“A RELENTLESSLY FAST-PACED, INTRIGUING TALE THAT LEAVES YOU $17.99 ($19.00 CAN) BREATHLESS AND SATISFIED, YET WANTING MORE.” —James Dashner, New York Times bestselling author of the Maze Runner series D ♦ J ♦ M “SYLO is D.J. MacHale at his finest—he’s crafted a book full of AC THEY CAME FROM THE SKY parachuting out of military helicopters to invade friendship, mystery and heart-pounding, spine-tingling adventure.” HALE — New York Times bestselling author Holly Black Tucker Pierce’s idyllic hometown on Pemberwick Island, Maine. They call themselves SYLO and they are a secret branch of the U.S. Navy. SYLO’s commander, Captain Granger, informs Pemberwick residents that the island has been hit by a lethal virus and “SYLO will have your pulse racing and your head spinning. must be quarantined. Now Pemberwick is cut off D♦J♦ MACHALE Make plans to stay up all night finishing it.” from the outside world. is the author of the bestselling book series —Michael Grant, New York Times bestselling author of the Gone series Pendragon: Journal of an Adventure through Time Tucker believes there’s more to SYLO’s story. He and Space, the spooky Morpheus Road trilogy, and was on the sidelines when the high school running the whimsical picture book The Monster Princess. back dropped dead with no warning. He saw the He has written, directed, and produced numerous bizarre midnight explosion over the ocean and the award-winning television series and movies for mysterious singing aircraft that travel like shadows young people including Are You Afraid of the through the night sky. He tasted the Ruby—and experienced the power it gives—for himself. Dark?, Flight 29 Down, and Tower of Terror. D.J. “I have no fingernails left! I chewed off every last one of them while I fretted over the fate of Tucker and his friends. lives with his family in Southern California. Well done, Mr. MacHale.” What all this means, SYLO isn’t saying. Only Tucker You can visit him online at —PJ Haarsma, author of the Softwire series holds the clues that can solve this deadly mystery. WWW . DJMACHALEBOOKS . COM LOOK TO THE SKY because Pemberwick Island is only the first stop. Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.com and Thinkstock.com SYLOBOOKS.COM Cover design by Christian Füenfhausen ISBN:978-1-59514-665-6 WWW.RAZORBILLBOOKS.COM WWW.PENGUIN.COM/TEENS WWW.TWITTER.COM/RAZORBILLBOOKS WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/RAZORBILLBOOKSPAGE AC AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC. DJ M HALE MANUFACTURED IN THE USA p #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR FINISH: MATTE 9781595146656_SYLO_JK.indd 1 3/27/13 11:24 AM An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. SYLO pages 2_12_13.indd 1 2/19/13 12:41:46 PM RAZORBILL Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins St., Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, 18p Comp: Please use the version that is closest New Delhi–110 017, India to the text measure, without going wider Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand than the text measure. (The designer may spec (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) 19p a narrower measure if the cr is setting Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa narrower than the text.) Penguin China, B7 Jaiming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang 20pDistrict, Beijing 100020, China Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England 21p Copyright © 2013 D.J. MacHale ISBN: 978-1-59514-665-6 22p All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized23p editions. Published simultaneously in Canada 23p6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Printed in the United States of America 24p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 24p6 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 25p 25p6 26 26p6 27p SYLO pages 2_12_13.indd 2 2/19/13 12:41:47 PM 27p6 28p 28p6 29p 30p For all the wonderful teachers, administrators, and staff at Grand View Elementary School in Manhattan Beach, California. SYLO pages 2_12_13.indd 3 2/19/13 12:41:48 PM foreword love to travel. I Doesn’t everybody? Besides getting a break from the regular old routine, traveling is like going to school. In a good way, I mean. In school you are constantly exposed to new information, shown different ways of thinking, and introduced to people and places that you wouldn’t ordinarily come across. I would love to go back to school for a while. Seriously. As long I could skip the tests and sleep late. But since that isn’t likely, I’ll stick to traveling. Like most writers I enjoy exploring unique places and talking with people who have lives that are totally different than mine. You never know what you might discover. I was once in Venice, Italy, where I met a guy who said, “If you come across small alleyways that look dark and forbidding . walk in. That’s where you’ll find the hidden treasures.” I thought that was great advice. (At least in Venice. I’m not so sure it’s wise to go down small, dark alleys just anywhere.) His point was that it’s important to be open to new experiences and to always look beyond the superficial. That’s where the adventure lies. SYLO pages 2_12_13.indd 4 2/19/13 12:41:48 PM As a writer it’s critical to explore those dark alleys, and the sunny streets, and everywhere else in between. Young (and not so young) writers often ask me for writing advice. My number one suggestion for them is to write about things that they know. When you write about the people and places and emo- tions and conflicts you’re familiar with, you will be writing with authority and readers will respond. The bottom line is that the more you know, the more you’ll have at your disposal to write about. That’s one of the reasons I love to travel. I am intrigued and inspired by the places I’ve been to. Inevitably, they end up playing a role in my books. It was while sitting on a remote beach in Hawaii shooting my TV show Flight 29 Down that I came up with the idea for the tropi- cal island of Ibara in The Pilgrims of Rayne. A trip to Rome sparked the idea that brought Marsh and Cooper to the Coliseum in the Morpheus Road trilogy. The climax of The Black took place in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal . a place I have been through thousands of times. The abandoned subway station where Bobby Pendragon first entered the flume in The Merchant of Death was inspired by an empty subway station that I passed through on the train every day on my way to college classes. I can still remember straining to catch fleeting glimpses of the dark, forgotten platform and imagining what real-life stories might have unfolded there. Images like those are constantly being gathered up and stored in the hard drive of my memory, waiting patiently for me to come calling in search of ideas. Like SYLO. When I was in college my friends and I would take road trips SYLO pages 2_12_13.indd 5 2/19/13 12:41:48 PM from our hometown in Connecticut to an island off the coast of Massachusetts called Martha’s Vineyard. I’m sure many of you have been there. Those who haven’t might know it because it was where the movie Jaws was filmed. “The Vineyard” (as they call it) is a timeless throwback to a simpler time. I hadn’t been there since 1985 and it’s not an exaggeration to say than when I visited last year I found that it hadn’t changed a bit. I half expected to find the can of Coke I’d left on a fence near the beach in Menemsha twenty-five years earlier. Okay, maybe that’s a little bit of an exaggeration but there was something comforting about visiting a place that has held true to its time-honored traditions in spite of the chaotic changes that have swirled around it. It was like a secluded oasis, stuck in time. It was perfect . and the perfect setting for a story about ordinary people fighting for their lives while friends are dropping dead all around them on an isolated island that is suddenly invaded by a mysterious, deadly force. Hey, what did you expect? You didn’t think I was going to write a story about some old farts rocking on a porch by the sea- shore sipping tea, did you? Give me a break.