The Life Below

by Alexandra Monir

  And then I think of Leo’s message to me. As the lyrics and melody to “Caruso” float through my mind, I suddenly know just what kind of signal to send.

  My pulse quickens as I open our crew’s shared music folder and run a search for my dad’s favorite old Radiohead song. As soon as I find it, and that haunting chord progression starts to play—it’s like being transported home. I can practically smell Mom’s rice cooking; I can feel the fabric of Dad’s wool coat as he steps through the front door, and Sam and I rush to meet him.

  “. . . In the flood, you’ll build an Ark

  And sail us to the moon . . .”

  The perfect song—that makes for a perfect message.

  My fingers fly across the touch-screen keyboard, encoding “Sail to the Moon” into a radio-wave message. And then I hold my breath and beam it across the stars to Europa.

  Afterward, I sit with my arms around my knees, doing some quick math in my head to figure out how soon my signal could hit its target. Based on our current distance from Jupiter orbit, I calculate it’ll be half an hour at most. A shiver runs down my spine at the reality of it.

  I’ve just attempted to make alien contact—and even if I wanted to, I’ll never be able to take it back.

  At the sound of whirring from the elevator pod, my head snaps up. The doors glide open, and Beckett Wolfe steps out. I hastily log off of my account on the touch-screen desk, and stand up.

  “What are you doing here?” He eyes my desk curiously.

  “It’s my personal time. What do you care where I spend it?” I retort.

  “I’m just looking out for the ship and her crew,” Beckett says breezily. “Making sure the usual suspects aren’t causing too much trouble.” He gives me a pointed look. “As I promised Dr. Takumi and the general I would.”

  “What do you have on the two of them, anyway?” I demand. “There’s no way they’d just hand you so much responsibility and special treatment, unless you had something to hold over their heads.”

  “Sounds like someone might be a little jealous,” Beckett says, his voice dripping with faux-concern. “What, were you the star student back home who’s finding it hard to watch someone else be the favorite now?”

  “You are so full of it,” I hiss. I push past him toward the elevator pod, but Beckett slides in front of it, blocking my path.

  “What are you and Sydney whispering so much about lately?”

  “We’re planning a coup, to overthrow you,” I say sarcastically. “It’s called friendship. Now let me through.”

  Beckett steps back the slightest inch, and I squeeze through toward the elevator. But before I step inside, I call out a question of my own.

  “What about you? Off to your not-so-secret 3D-printing lab?”

  He stiffens.

  “If you think I’m going to tell you about it, you’re sadly wrong.”

  “Why? Saving the details for our next TV appearance?”

  He doesn’t answer, and I can tell from his expression that I’ve struck a nerve. Dr. Takumi and the general must have chewed him out after the press conference.

  “So what are you guys making in there that’s so hush-hush? Weapons or something?”

  I’m trying to catch him, make him slip like he did before on TV. But this time, he stays quiet. He doesn’t flinch—not until I say the word “weapons.”

  The elevator starts to close, and I wedge my foot in the door to keep it open.

  “Come on—one secret for another,” I say on a whim, unable to hold back my curiosity. “I’ll tell you what me and Sydney were talking about if you show me the 3D lab. We can go right now.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” he says dryly. “Some things are none of your business. Besides, I don’t think your gossip qualifies as an even trade.”

  I narrow my eyes at him, feeling my blood start to boil.

  “If you think I’ve ever in my life had time for gossip, you’re more clueless than I thought.”

  I let the elevator door slam shut. It was stupid of me to think I could negotiate with him.

  I’ll just have to find out the truth about the weapons they’re building myself.

  Thirteen

  LEO

  THE CRINKLE OF STATIC AND THE SOUND OF MUFFLED BREATHING in my earpiece send me hurtling out of my chair in relief. It’s been three days since I had any human contact—three interminable days of staring out at the dark universe while time turned in on itself, stretching on forever and threatening to suck me into the void. There was nothing for me to do but wait, my mind stuck on an endless replay of our harrowing launch. Greta might have called me brave before I left, but if I’d known what that first hour would be like, when our capsule went into an uncontrollable spin—I’m not sure if I still would have had the guts to go.

