THE IMPOSSIBLE MISSIONS ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT SUCCEED Jacques Cousteau 1910 1997 64 1265 N 21 8174 W
Bay Chesapeake Potomac NATIONAL HARBOR MARINA MARYLAND U S A MARYLAND D C VIRGINIA Potomac A HEAD popped around the doorway of cabin 202 a thick hazelnut ponytail swinging from the top Aren’t you unpacked yet Almost Cruz gave Sailor an uncertain grin His heart skipped as he reached for the last item in his suitcase a ball of puffed black carbon carbon He hoped the treasure inside wasn’t broken but it probably was How could it not be If it hadn’t been damaged by Lani taking it apart it most certainly had suffered from the overnight trip from Hawaii via mail drone Cruz gently tapped the foam-like carbon until the seal broke then carefully pulled the orb apart Free of its cocoon the palm-size silver dome looked all right However Cruz wouldn’t know for sure until he touched it and the holo-video of his mother and him as a younger child at the beach appeared Humming Here Comes the Sun he set the globe on his nightstand He placed it between the aqua box with some of his mom’s things and Mell his honeybee drone Cruz hesitated Maybe now wasn’t the best time to find out if the video was ruined If it was Lani would say it was a bad omen a sign that his journey on Orion was doomed Cruz wasn’t superstitious Still he couldn’t seem to get his finger to tap the dome His friend and teammate Sailor York was checking out Cruz’s cabin You got a corner again Sweet as Bryndis and I are at the other end of 7 1
the passage Doesn’t this place make you feel like you’re seeing double She had a point Most everything in the cozy whitewashed maple stateroom was in pairs two twin beds two identical navy-and-white pinstriped comforters with shams two maple nightstands side-by-side dressers a pair of navy stuffed chairs each with a penguin pillow and two small writing desks and chairs Cruz loved his desk Made of polished blue lapis granite the deep sapphire blue stone with golden flecks and soft white splatters reminded Cruz of photographs of the Milky Way Standing like a miniature tent on each starry desk was a note from Explorer Academy president Dr Regina Hightower She’d written Cruz and his roommate Emmett Lu nearly identical messages wishing them an exciting educational and life-changing journey However Cruz noticed his note contained one line that Emmett’s did not Under her signature Dr Hightower had included her private cell phone number In case you need anything she’d scrawled beside it then Please be careful The school’s president was one of the few people who knew about Cruz’s personal mission He was looking for a formula developed by his mother before her death Petra Coronado had discovered a serum that had the power to regenerate human cells a breakthrough that could have led to curing hundreds of diseases A founding scientist with the Synthesis the top secret scientific branch of the Society she had hit upon the formula while working on a pain medication for Nebula Pharmaceuticals Once Nebula learned she’d created something that went far beyond their parameters they’d ordered her to destroy the serum and formula As his mother had explained in her digital holo-video journal The last thing a pharmaceutical company making billions of dollars selling drugs wants is for humanity to never need those drugs Cruz’s mother had been pressured into agreeing to Nebula’s demands but not before engraving the formula into black marble splitting the stone into eight pieces and hiding the fragments of the 8
cipher around the world Fearing for her life she made a holo-journal for Cruz with clues on how to find the pieces Soon after she died in a mysterious lab fire that had been ruled accidental Cruz only recently discovered his mother’s death had been no accident And worse Nebula was to blame Following the first clue in her journal Cruz had deduced the first piece of the cipher was hidden in the base of his holo-projector back home in Hawaii His best friend Lani Kealoha had removed the bottom plate of the dome and sure enough found the stone inside Laser-etched with partial numbers and symbols the black marble now hung on a lanyard around Cruz’s neck It was pie-shaped and less than an inch across at the curved edge The segment looked like a piece to a miniature round puzzle With two knobs on the right side and a curved indentation on the left it was obvious the fragment was meant to interlock with two others Finding it had been an amazing feat but Cruz knew he had a long way to go to complete the cipher circle Then there was Nebula They were still out there still determined to make sure he didn’t succeed To help keep him safe Dr Hightower had increased the security on board Orion and among the students only Emmett and Sailor knew of Cruz’s mission Sailor peered around cabin 202 dark eyes roving past the door that opened to the attached balcony over to the closet then finally to the closed bathroom door Is Emmett She stuck out her tongue and pointed at her mouth making what Cruz was sure was the international international sign for hurling Heaving chunks Nope So far so good He went up to the fourth 9
