Grant looked crestfallen. I tried not to betray anything with my expression, but I suddenly found myself glad that Scylla had shoved that thing down her shirt, after all.

Nobody talked much on the ride back over to Kimbal. Everyone who’d been working in Trench 21 was pretty shaken. The person who’d actually made the find had stayed behind so GSAF could question them about the events of the find.

“Poor Schlessinger,” a girl I didn’t know murmured at one point, her face shiny from tears running down her cheeks. “They were so freaked out, and now they’re stuck out there all alone with Joseph Condor and the cops. I mean, what the hell? Rocks and crap are one thing, but I never signed on to dig up a crime scene.”

“I wonder who it was,” the guy sitting next to her said. “It would have to be a missing person, right? Has anyone heard about anybody disappearing from Tierra Nueva the last few years?”

My heart shuddered to a stop in my chest. The chatter of my classmates faded, inaudible over the deafening roar in my ears. Oh, God, what if it’s…

My throat tightened. I thought I might throw up.

“Isaak? Isaak, are you okay?” Slowly I became aware of Tamara’s hand on my shoulder, peering into my face. Her expression was grim. “You don’t think it’s”—she swallowed, and added in a whisper, “your dad?”

“I don’t know. Ayyyy,” I groaned and shoved my face into my hands. I wanted a do-over. I wanted this day to go away. All this time I’d thought he just left, abandoned us. But none of us had heard from him at all in over two annums. I knew he and Mom had been having problems, and he’d talked so many times about leaving and going back to Earth, but what if he hadn’t? What if he’d actually been killed?

What if Emil killed him?

And Emil had been in my house, where Mom and Celeste were right now. Who knew what he might do to them?

I needed to get home. Now.

“I have to call my mom,” I said, pulling my palmtop out of my pocket. “I have to make sure she’s okay.”

On the other side of Tamara, Scylla frowned. “Dude, what are you talking about? Are you seriously saying you might know who that stiff out there is?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to believe it, but it seemed like my dad had some sort of weird connection to the dig site—the coin, the arch, crazy Emil and his cryptic warnings. And then his disappearance. It was all way too much.

My palmtop buzzed in my hand. A text from my mom. Erick called me. Celeste and I are on our way over to Curiosity Bay right now. I’ll meet you at the bus stop on campus.