  It was twenty-seven minutes of roll, at the most excruciating speed you can imagine. According to Greta and Asher, by minute twenty-nine, I would have been dead. No human organs can survive that many revolutions per second. Their directions saved my life, with only two minutes to spare. It’s the inverse of what happened to Johannes, and I can’t tell what I feel more of: gratitude or guilt.

  After disabling the maneuvering thruster and activating the control system engines instead, we righted our course and, thankfully, it’s been smooth flying since. But that doesn’t stop the cold brick of fear from filling my chest every time I feel the ship pitch or accelerate—a fear made that much worse when there’s no other human to talk to.

  Now, finally, it seems I’m getting an answer to the dozens of messages I’ve been radioing down to Earth. I wait for the person on the other end to speak, jittery with anticipation.

  “Leo.” It’s Lark. Her voice sounds different, muffled. It must be the long distance.

  “There you are!” I exclaim. “I’ve been waiting forever up here. I was starting to think something was wrong.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. We’ve been dealing with back-to-back storms since the tornado, plus managing the fallout from the ISTC learning about your launch.” She lets out a weary laugh. “Space sounds a lot more chill than home right about now.”

  “Oh.” My stomach tightens with guilt. “Are you guys okay?”

  “We will be. It’s a good thing Greta has a bang-up security team. Anyway, I have to run, but just wanted to let you know not to worry if it gets quiet on our end. We have a satellite tracking your ship at all times, so even when we’re not in direct contact, we’ll always be checking on you and making sure everything is running smoothly.”

  “Um, okay, but why—”

  “I’m so sorry, I really do need to run. I’ll touch base again as soon as I can, but in the meantime, try to enjoy the calm before the chaos. These couple months before Mars will go by faster than you think!”

  With that, the radio receiver turns silent. I stare at it in disbelief. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Lark was avoiding me. What was up with that rushed, strange conversation?

  I float aimlessly through the capsule trying to calm my spinning mind. When I get close to the cockpit, Kitt’s gray square exterior lights up.

  “Cabin fever?” the AI guesses. “I should remind you that you have a full hard drive of television shows and movies from Earth loaded onto the touch screens here, if you need—”

  “I’m fine,” I interrupt.

  “Including the new episode of the Final Six docuseries,” he continues, oblivious to my tone. “It came through this morning in our daily uplink.”

  I pause. In all the chaos of my sped-up training schedule and launch, I forgot there even was a series about the Final Six. And with Greta warning me not to make any contact with the Pontus until we reach Mars orbit, to avoid the ISTC tracking and sabotaging our mission, this is my only way of seeing Naomi.

  “Thank you,” I tell Kitt, before moving toward the desk. I log onto the touch screen and do a quick search for the Final Six docuseries, holding my breath while I wait for it to load.

  There they are. T
he episode opens with two astronauts running alongside each other in the ship’s gym, the treadmills beneath their feet transforming to a verdant forest ground, thanks to virtual reality. The camera pans up from their legs, and that’s when I see who it is: Jian and Naomi. I stare at the screen, taking in her glistening olive skin, the sweep of black hair pulled back from her face, dark brown eyes narrowed in concentration. I swallow hard. As their workout winds down, she leans over to nudge him and murmurs something in his ear that makes him crack up with laughter. His eyes follow Naomi after she hops off the treadmill, the grin still stuck on his face—and that’s when I know. Jian Soo has a crush on Naomi.

  The scene cuts to Beckett and Dev on a mock training mission, and that’s my cue to switch it off. I try to move on, to distract myself with one of my many daily tasks around the ship, but I keep thinking about Jian’s expression. Is there any chance she’ll start to feel something for him, too? What if by the time I get there, it’s too late?

  Two Weeks Later . . .

  Fourteen

  NAOMI

  THE PONTUS, DAY 43

  “SOMEONE WANTED US CUT OFF AND ISOLATED FROM THE entire world. Why?”

  “Not just someone. One of us.”

