apologetically. “Yeah, Pretty Boy’s a mean one all right. But pliosaurs and plesiosaurs are the only vicious creatures we help proliferate, and that’s only to protect the lab.”
“Proliferate?” Shawn asked.
“Help multiply,” Chaz supplied. “Our main focus is herbivores.”
“OK,” I said, trying to wrap my mind around this new information. “Then why didn’t you kill that carnotaurus herd on the beach? They were definitely not herbivores.”
“It’s a lab rule,” Chaz said. “It all goes back to the ecosystem balance I mentioned before. No one likes spiders either, but if we killed them all, the bug population would take over. If we kill off all the carnivores, we throw the entire ecosystem off balance.”
“Wait a minute,” Shawn said, his brow wrinkled in confusion. “Didn’t you say this lab had been here since before the pandemic?”
“It has.” Chaz nodded. “Originally it was a top-secret testing centre for the dinosaurs. Scientists back then were interested in discovering what else the dinosaurs might be useful for besides entertainment. This lab has discovered thousands of uses for everything from the oils in their skin to their dung. Medicines, tools, food, you name it, dinosaurs provide it way better than cows or chickens ever could. Which is good, considering all those domestic animals are extinct now. Plus dinosaurs are exceptionally trainable if you start them as hatchlings, and they make pretty fabulous pets.”
“But what about the pandemic?” I asked. The pandemic was one of the main reasons the human race had been struggling to make a comeback for the last 150 years. The small portion of the population that had survived it had done so because they’d been blessed with immunity to a disease that should have been extinct for millions