If the undersea extraterrestrials could somehow think of Leo as connected to them, then he—and Beckett—might be safe. But how . . . ?
The idea hits me like a bullet. I yank my life-support backpack off my shoulders, reaching inside for the backup RRB vials.
I pour the RRB across my suit, my helmet, as many vials as I can douse myself with in a minute. And then, with a deep breath and a silent prayer, I take the most terrifying step of my life—into the thawed ice.
I extend my gloved hands, holding my breath and biting the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out as I let the extraterrestrials detect my scent. If they can smell the RRB on me, then I should smell like Europa . . . like one of them. Something they don’t need to attack.
I wait, holding my breath, unmoving, as the anemones circle around me. The closer they get, the more I can hear it—an eerie hum in a pitch no human could ever attempt to mimic. As foreign as the sound is, something about it gives me the strangest sense of déjà vu. That’s when I remember the sound coming from Dot’s AIOS screen the night I accessed my hacked data—this was it.
And now I see the crimson glow through the reflection in the ice, blazing toward me. I scramble backward, terror making me forget my plan. The behemoth lengthens even more as it slinks in my direction, and when it lurches up to the thawed ice, I catch my first glimpse of bloodred, scaly, mile-wide skin. It’s worse than any nightmare I could have imagined.
Fear clenches me in a death grip, and I’m this close to passing out when Leo’s voice breaks through my consciousness, screaming in my headset for me to get away. And I remember what I’m fighting for.
I hold still, waiting out the most interminable moments of my life, for my RRB-covered scent to register. And then, I gasp as the anemones’ tentacles retract. The bioluminescent giant surrounding me suddenly turns, shifting direction. I don’t know how long this reprieve will last—now is my chance.
I plod forward through the water, the RRB forming a shield around me as I close the distance to Leo and Beckett. But when I make it to an arm’s length of them, I feel the jolt of something pulling me down. Is it one of the anemones, or something potentially worse lurking in the water? I try to shake loose, to fight it, but I’ve used up too much energy, and now there’s nothing left.
I’m falling under, inching closer to Minka’s lifeless body. I close my eyes, seeing my parents and my brother one last time. I see Leo’s smile, the way it looks every time we pull back from a kiss.
And then a pair of arms grabs me around the waist and starts to swim, yanking me up to the surface. It’s him. We’re going to live. I relax my body, leaning against him, waiting for the relief. But when we reach the surface, and he pulls me forward over the ice crevasse, I’m in for a shock.
“You?” I stare at the face of Beckett beside me and then look frantically out at the water, where Leo is pushing his way past a tangle of anemones to reach us. “You helped me? I—I never would have expected that.”
Beckett falls back against the ice, his whole body shuddering from the cold.
“And I never expected you to help me.”
I hear a yell as Leo’s gloves grip the edge of the crevasse. I scramble forward, adrenaline rushing back at the sight of the alien anemones, their tentacles clawing at his legs as he struggles to pull himself up and over the edge. My RRB trick only bought us a few moments.
Mustering all the strength I have left, I grab Leo’s arms and pull him toward me, feeling my muscles rip at the force. He tumbles on top of me, choking and gasping behind his helmet, just as I hear Beckett yell, “Guys—guys!”
I follow his gaze and stifle a scream. Two of the anemone hybrids are dangling from Leo’s boots, their guts exposed in their clear, jelly-like sacs. I swallow the bile rising in my throat as Leo shakes them off with a yelp. And then, landing on the rocky ice, their tentacles start to shudder and flail. The three of us watch, stunned into silence, as they lurch away from us, springing back into the crevasse.
“They can’t breathe the air out here,” I whisper. “These—these things can only survive in water or covered ice.”
Leo reaches for me, our helmets nearly colliding as we hold each other. Beckett collapses beside us, and I quickly scan our vitals on my biomonitor. Our oxygen is running dangerously low.
I swipe my wrist monitor, praying it still works, and then radio Jian and Sydney to prepare the Hab with our medical supplies.