  I turn sharply at Dev’s reply. Our eyes meet, and I can see my own fear, dread, and suspicion reflected in his.

  I push off the handrail, my palms slipping in my haste for escape. The terror has my mind reverting to that of a child, with one illogical thought screaming above the others. Get away from here, away from him—and get back to the moment before. If I can just shut the door on the payload bay, maybe I can somehow erase the memory of what we discovered here; maybe I can return to the security of still believing my family is only a video-chat away. I’ve never bought into magical thinking before, but my desperation has me half convinced that if I can just believe hard enough—then maybe my headset will soon start crackling again with voices from Earth.

  Floating to the hatch door in my current state is like treading quicksand. I feel the walls closing in around me as I try to move forward, their shadows sucking the breath from my lungs. The coiled wires running across the floor become claws, reaching out to ensnare me, while the hiss of equipment is like the sound a predator makes just before it strikes. Everywhere I look now, the spacecraft seems different, menacing—like it’s coming to life and out for blood.

  “Naomi! Watch out!”

  I feel hands pushing on my back, and I gasp as my body hurtles forward, right before a heavy round weight barrels past. It’s the stray bolt, completing another loop in its never-ending cycle around the module.

  “Thanks,” I murmur to Dev. Staring at the bolt, and realizing just how close I came to getting all consciousness knocked out of me, lifts me from my trance. Adrenaline overrides my shock and I move at full speed, swinging from one handrail to the next with Dev right behind me, until we reach the hatch door. He cranks it open and we dive into the tunnel, floating side by side through the dark, winding nodes that lead to the Astronauts’ Residence. The light from our wrist monitors guides our path, and I swipe at mine until Jian’s face pops up on the screen.

  “Jian, we’re on our way back,” I yell into the built-in mic. “Can you gather the others and meet us in the Communications Bay?”

  By the time we get there, we find four tense faces crowded around the hatch opening. Jian catches my eye as we climb out, and his expression freezes. He knows.

  “Well?” Minka presses. “What’s happening?”

  I glance at her, at each of my crewmates, and my heart starts thudding at a sprinter’s pace. Who was it? Who could pull off this level of sabotage? Beckett seems like the obvious answer, but as I look at him now, with his usual confident swagger conspicuously missing, I wonder if he is even capable of it. If he is . . . then that means I’ve underestimated Beckett this entire time.

  “We’ve lost all contact with the ground,” I reveal. “Someone—someone destroyed the X-band antenna system, and threw it out the payload door. It’s gone.”

  “What?!”

  “But how—”

  I turn away from the cries of shock and look up at the dark screens surrounding us. It’s hard to believe they were so recently filled with hundreds of faces; that we could speak to five different countries at once like it was nothing. Now, next to dead screens and silent radios, that memory feels like it’s been lifted from another life.

  “What I want to know is who did this to us. Beckett?” My voice shakes with barely controlled rage. “Do you have something to confess? We all know you’re the only one with a real motive here.”

  “What?” he sputters. “What are you talking about?”

  “I didn’t forget what the general said. ‘One of you will assume the leadership role in our place, whenever Dr. Takumi and I are unreachable.’” I meet his eyes, my skin turning hot with fury. “They made you de facto leader, and you were all too eager to make that position permanent. Right?”

  “Sonofa—” Jian lunges toward him, but Dev yanks him back.

  “Wait a second! We don’t know for sure that it was even him.”

  “It wasn’t,” Beckett insists. “I swear. Just think about it—without a connection to Houston, there’s no one to enforce me as leader anyway. That so-called motive makes zero sense.” His eyes sharpen in my direction. “Naomi, on the other hand . . . you’ve already sabotaged us once, with what you did to Dot. I’ve seen you break the rules more times than I can count. And, hello, communications and tech specialist?” His voice lowers to a tone that makes my skin crawl. “The antenna is your domain. No one else’s.”

  I shake my head in disbelief.

  “You really have lost your mind if you think you can pin this on me.”

  But as I glance back at my teammates, I realize with a jolt that no one is rushing to my defense just yet. They look from me to Beckett warily, until Sydney finally speaks up.

