Dylan pulled the last shirt from the box that had once been full of clothing, keeping the blue piece of fabric neatly folded as she placed it into the small dresser and slid it shut. She turned around slowly to face the empty boxes that now covered her bed, relieved to have finally finished unpacking her belongings in a halfhearted attempt to make a home of her new surroundings.

It was much smaller than her old room back on Figure Eight, there was no doubt about that, though the familiarity of seeing her things placed around the room brought her a small sense of comfort. It would take a while before she saw The Cut as her home, if she ever would at all, but she could only hope that Topper was right and she'd be back where she belonged in no time.

As she left the room in search of the living room boxes, hoping to unpack a few to surprise her mother when Linda got home later that evening from her first shift at The Wreck, a crashing noise sounded from outside, causing Dylan to freeze in place. Her gaze was torn over to the direction of the sound, coming from her neighbors' house, belonging to Scooter and Lana Grubbs, the former of whom having been found floating in the marsh after the storm. More crashing sounded, each one louder than the last and accompanied by muffled yells, and Dylan quickly crouched to the ground, scrambling over to the closest window to the house next door and pushing it open just a crack in an attempt to make out what was being said inside.

"Tell me where it is or I'll fuck you up!" an unfamiliar voice shouted, causing Dylan's blood to turn to ice in her veins as she could hear Lana's screams over the sound of shattering glass. "I'll sink you in the fucking-"

"You're hurting me!" Lana shouted, and Dylan sat with her back pressed against the wall, just out of view of the window above her as she listened, holding her breath in an attempt to make no sound of her own.

"Where the fuck is it, you bitch?" another unfamiliar voice shouted.

"I don't know!" Lana screamed again.

"Is it here in this house?" the man asked. "Is it somewhere else?"

Dylan's eyebrows furrowed together in confusion as she attempted to piece together their words, but she came up short. Whatever they were searching for, they left no stone unturned as they continued to tear through the house. Out of habit, she reached for the back pocket of her shorts, where she usually kept her phone, but the denim pocket remained empty, her phone battery having long drained due to the lack of power and cell signal after the hurricane and leaving her powerless to call for help.

Dylan slowly spun around from where she sat on the ground, lifting herself up just enough to be able to peer through the window to the house next door. Although, where she expected the yard to be empty, as it had been mere moments before, JJ and John B now crouched against the side of the house, looking equally as terrified as she felt, though she couldn't figure out why they were there.

"The compass wasn't in the boat!" the first voice roared, causing Dylan to crouch back out of sight again, panting heavily as the adrenaline began to surge through her veins. "Where is it, Lana?"

"I don't know," Lana sobbed, accompanied by the sound of more glass breaking.

As she looked back up once more, Dylan froze as two figures left the house, both clad in black and moving quickly to where a boat sat at the edge of the water in the Grubbs' backyard. They jumped from the dock into the boat, starting the engine and driving away, back in the direction of the marsh. As soon as they were out of sight, JJ and John B slowly began to advance towards the front door, and Dylan moved from her hiding spot, pulling on her shoes and rushing over to her neighbors' after them.

"Ms. Lana?" Dylan called out as she stepped into the house, eyes widening as she took in the scene before her.

Shattered glass covered the floors, broken picture frames littering the hallways and furniture upturned around every corner. The kitchen cabinets all lay open, with various foods spilling out and onto the counters and the floor below. At the sound of her arrival, JJ peeked out from around the corner, a scared and alert expression shifting to one of confusion as he recognized the girl in front of him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, and she hesitantly stepped closer to him, in no hurry to be around him after the incident with the gun at the Boneyard the night before but also knowing she needed to find Lana.

"I live next door now, remember?" she asked. "What are you doing here? Where's Ms. Lana?"

"She's in here," JJ said, and she followed him around the corner to the bedroom, where John B crouched down in the adjoining bathroom next to Lana Grubbs.

While the destruction in the bedroom matched the rest of the house, with various dresser drawers open and some even ripped completely out of the piece of furniture, leaving clothes and other personal artifacts strewn around the room, it hardly matched where Lana hid in the bathroom, sobbing under a broken sink that threatened to topple over at any moment. Cuts lined the woman's face as she turned in on herself, shutting her eyes tightly as if in an attempt to blink and wake herself up from a horrible nightmare.

