Shadow Zone Read Online Free PDF Page B

all yours.”
    Hannah smiled as she shook her head. It was amusing to see Melis in matchmaking mode. Melis was usually as intense and obsessed with work as Hannah. “You know he’s not my style.”
    “A gorgeous man who worships you?” Melis thought for a moment. “You’re right. Not nearly complex enough. Not your style. But maybe you should consider changing your style.”
    A loud, insistent beep sounded from the walkie-talkie clipped to Hannah’s belt. She unfastened it and held it up. “This is Hannah.”
    Josh’s voice blared from the tinny speaker. “Hannah, I’m inside Conner One. You and Melis need to get over here now. Right now.”
    Hannah exchanged a glance with Melis. Josh’s urgency surprised her. She raised the walkie-talkie. “What’s going on, Josh?”
    “You’re not going to believe this. Hell, I can’t believe it.” Now she could hear the excitement and jubilation that vibrated in his voice. “Screw Ebersole. I think we’ve found it.”
    “Found what?”
    “What we’ve been looking for. The end of the story.”
    Hannah and Melis stared at the murky eight-foot projected image in the Copernicus conference room. There were over two dozen crew members crowded behind them, all trying to make sense of what they were seeing.
    “What are we looking at?” Hannah asked.
    Josh adjusted the focus. “This is the captured video from Conner One ’s aft camera right before we struck the wall. I was reviewing the footage from the moment of impact, to see what happened.”
    Matthew smiled. “You’re a screwup, that’s what happened. You shouldn’t need instant replay to figure that out.”
    “Thanks for the support, Matthew. I wanted to see how I screwed up.” Josh advanced the image a few more frames. “When the wall came down, it hit the edge of a mosaic of colored glass that had been covered by silt. The stained glass tilted up for a second, and our lights shone through it. We don’t have a clear shot of the glass itself, but you can see the image that it cast on another wall. Look.”
    Josh froze the image, and they could see the multicolored images projected with astonishing clarity.
    “It’s incredible,” Hannah murmured. “So sharp and vivid.”
    Melis walked toward the screen. “This may have been the top surface of a trellis, probably designed for the sun to shine through and project these images on a white patio. We’ve seen these in a few other places, mostly schools and libraries. They were often used to recount histories of various buildings and institutions.”
    “Exactly what I thought,” Josh said. “I’ve seen enough of these in the past few weeks to get an idea what I was looking at. If it’s anything like the others, the top line tells us what story we’re being told.” He turned to Melis. “You’re the expert. What does that say to you?”
    Melis studied the image. “It’s sunrise/sunset signs, meaning birth and death. We’re being told a life story.”
    “Whose life?” Ebersole asked from the back of the room.
    Melis’s eyes narrowed on the sign to the right. “It looks like the birth and death of . . .” She gasped. “Oh, my God.”
    Josh nodded. “So I’m not crazy?”
    Melis studied it for a moment longer. “This last picture is in the shape of what was once the island. Marinth itself.” She looked up at Hannah. “This is the story of Marinth, from the beginning to the end.”
    “You always said this was here someplace,” Hannah said.
    “It had to be here. The people of Marinth had too much regard for their history for them not to have had some kind of record. And since their civilization was dying long before the tsunami, they would have had time to tell it.” Melis walked toward the projected image and ran her finger across the lines, which looked as much like cave paintings as a written language. “But only the first part is visible here. Look, here are the early settlers in their fishing boats, and this is the great war they had