Idols (9780316279772) by Stohl Margaret

Author:Stohl, Margaret
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction / Science & Technology, Juvenile Fiction / Action & Adventure / General, Juvenile Fiction / Love & Romance
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2014-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

I slip back noiselessly into the shadows, walking over the same rolling deck where I stumbled not so long ago. Tima and Lucas and Ro are still sleeping; even Brutus is snoring. Battered as we all are, just getting through another day is a minor medical miracle. Fortis says sleep is the best thing they—and any of us—can do. Not that it’s that easy to come by, in a situation like ours.

Maybe he spiked their food with sleep tabs, I think, looking at them snoring away now.

Even better.

I spy Fortis’s jacket, and before I know it, I’m reaching inside. I need to know what’s going on, especially with his sudden plans for us to take down the entire General Embassy.

Fortis isn’t himself—or I’m not.

Either way, I have to find out.

As with any Merk, his jacket is a treasure trove, with every hidden inside pocket brimming full of the odd bits that make Fortis, Fortis. He’s never without it; only the intolerable heat and the more intolerable humidity of the Colonies have made him leave it behind, even now.

A rare mistake.

Stop it, I think.

What are you even looking for?

But I don’t stop. I can’t help myself.

Information, as he would say. Pertinent information. That’s what I’m looking for.

And so I keep looking.

The first thing I see is the cuff, wrapped in the stiff black fabric.

Strange, Fortis without his cuff.

That rarely happens.

Next I find a wad of digs, a bundle of Merk cash held together in a digi-clip with the faded letters P.F. on it. Beyond that, there are such treasures as this: a bundle of old photographs, tied with string—a small pocketknife—a larger hunting knife—and what looks like a tin of grease for his hair. I open it.

Plastic explosives. Nice.

Then I find it, in one of the larger pockets that line the back of the jacket. Still bound in its own rough burlap sack, just as I left it when I gave it to him for safekeeping, back at Nellis.

My book.

My last gift from the Padre.

The Humanity Project: The Icon Children.

I open the pages, eagerly, shamefully—as if I were reading something immoral or illegal or worse.

But I’m not. I’m reading about myself. Until I get to the back pages, which are scribbled in with writing by another hand.

Fortis’s.

It’s his journal, as far as I can tell.

I settle back against the wall of the rolling ship and start to read about the man I have entrusted my life to.

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