"Ms. Lana, what happened?" Dylan breathed, moving past JJ and crouching down next to John B, reaching a hand out for the woman.

"Do you need a doctor?" John B asked, but she made no motion to respond to him as he looked back at Dylan and JJ. "Let's call the sheriff's department."

"No no no, no cops, please!" Lana begged, suddenly alert as she turned to look at the three teenagers.

"That's not good," JJ mused. "Come on guys, let's just go."

"Lana, what happened?" Dylan asked.

"You shouldn't be here," Lana insisted, shaking her head.

"That's enough for me, come on," JJ said.

"Guys, we can't just leave her here." Dylan said, looking back at them with an incredulous expression.

"What do you know about these guys?" John B asked, causing Dylan's eyebrows to furrow together in confusion as she looked back at him.

"They were looking for something." Lana explained in a small voice.

Dylan watched as John B rummaged around in his pockets before pulling out a small compass. While to Dylan, it was no more than just a tiny household item, not unlike the ones she'd seen hundreds of times before, Lana's eyes filled with tears as she looked at it with a horrified expression, causing Dylan's eyebrows to pinch together in confusion.

"Does it have anything to do with this?" John B asked. "Do you know anything about this? This was my father's, and Scooter had it. Why?"

"Scooter didn't have it, okay?" Lana asked. "Don't tell anyone that you have that!"

"Come on," JJ said, pulling Dylan up to her feet and stepping forward to help up John B.

"Why?" John B insisted.

"They can't know that you have that!" Lana shouted. "You have to get it out of here!"

"What do you know about the compass?" John B pressed, but JJ grabbed him by the elbow, pulling him up to his feet.

"Go!" Lana shouted. "Get out!"

"We've gotta go," JJ insisted, grabbing each of them by the elbow and leading them out of the house, Lana's shrieks growing further and further behind them.

"What the hell was that?" Dylan asked as soon as they stepped out of the house, back into the humid air, and she turned around, facing the two boys. "What were you even doing here? Who were those guys and what do they want with a stupid compass?"

"That's what we were here to figure out." John B said solemnly, staring down at the compass for a moment before shoving it into his pocket. "But we need to go in case they come back."

"Go where?" Dylan asked. "What do I do if they come back?"

"Back to my house." John B explained as they began to walk towards where his van sat at the edge of the driveway. "We'll meet Pope and Kie back there. You're welcome to come with us, until you're sure the coast is clear."

Dylan watched the boys for a moment, arms crossed over her chest. "And you'll tell me everything?" she asked.

"We don't know much, ourselves." John B admitted. "But yes."

"John B, are you crazy?" JJ asked. "We can't get her involved in this. Bates, go home. You'll be safer there."

"I'm not going home." Dylan insisted, shaking her head as she looked back in the direction of the house. "Not after seeing what those guys just did to Ms. Lana's house." Dylan stepped forward, pulling open the back door to the van and climbing inside. "Are you guys coming or what?" she asked, and John B and JJ exchanged a look before climbing into the front seat.

John B turned the key in the ignition, and the van roared to life. He wasted no time in backing out of the driveway, turning back onto the roads to lead back to the Routledge residence. While Dylan herself had no idea which house John B called home, she was no stranger to the rumors that he'd been living on his own since his father went missing at sea nine months before, rather than living with the uncle he claimed had been there ever since.

"So where do you start?" Dylan asked, watching them expectantly.

"It all started the night of the hurricane." John B explained. "Pope and I tried to surf the surge, and there was some boat out on the water. The next day we found it in the bottom of the marsh. It was Scooter Grubbs's boat." At the name of her recently deceased neighbor, Dylan's mind flashed with the memory of her friends talking about him the night before. "On the boat, I found a motel key, which led us to a room that had a safe full of cash, and a gun."

"Bet I can guess what happened to the gun." Dylan murmured, sparing a glance at JJ, who glared back in her direction.

"Bro, why are we telling her all of this?" JJ asked. "She's a Kook, remember."