“What happened?” Sydney’s terrified voice echoes through my earpiece. “None of you have been answering for the longest time, and we thought—we thought—”
“We’re okay,” I tell her. “At least, I think—I hope—we will be.”
Twenty-Eight
LEO
“LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT.” JIAN STARES AT THE THREE OF us, looking like he’s aged a decade in the time we’ve been gone. “You’re telling me that Minka is dead—was dead, when she came back to the Hab tonight? And there’s murderous alien life under the ice, which means—it’s only a matter of time before one of us is next?”
No one answers. Jian sinks into one of the built-in seats in the Hab’s common room, a sterile, half-empty space that we never got a chance to unpack. I sit across from him between Naomi and Beckett, still shivering beneath the heavy blanket draped over my shoulders. Sydney paces between the three of us, monitoring our vitals while blinking back tears at every mention of Minka.
“I—I don’t know if I’d call the extraterrestrials murderous,” I speak up.
Beckett gives me an incredulous look.
“Um. Were you not just in the water fighting for your life along with me? You think Minka was killed by accident?”
“I think maybe their instinct was to attack because they felt threatened,” I reply. “Imagine if those same alien beings showed up on Earth. How do you think we would all react? Wouldn’t our armies do the same thing—try to wipe out the unknown to protect our species?” I glance at Beckett. “Just like our leaders instructed you to use a weapon against them?”
“That’s different,” he argues. “We’re the intelligent species. Of course we would think about things like defending ourselves and protecting the human race. Those things are just . . .” He shudders. “They’re all animal instinct, no intelligence.”
“You don’t know that, though,” Naomi tells him. “I think Leo is right. It’s only the unknown that led them to attack—which is why when I entered the water covered in bacteria from their world, even though I must have looked different from anything they’d seen before, the familiar scent kept me safe.”
“So you think that—that was the purpose of the RRB all along?” Sydney asks, her eyes widening. “It wasn’t so much about radiation shielding, but about making us similar to these . . . beings?”
“That had to be part of it. But there’s something else that protects us,” Naomi says. “The surface. From what I saw, I don’t think they can survive outside the water.” She shudders. “They must have pulled Minka in somehow.”
Jian lets out a long exhale.
“So we could be safe as long as we stay at ground level . . . but the whole point of this mission was for us to drill through the ice and terraform the air pockets between ice and ocean into habitable land. How are we supposed to do that now?”
“I think that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Beckett speaks up, and we all turn to look at him. “It’s time to bring out the drones.”
My stomach clenches.
“I know what they did to Minka—what they almost did to us. But we’re the intruders here.” I look each of them in the eye. “There’s no amount of fear that will convince me we have the right to hurt them.”
“Or me.” Naomi stands up, shaking the blanket off her shoulders. “Do you guys remember when Dev asked us why we each think we were chosen?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Jian asks impatiently.
“I’ve had some time to think about it, and I realized—there was a deeper reas
on, beyond how well we did at space camp. I think it had everything to do with what Dr. Takumi and the general knew could happen on Europa.” She takes a deep breath, the spark of discovery back in her eyes.
“Beckett is the obvious one. His background put him in the sphere of influence from the beginning, and by having Beckett on the crew, they didn’t have to entrust anyone else with their secrets.” She turns her gaze on him. “And somehow they brainwashed you into being ready and willing to kill whatever we found here.”
“No one brainwashed me,” he retorts. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to be the greatest war hero in the entire history of the human race? Once I defeat the ETs here and claim this world for us, that’s exactly what I’ll be. So of course I was up for the challenge. No one had to twist my arm.”
“They just told you all of that,” I point out, trading a knowing glance with Naomi. “Takumi and Sokolov knew exactly what to say.”
Beckett starts sputtering a rebuttal, but Naomi is already moving on to Sydney.
“Out of all the finalists, Sydney was the one with experience in marine biology. She’d studied deep-sea gigantism—creatures like that nightmare we saw glowing under the ice.” She shivers. “If anyone can figure out what makes these creatures tick, it’s Sydney.”
