WE DON’T INHERIT THE EARTH FROM OUR ANCESTORS WE BORROW IT FROM OUR CHILDREN Native American proverb 24 7681 S 15 2959 E
1 RUSSIA GEORGIA ARMENIA IRAN AKSARAY TURKEY CRIMEA Black Sea TURKEY NORTHERN CYPRUS CYPRUS Mediterranean Sea SYRIA LEBANON IRAQ A DROP OF WATER splashed onto Cruz’s forehead Emmett he moaned feeling the bead roll down his temple One more minute Cruz was drifting off again when another drop tapped him on the bridge of his nose Okay okay His roommate was right They’d be in big trouble if they were late to class Cruz yawned his eyelids fluttering You win Emmett I’m The creamy white ceiling he expected to see was instead a forbidding black hole up he gulped He remembered now Cruz was not in his soft warm bed in cabin 202 on board Orion Explorer Academy’s flagship vessel Not even close He was huddled at the bottom of a cold damp cave somewhere outside of Aksaray Turkey Cruz’s neck was tipped back His head rather than being cradled in his cloud of a pillow was awkwardly butted up against unforgiving unforgiving rock The last thing he recalled before falling asleep was peering up into the stone well he’d fallen down Cruz had scanned the void for any hint of light any sign that help was on the way He had seen only darkness darkness then And now Achoo With the sneeze Cruz’s head snapped forward A cramp shot through his neck Ow he yelped and his cry echoed back to him Ow ow ow Cruz scooted out from under the dribble of water Bones lay 5
scattered around him like driftwood on the beach after a storm The good news was they no longer frightened him At first coming face to skull with a dozen or so skeletons had freaked him out To get his heart to stop trying to leap out of his chest Cruz had told himself it wasn’t so bad He would have been excited to uncover even a tiny piece of bone near the surface so there was no reason to panic over finding a bunch of them so far below it right That sounded good Plus it had kept his heart where it belonged Once Cruz realized he had survived the tumble into the cave his first impulse had been to reach into the upper pocket of his uniform for Mell his honeybee drone She could fly to the surface for help Unfortunately his pocket was empty He’d left the little drone back on Orion Mell was on a mission of her own A few weeks back Bryndis had shown him a blue door she’d discovered on the lowest deck of the ship Cruz had left Mell perched above the mystery door to record anyone entering or leaving the room Soon after the drone had captured Jericho Miles on video It was quite a surprise to Cruz Jericho was a tech who worked in the top secret Synthesis lab in the basement of the Academy So what was he doing on board Orion Emmett had said it probably wasn’t anything anything to worry about reasoning that Explorer Academy was the perfect cover for the Synthesis to travel the world and conduct classified research Still Cruz couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on Cruz glanced at the clock on his school-issued Organic Synchronization wrist band aka the Open Sesame passkey band The thin gold screen read 3 12 a m Seriously
He’d been stuck here for 11 hours The numbers were flickering The mini solar-powered computer must be losing juice Cruz let out a ragged breath So far his attempts to contact the surface had failed Cruz tapped his communications pin Cruz Coronado to Marisol Coronado He got no response from his aunt Numb fingertips touched the pin again Cruz to Emmett Lu Again nothing Cruz tried the rest of his teammates Sailor York Bryndis Jónsdóttir and Dugan Marsh No answer Before his mishap Cruz had been on an archaeological mission with the rest of the explorers It had begun as a class assignment on board Orion Team Cousteau Cruz’s team had been scouring satellite images looking for looting pits when they’d come across the outline of an unknown archaeological feature Thinking they may have stumbled onto an ancient tomb or temple Aunt Marisol and Dr Luben had led all 23 explorers to the actual location in Turkey Cruz had been excavating alongside his teammates when he’d broken away to check out an out crop The rest was blurry One minute he was examining prehistoric art on the wall of a cave and the next he was plunging down a hole Still Cruz was lucky His OS band indicated he’d suffered only a slight concussion and minor bruises It could have been worse Had he landed a few feet to the left he would have hit solid rock instead of hard-packed dirt Cruz suddenly sat up There had been something else too before the fall A jolt It hadn’t come from beneath him not like an earthquake or a landslide It was more like Pressure Yes When he’d leaned into the space to look down Cruz had felt a pressure between his shoulder blades The fog of uncertainty was beginning to clear His fall was no accident He’d been pushed And there was no doubt in Cruz’s mind who was behind it Nebula Several weeks ago he’d received an anonymous note warning him that Nebula’s spies were out to steal the journal and kill him before he turned 13 Yet Cruz still had the journal safely tucked in the upper-left pocket of his jacket And today was November 29 his 13th birthday 7