"Does it look like I still live over on Figure Eight?" Dylan asked, crossing her arms over her chest. "At least Kooks aren't firing guns into the middle of the night."

"Easy, easy," John B warned, glancing at JJ before looking back at Dylan in the rearview mirror. "Anyways, I borrowed some scuba gear from Mr. Cameron to see what else I could find on the boat. I found a bag that had the compass inside, my father's compass. Then we were chased out of the marsh by those same guys, who shot at us. Whoever they are, whatever they want, it has something to do with his disappearance, I know it. I know he didn't just get lost at sea."

Dylan sat in silence as she attempted to process the boy's words, but instead came up short. She watched out the window as he pulled into a gravel driveway, killing the engine as they stopped outside of his house. She followed the boys out of the car and up to the front porch, where Kiara and Pope waited on the other side of the screen door.

"There you guys are," Kie sighed, but a confused expression soon crossed her features as she took in the sight of Dylan standing behind them. "What happened? What's she doing here?"

"We tried to go talk to Lana about the compass, but those guys that shot at us yesterday in the marsh beat us to it." JJ said, instantly beginning to pace around the small porch. "And we were right outside like this." he said, leaning against the wall in an attempt to mimic the earlier events. And all we hear is just bam, bam, bam, bam! Knocking paint off the wall, G! From the inside. Alright? And I'm just looking at him like- wait, first off, look at this shit."

JJ stepped forward to where Pope and Kiara now sat, leaning forward and shaking out his hair to where a number of flakes now fluttered towards the ground, the two other Pogues watching their friend with disgusted expressions.

"That's dandruff, disgusting," Kiara muttered.

"Okay, thank you," Pope said, attempting to push JJ away.

"Look at all that, alright?" JJ insisted. "That's paint. At that point, I was just like... I'm waiting for death."

"Okay, so you saw the guys that shot at us, right?" Pope asked.

"Yeah," JJ confirmed, and Dylan nodded in agreement.

"Did you get a good description of them?" he asked. "What did they look like?"

"Anything's helpful." Kiara added.

"Anything we can bring to a police report, maybe?" Pope prompted.

JJ thought for a moment before turning back to them. "Burly." he said simply.

"Burly," Pope echoed, and JJ nodded.

"That's not very helpful." Kie deadpanned.

"Okay, well, no, like the type of guy at my dad's garage." JJ explained. "I mean, you guys know he made cargo hides for drug smugglers. So I can tell you with full confidence that these boys, these killers..." JJ paused, taking a drag of a cigarette and slowly exhaling. "They're square groupers."

"They're square groupers, like narco square groupers?" Pope asked. "Like Pablo Escobar square grouper?"

"Yeah, man," JJ said.

"You guys, not everything is a kingpin movie." Kiara reminded them.

"Okay, so what does this square grouper look like, specifically?" Pope asked.

"You weren't there, bro!" JJ exclaimed.

"Well apparently, you don't know what to look for!" Pope retorted.

"Dude, I wasn't taking little mental Polaroids the entire time!" JJ pointed out. "I was under duress, okay? But I can tell you by the way Ms. Lana was screaming that these guys are serious, serious hombres, man."

At JJ's words, Kiara and Pope spared a look over at where Dylan and John B still stood near the door, their eyes trained on the floor. At the mention of her name, Lana's screams from earlier echoed around in Dylan's mind, and she shook her head softly, attempting to quiet them.

"It's a heavy vibe right now, okay?" JJ continued. "I'm not liking this very much."

"Why would they want the compass?" Kie asked.

"That thing's a piece of shit." Pope added. "You couldn't pawn it off for five bucks if you wanted to." he spared a look over at his friend. "No offense, John B, I know it's in your family."

"The office," John B said simply.

"What?" Dylan asked.

"My dad," he explained. "My dad's office." he shoved the compass in his pocket, walking towards the front door of the house as the others quickly scrambled after him. "He always kept his office locked 'cause he worried about his competitors stealing his Royal Merchant research. We used to laugh at him like he was gonna find it, but now that he's gone, I've just kinda... I just left it as he kept it."

He paused outside of a door locked with a padlock, rummaging around in his pockets and pulling out his keys, where he instantly began to undo the lock.

