𝓟𝐫𝗼𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝓢𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐮𝐧𝐞

Chapter #16 - Sophie

Chapter #16 - Sophie

"Do you think you have a password?" Mr. Forkle asked as Sophie arrived back at Solreef. He, Glimmer, and Tam were standing at the sprawling fields in front of the mansion, and Sophie assumed Dex— and maybe Tinker— would also be coming in a minute to help unlock the cache.

"I think so. Oralie believes it's—"

"Actually..." Forkle put his bloated hand out (his other hand was holding the cache, Sophie noticed), not letting her finish her sentence. "Don't tell us. I've been considering the options, and I think only you and Glimmer should be the ones to look at the secret. So it'd be better if nobody else knew the password, so we wouldn't be tempted to look at it."

Sophie did a double take. "Shouldn't an adult be there too?" Tam seemed surprised as well.

He shook his head. "I trust you." The words made Sophie feel warm and fuzzy until he added, "Plus, the less people that see it, the better. We don't want to damage anyone's sanity if they turn out to be involved in any of the secrets."

The gravity of the situation seemed to sink in.

They were really doing this.

Suddenly, a periwinkle eyed boy leaped onto the property.

"Hey," said Dex, his eyes scanning all the people out in front of Solreef, gaze finally lingering on his best friend. He gave Sophie a How are you doing? look and a smile that didn't quite show his dimples. She shrugged. That was honestly the only way to describe how she was feeling at the moment. Though, now that she thought about it, she probably should've been asking him how he was doing. She had never followed up about how things were going with Rex.

Talk about a best friend fail.

But Sophie had already been failing as a best friend, and Keefe's departure made it a zillion times worse.

It was so.

Hard.

Not.

To.

Think about him!

"You wanted me to help open up the cache?" Dex asked, zapping her back to reality.

Sophie fished out the Wanderling leaf from the pocket at her ankle and tentatively handed it to Dex. "Think you can use the DNA in this to help open it?"

Dex seemed hesitant as he said, "Probably. I would've asked Tinker to help but she's been working on something else. I actually think it has something to do with your Enhancing, Sophie." Sophie raised her eyebrows. She was curious what the Black Swan's mysterious Technopath had been up to.

"Anyway, let me see the cache. Let's get cracking."

***

Dex mumbled a bunch of words in his Technopath speak that Sophie couldn't understand. After a minute of intense contemplation, he looked up from the black, marbled cache.

"Think you can Enhance me, Sophie?"

"Sure." She peeled off her single layer of gloves and searched for the familiar zinging feeling on her fingertips, temporarily turning her Enhancing on.

Dex's eyes widened, "I forgot you can turn it on and off like that. That's so cool. Councillor Oralie was smart to think of it." Sophie shrugged. She extended her hand and Dex took it, and ideas seemed to fly into his brain.

After fidgeting with it several times, he held up the cache triumphantly.

He twisted the top, revealing the six smaller marbles inside, each one containing a secret that could change everything.

"I think I've got it! Just say the password— you know one of them, right?— and you should be able to see whichever secret the password corresponds to." There was something in Dex's words that Sophie wasn't expecting. Suddenly, she realized what it was.

"Wait— each secret has their own password?" She looked at Tam and Mr. Forkle for confirmation— especially Mr. Forkle. She knew he had a cache of his own, and must know how it works.

He nodded, "That's how it works. You didn't know that?"

"The only cache I've seen opened was Councillor Oralie's. And hers only had one secret, so I guess I always assumed the password was for the whole cache." Though, thinking back to the Fake Cache Incident, she actually did recall Dex saying each secret had an individual password.

Great.

They were spending all this time opening it, only to unlock one secret. Of the six ones they could possibly open, not to mention all the stuff they couldn't even look at in Fintan's cache.

If Oralie's theory was even correct...

No.

The password was going to work. And this wasn't going to be worthless. Even if they didn't learn anything valuable from the secret— which they would, Sophie hoped— at least then Glimmer would tell them the code in the scrolls.

For once, they were going to get ahead of the Neverseen.

Forkle, Tam, and Dex all said their goodbyes, leaving only Sophie and Glimmer.

But before Sophie unlocked it, had one thing to ask her. "You haven't talked much. Or at all— actually. Is there something you want to say before we open it?"

"People always say that when there's something they want me to say."

"Well..." There was no point in denying it. "What, exactly, do you want to learn from the secrets? Why does it matter to you?"

The shadow of Glimmer's hood turned cold.

"I... can't tell you." Sophie narrowed her eyes, extremely tempted to just tear off Glimmer's hood— and shred the nightmare-filled Neverseen eye into pieces— to find out what she was hiding.

But Glimmer trusted her.

That wasn't worth jeopardizing— at least not for the time being.

So Sophie softly whispered "Dedrikedes" at the six teeny marbles, each one containing a secret that could shatter the world as they knew it.

One of them flashed a projection.

Sophie took a deep breath. She was ready.