Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

Robbed of the ability to take proactive steps, she dwelled on what she had learned, and how it might relate to the Enneagon.

Okay, Dr. Corwin, I feel you. We started off with a zero and we followed it all the way to India. You showed me the amazing history and culture of the subcontinent, forced me to contemplate the complexities of Kali and experiential religion, and then, whether you meant to or not—Mani’s last-minute help was awfully convenient—I came full circle by wading through human filth in a sewer and holing up in a god-awful slum. I saw the highs and lows of one of our great civilizations, its dizzying achievements and its harsh realities, and I learned that a zero is not just an essential mathematical construct but a philosophy, a realization, a state of being.

So I feel you—but why?

How does it fit with all the other locations? What’s the endgame of this wild, immense, globe-spanning puzzle of yours?

Swift movement at the corner of her vision caused her to slide her seat back and jerk to her feet, but it was just Cal approaching through the garden, walking faster than normal. She remained standing as he hurried over and jumped the patio railing.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Zawadi sent a text.”

He held out the phone, and she read it for herself.

I strongly suspect Dr. Corwin is alive and being held in an unknown location. Spy within Ascendants claims fourth Star Phone puzzle was solved in Mali and they’re working on the fifth. Next clue is an old-fashioned world map with a spider walking across a path of lotus petals on the back of a dragon. 4 doors in corners of map and one cracked door in center. Initial consensus is Silk Road, somewhere in China. Meet me in Hong Kong but stay underground until I arrive. A pilot named Darsha at Krishnanagar helipad is waiting. Contact me only if emergency.

Andie held the phone in her hands for a long time, so long that Cal gently nudged her. There was so much to process. A spy within the Ascendants. The fourth puzzle solved. Most importantly, Zawadi thought Dr. Corwin was alive!

In her heart, Andie had believed that already, but the validation brought a lump to her throat. She allowed herself a moment of silent relief and then pushed the emotions away, because while Dr. Corwin might still be alive, if his imprisonment was anything like her and Cal’s experience…

She drew a deep breath. There was no time to savor the moment.

One line in the text almost made her laugh out loud. They should contact Zawadi only in an emergency? The entire goddamn journey was an emergency. What did she mean? They should call her only if they were in the middle of a James Bond–style crisis, dangling upside down above an alligator pit as the rope holding their ankles slowly frayed from the other end?

Still, when Andie pocketed the phone, she did so with a grim smile on her lips. She thought she understood some, but certainly not all, of the new Star Phone clue the Ascendants were trying to solve—and she thought they had drawn the wrong conclusion.

Yes, she was ready to leave the guesthouse and find the pilot Zawadi had suggested.

But she and Cal wouldn’t be going to Hong Kong.

New York City1971

Ensconced in a secret parlor inside the main branch of the New York Public Library, Dr. Corwin sat in a velvet armchair with his legs crossed, contemplative, sipping a Macallan eighteen-year. Just over twelve months had passed since he had escaped Cartagena by boarding a bus in the same disguise—a homeless man dressed in rags—he had used to climb to the top of San Felipe Castle, in plain view of all who wished to see. There, carved into the underside of a rusty cannon, he had discovered what might have been Ettore Majorana’s last message to the world.

Addio.

Over the last year, starting in Central America and working his way east across the Atlantic, Dr. Corwin had searched for any trace of Nataja Tromereo, and similar anagrammatic aliases, in crime databases and hospital records and apartment leases around the world. He enlisted help from within the LYS, as well as outside, employing private investigators and research assistants under the aegis of trying to solve one of the world’s great scientific mysteries.

Not a trace to be found.

The Society had confirmed his suspicions that Tesla and Taylor had both been members, though no record existed of any contact between them and Ettore Majorana. Nor could anyone explain the photograph of Tesla in Cartagena, except to say it could have been doctored.

Dr. Corwin was unconvinced. That photo was real. Ettore is alive and laughing at us all.

Searching for a creative new avenue to explore, he let his thoughts drift as his gaze roamed the hidden parlor.

At the turn of the twentieth century, when the New York City library system was being built on the back of steel baron Andrew Carnegie’s donation, buildings were heated by coal. On-site apartments beneath the libraries housed the custodians who stoked the furnaces. Some of those apartments still existed, some had been demolished, and some had been repurposed into speakeasies or storehouses for rare manuscripts.

Those were the known anomalies. What the public didn’t know was that Andrew Carnegie had been a member of the Society and had built other secrets into the architecture of the libraries, which had long served as safe havens for the LYS.

The parlor Dr. Corwin was in now resembled an executive lounge for explorers. Coffered oak paneling, a Persian rug, copper mood lighting, a humidor, and a well-stocked liquor cabinet provided the creature comforts. Ornate standing globes, telescopes, and framed maps from around the world evoked a spirit of adventure. Books were everywhere, behind glass cabinets and stacked on the tables and piled on the floor. It was a room for resting weary legs and letting the imagination roam free.

Directly across from his armchair, against the far