Free Isle of Man (The Park Service Trilogy #2) by Ryan Winfield

in the world visible on his features. I’m reminded of those fearful days hidden away in that cave, nursing him back to health, hoping the homemade antibiotics would help. I remember the same innocence on his sleeping face then. And I remember the horrors of what happened in that cove flooding back into his eyes the moment he was awake. As much as I want to, I can’t bring myself to wake him now. Instead, I do something that surprises me. I lean down and kiss his forehead.
    Then I ease myself off the bunk, climb onto the empty one above, close my eyes, and fall fast asleep.

CHAPTER 5
Where Man Rises from the Sea
    The professor’s voice echoing down the hatch wakes me.
    I lean over and look down on the bunk below, but Jimmy and Junior are gone.
    “Aubrey!” the professor calls again.
    “Coming!”
    I jump from the bunk and rinse my face with cold water in the tiny submarine sink and run my wet fingers through my hair. A faceless outline of my head is dimly reflected in the small mirror. I wish I knew who I was supposed to be.
    The professor lends me a hand out onto the deck of the submarine and presents me my lesson slate.
    “Does it work?”
    “Quite well,” he says. “And it’s loaded with our entire library now, even the books that were banned in Holocene II.”
    “That’s great! I was sad to see Radcliffe’s library washed away in that wave. There was so much I wanted to read.”
    The professor smiles approvingly.
    “We do have a problem, however. Come with me.”
    “Where’s Jimmy?”
    “Oh, no,” he says, “Jimmy’s fine. He’s in the supply room trying to find something for that fox of his to eat. We have a problem with the mastercode.”
    “What is it?”
    “Come. I’ll show you.”
    Following the professor toward the command center, I look around at the Foundation, wondering what the problem could be. It’s remarkable how little evidence there is of the flood. You’d never know how many people drowned here if you didn’t have to dredge them up and dispose of them like Jimmy and I did. I remember Dr. Radcliffe leading Hannah and me down here for the first time, taking us through the sintering plant on our way to the hanger to board that drone and tour the park. I remember seeing Eden and having doubts about its promises, but I pushed the doubts away. Never again. From now on, I trust my instincts.
    We enter the command center and find Hannah and Red watching random lines of code scroll across the wall of black screens. Red’s head bobbles up and down as he tries to follow individual lines of code, moving far too fast to read even if they weren’t gibberish. Hannah has her balled fists on opposing hips and a frustrated look in her eyes. The professor waves at the passing characters as if presenting the problem.
    I shrug.
    “What does it mean?”
    “It means,” the professor sighs, “the code is encrypted.”
    “Encrypted?”
    “Impossibly so,” he says.
    “There’s no way to unlock it?” I ask.
    “Not unless you have the key.”
    “Well, where’s the key?”
    He tosses up his hands.
    “Probably at the bottom of the lake trapped inside Radcliffe’s thick skull.”
    Hannah shoots the professor an angry look.
    “There must be some way to crack it,” she says.
    “We were using 14 rounds of 256-bit keys when this was designed,” the professor frowns. “I’m afraid there’s no way to decrypt it with brute force.”
    Red shakes his head.
    “I should’ve studied more in school.”
    I step closer and watch the code roll down the screens—lines of random letters and symbols marching like armies across two-dimensional space. Could we possibly be doomed to die down here because of a missing key? A simple string of thought buried with Dr. Radcliffe and never to be exhumed?
    “There is this,” the professor says, stepping past me and tapping a command into the keyboard.
    The code disappears in a flash, replaced by a static page of header text that reads:
    THE HUMAN EXTINCTION