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