  “No. Naomi wouldn’t do this. She has a family back home.”

  “Exactly.” My voice breaks, and I wrap my arms around my chest. “I can’t lose them. I can’t let them think they’ve lost me.”

  “So then, who did do it?” Minka demands. Of course, no one says a word. “And what are we supposed to do now?”

  We fall into silence, broken only by the sound of Dev’s pacing footsteps. And then I jump up at a flash of inspiration.

  “The robots have their own implanted comm systems that should work independently of our antenna. It won’t be anything like the on-demand connection we had with Earth before . . . but we can still send and receive messages to Houston!”

  I race back to the hatch door, not bothering to wait for a reply. Hope is flooding through my chest, and all I can think about is getting to the command module, to Cyb. I can hear the others following behind me, and someone’s foot clocks me in the shoulder as we transition to zero gravity. The six of us move through the air in a pack, pushing off hand- and footholds to gain speed as the different capsules of our ship pass in a blur. And then we reach the hatch door with a navigation symbol painted across its face—the command module.

  Jian pulls the door open and we float inside, returning to the blinking lights of the cockpit and the vast expanse of black through its cupola windows. We find the robots in their usual positions, with Cyb in the pilot’s seat and Tera standing at her post against the wall, her neon-blue eyes raised to the ceiling, where a navigational map plays like a movie on the screen above. There is something almost jarring about the air of calm in here, in the midst of our mission emergency. It’s a stark reminder that while Cyb and Tera may have been built to imitate humans—there is nothing human about them.

  Cyb’s head swivels around to face us.

  “What is this about?”

  “Naomi found the source of the signal failure,” Jian replies, glancing at me to continue.

  “The X-band antenna is destroyed. But I think there’s still hope for ground communication through you and Tera.”

  I
hear a click as Tera turns her head from the ceiling, joining Cyb in staring at me.

  “I don’t understand,” Cyb says after a pause.

  “I’ll explain more later, but what’s urgent right now is that we need to use your AIOS software to try regaining contact with Dr. Takumi and the general.” I step up to the cockpit, eyeing the sliding metal plates on Cyb’s torso. “Please.”

  The robot rises from his seat, and I watch, heart in my throat, as the metal plates slide apart to reveal a rectangular touch screen. He moves his mechanical fingers across the screen, performing a swift series of taps until he reaches the CALL screen. But the short list of contacts—I. SOKOLOV, R. TAKUMI, and HOUSTON MCC—appears in red italics, with a warning symbol next to each name. I have a sinking feeling before Cyb even attempts the first call.

  “What’s the problem?” Sydney frets over my shoulder after a few minutes of silence.

  “I don’t—”

  My voice cuts off as the message flashes across Cyb’s screen. He wasn’t programmed for failure, but there it is.

  NO SIGNAL—NO CONNECTION FOUND.

  “This isn’t happening.” Jian crumples into his copilot chair, his face ashen.

  “They must have been using our antenna as a communications relay. And without it . . .” My voice drops. “I’m going to be sick.”

  It’s every astronaut’s worst nightmare—and it’s happening to us.

  It only takes minutes for our carefully constructed life on the Pontus to fall apart. Without contact, there’s no agenda to follow or tasks to complete, there’s nothing to do, nowhere to be. All we have left is the long, empty stretch of time ahead, as bleak as the dark void outside our ship. I try telling myself that it could be worse, that at least I’m not alone in this. But it’s not exactly comforting to be around my crewmates when I know one of them is responsible. How am I supposed to sleep at night, knowing there’s someone just steps away from my room who is clearly out to hurt us? I’m still pretty convinced the culprit is Beckett Wolfe—but as the day wears on, my certainty starts to waver. Maybe it’s the change in his demeanor since we lost contact that has me looking at the rest of the crew through a new, suspicious lens. His face has gone pale, his expression like an actor who’s forgotten all their lines onstage—a mix of shock and panic that’s hard to fake. But if Beckett wasn’t the one to destroy the antenna . . . then who?