"Yeah, for when he gets back." Kiara said encouragingly, and John B pulled off the open padlock, pushing open the office door.

Inside, the room was covered with tables, and every available surface was littered with papers and maps, ink scrawled over every inch. Even the wall was covered in various maps and lined with bookshelves, each full to bursting with different texts. Whatever Big John had been researching over the years, it was obvious just how much he'd learned about the subject over time.

"I've slept over here like six hundred times and I've never seen this door opened." Pope mused, his eyes scanning over the walls.

John B's eyes wandered the room until he found a bulletin board hanging on the wall, and he quickly pulled it off, setting it on the table in the center of the room.

"Here, look, this is the original owner right here." John B said, pointing to a picture at the top of the board.

"Okay, Robert Q. Routledge," Kiara said, reading where a name and two dates were hastily scrawled on a scrap of paper underneath the picture. "Eighteen eighty to nineteen twenty. There's the lucky compass right there." she said, pointing to where the small device could be seen in the photograph."

"Actually, um..." John B trailed off nervously. "He was shot after he bought it. Then the compass was shipped back to Henry," he explained, pointing to the other pictures of Routledge family members as he went along. "He was killed in a crop dusting accident when he had the compass. After he died, the compass was given to Stephen. Stephen had the compass with him when he died in Vietnam."

"Let me guess, he died in action, right?" JJ asked.

"Sort of," John B said. "Actually, he was killed by a banana truck, in- in country. Anyways, after that, Stephen passed the compass down to him, my dad." he paused over the picture of Big John Routledge, an indiscernible look in his eyes."

"Sounds like there's a recurring theme here," JJ concluded.

"Yeah, uhm, you have a death compass." Pope said.

"I do not," John B insisted.

"You have a death compass." Pope repeated.

"Get rid of it, dude." JJ insisted. "It's cursed, and it found its way back to you."

"Look, my dad used to talk about this compartment in here." John B continued, sitting down and beginning to twist the back off the compass. "Soldiers used to hide secret notes."

John B pulled off the back of the compass, shaking the device out in an attempt to loosen anything hidden inside, but to his disappointment, it was empty. However, Kiara's gaze followed the back of the compass, her eyebrows furrowing together in confusion.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing to where an engraving was now etched into the metal.

"That wasn't there before," he said, studying the inscription, and Dylan peered over his shoulder in an attempt to read it for herself. "This is my dad's handwriting." John B said.

"How can you know that?" Pope asked.

"Because he does these weird 'R's," John B explained, holding it in Pope's direction. "See?"

"Can I see it?" JJ asked, and John B handed him the small piece of metal. "Red- Rout-"

"Redfield," Dylan read. "What's Redfield?"

"Besides the most common name in the county?" Pope suggested.

"Okay maybe- maybe it's a clue." John B said. "Maybe it's a clue to where he's hiding."

"A clue?" Pope asked skeptically. "Come on, that's..." he trailed off as Kiara began to glare in his direction, his expression softening. "But if it is a clue, maybe it's an anagram?" he suggested.

"Yes, perfect!" John B agreed. "Anagram. You need paper." John B reached for a random piece of paper that littered the tabletop, and grabbed a pen. "Here you go."

Pope picked up the pen, staring down at the paper as a rooster began to crow from the small chicken coop outside. "How can you concentrate with that thing constantly crowing at you?" he asked.

"JJ loves the rooster." John B explained.

"I love the rooster." Kiara added.

"Okay, let me think," Pope said as John B wandered back over towards the window, grabbing a piece of paper of his own. "Dedfiel, colors... no, that's stupid."

"What about, like... Ritalin?" JJ suggested, but Dylan shook her head.

"Dreidel?" Kie suggested. "Fiddler?"

"Something with fields?" Dylan added, but Pope simply shook his head.

"Defile," he spoke up, quickly writing the word down. "Does that mean anything to any of you?"

"Guys," John B spoke up uneasily, though it went unnoticed by the others.

"Nothing," Dylan said, shaking her head.

"You're missing a letter." Kiara pointed out.

"Guys!" John B shouted, pulling their attention over to him as Dylan suddenly felt her heart drop into her stomach. "Somebody's here."