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Chapters (73)
  1. Chapter 1
  2. Chapter 2
  3. Chapter 3
  4. Chapter 4
  5. Chapter 5
  6. Chapter 6
  7. Chapter 7
  8. Chapter 8
  9. Chapter 9
  10. Chapter 10
  11. Chapter 11
  12. Chapter 12
  13. Chapter 13
  14. Chapter 14
  15. Chapter 15
  16. Chapter 16
  17. Chapter 17
  18. Chapter 18
  19. Chapter 19
  20. Chapter 20
  21. Chapter 21
  22. Chapter 22
  23. Chapter 23
  24. Chapter 24
  25. Chapter 25
  26. Chapter 26
  27. Chapter 27
  28. Chapter 28
  29. Chapter 29
  30. Chapter 30
  31. Chapter 31
  32. Chapter 32
  33. Chapter 33
  34. Chapter 34
  35. Chapter 35
  36. Chapter 36
  37. Chapter 37
  38. Chapter 38
  39. Chapter 39
  40. Chapter 40
  41. Chapter 41
  42. Chapter 42
  43. Chapter 43
  44. Chapter 44
  45. Chapter 45
  46. Chapter 46
  47. Chapter 47
  48. Chapter 48
  49. Chapter 49
  50. Chapter 50
  51. Chapter 51
  52. Chapter 52
  53. Chapter 53
  54. Chapter 54
  55. Chapter 55
  56. Chapter 56
  57. Chapter 57
  58. Chapter 58
  59. Chapter 59
  60. Chapter 60
  61. Chapter 61
  62. Chapter 62
  63. Chapter 63
  64. Chapter 64
  65. Chapter 65
  66. Chapter 66
  67. Chapter 67
  68. Chapter 68
  69. Chapter 69
  70. Chapter 70
  71. Chapter 71
  72. Chapter 72
  73. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Amy’s pacing in front of the elevator by the time I reach the cryo level. “What took you so long?” she demands. Before I have a chance to answer her, she grabs my arm and starts dragging me to the hall in the back.

“I read the whole thing last night,” she says, tossing me a slender book.

“What’s this?” I turn it over, reading the title.

“Shakespeare’s sonnets. Keep up. Anyway, I read the whole thing—actually, I had to read it twice—but I finally noticed something very interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“Turn to page 87.”

Balancing the book in one hand, I carefully turn the pages. Amy taps her foot impatiently, but I don’t want to risk damaging this treasure from Sol-Earth. I turn over page 85. And—

“Where’s page 87?” I ask. I flip page 85 back and forth—but the book jumps straight to page 89.

“Exactly,” Amy says, a huge grin spreading across her face. “It’s so neatly cut out of the book that you’d never notice that page was gone unless you were looking for it.”

“This is the clue?” I ask, handing the book back to Amy.

“I think the clue was on page 87,” Amy says. “Someone altered whatever clue Orion left in the armory, trying to make us give up and quit looking. Whoever did that also cut the page from the book.”

“How did you find it?” I ask. I’m trying to remember what any of Orion’s videos said that indicated Shakespearean poetry.

“It was in the fiction room,” Amy says. “Anyway,” she continues when I open my mouth to question her further, “the point is—that missing page. It had a sonnet on it.” She turns back to page 85 and shows me the book. “This page has Sonnet 29 on it.” She turns to page 89. “This page has Sonnet 31. Which means that page 87 must have had Sonnet 30 on it.”

Amy tosses the book to the ground and my eyes go wide to see a treasure of Sol-Earth treated so casually. Amy doesn’t notice, though, as she spins around to the largest door at the end of the hall. “Codes have to be at least four digits long,” she says. “So try 0030.” She jerks her head to the door on the right of the hatch.

“This is never going to work,” I say.

In answer, Amy punches 0030 in the keypad by her door.

“Told you,” I say when nothing happens after I punch the code in my door too.

Amy picks the book back up and examines it again. “But . . . I was so sure.”

I look over her shoulder. “I don’t know why you think those sonnets are numbered. They have letters beside them, not numbers.”