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TWENTY SIX 「breaking the barrier」
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SYLVIA FELT HER world tilt on its axis. All the work they'd done, all the time they'd spent studying the maps, and the answer was right beneath their noses the entire time. Sylvia felt elated with the discovery, and incredibly stupid that she hadn't figured it out sooner. The letter F stood boldly in the middle of the page, the image seared into her mind.
"Man..." Minho said, summing up her anger, shock, frustration, and elation all in one word.
"Could be a coincidence," Teresa said. "Do more, quick."
Thomas did, putting together the eight pages of each day, in order from Section One to Section Eight. Each time, an obvious letter formed in the center of the crisscrossed mass of lines. After the F was an L, then an O, then an A, and a T. Then C...A...T.
"Look," Thomas said, pointing down the line of stacks they'd formed, looking confused. "It spells FLOAT and then it spells CAT."
"Float cat?" Newt asked. "Doesn't sound like a bloody rescue code to me."
"We just need to keep working," Thomas said.
Another couple of combinations made them realize that the second word was actually CATCH. FLOAT and CATCH.
Sylvia let a grin split her lips, and then laughter shook her chest. She walked over to Thomas, and he looked at her inquisitively, and admittedly, a little scared. She gripped his shoulders, shaking him a bit, eyes wild and still laughing lightly. "You're a freaking genius, Greenie!"
"Definitely not a coincidence," Minho said, lips curling.
"Definitely not," Thomas agreed, smiling at the two of them.
Teresa gestured toward the storage closet. "We need to go through all of them—all those boxes in there."