Naomi turns her gaze to Jian.
“And of course, with Cyb being used for something more sinister than just piloting, maybe they knew he wouldn’t last the whole trip. So they needed the best pilot they could find to take over. You.”
“And where do you fit into this theory?” Beckett challenges her.
“They obviously sent me here to shut me up about what I uncovered back at training camp,” Naomi acknowledges. “But beyond that . . . Well, I’ve been breaking codes since middle school. Maybe they figured I had a shot at cracking the biggest code of them all—the language of the extraterrestrials.”
I draw in a sharp breath. If she’s right . . . then this whole plot is so much bigger than us.
“And then there’s Leo.”
“I wouldn’t be part of their theory,” I remind her. “I wasn’t chosen.”
“But Greta chose you. And she was part of the initial selection team, back when she was working with the ISTC.” Naomi lowers her voice. “Remember what you found out before you left Italy?”
It feels so long ago, it might as well be someone else’s memory: the voice of the prime minister’s daughter telling me, “They’ve been watching you for years.”
“My ability to hold my breath for so long underwater—they thought it could make me some kind of weapon,” I murmur. “I never really understood what that meant, but . . .”
“Your ability is the same reason Greta was studying your DNA,” Naomi continues, her words coming out in a rush as her hypothesis builds. “Panspermia spread alien DNA to our world, and I believe you, Leo Danieli, are in the slim percentage of people born with traces of that DNA in your body. That’s why Greta singled you out from the beginning, and why you were always meant to be here—no matter what choice the mission leaders made.”
Her words sear across my mind, and as they echo in my ears, I know . . . she’s on to something.
“Okay well, I think we’ve done enough analyzing for one night,” Beckett says, looking at Naomi sideways. “If what you say is true about us being safe on the surface, then I vote we try to finally get some real rest. We can get back to this whole debacle tomorrow—or whatever day it is when we wake up.”
Jian is already nodding before Beckett finishes his sentence, clearly relieved at the thought of getting to pause this mind-bending conversation.
“Beckett’s right. It can wait till tomorrow.”
I can’t tell whether I’ve been sleeping ten minutes or ten hours when I feel hands shaking me awake. My first instinct is to smile when I see that it’s Naomi, her dark eyes peering down on me. But she doesn’t smile back.
“Leo—Beckett’s gone.”
“What?” I sit up groggily. “Are you kidding me? He went out there again?”
“Jian just checked the camera feed from our lander, and Beckett was seen there an hour ago, carrying some type of equipment out of the ship. And he obviously didn’t come back here with it.”
I stare at her.
“You’re thinking the same thing as me, aren’t you?”
“He was never going to listen to us,” Naomi says numbly. “He’s using the weapon.”
I throw off my covers and jump out of bed.
“We can’t let him.”
Jian and Sydney insist on coming with us, but nobody speaks as we return to the scene of our hours-ago nightmare. We’re bracing with every step, steeling ourselves for each terrifying unknown. And then, from yards away, we spot the unmistakable cylinder of a small submersible. It glides across the ice like a shark circling prey, and the four of us look at each other in horror.
“He—he wasn’t lying,” Sydney whispers.
A familiar figure walks beside the submersible, his back toward us as he steers its movements with a palm-size device. Beckett Wolfe looks somehow bigger and more menacing from here, under the light of Jupiter—like someone who wouldn’t just make threats but would execute them in a heartbeat.
The mini-sub inches closer and closer to the crevasse of melted ice, and I break into a run, swiping at my wrist monitor to radio him.
“Beckett, stop—”
I’m too late. The submersible is lowering toward the water, a thick rope unfurling from its side. Beckett follows right behind, stripping down to a pressurized wet suit and diving mask before stepping off the ice, grabbing onto the rope like a tether as he descends with the sub. He doesn’t look half as afraid as he should be, after what we just went through—and I realize his confidence is directly linked to the power of the weapon. Right now, his drones have him feeling invincible.
“Why is he going down with it?” Sydney asks behind me. “I thought the submersible was supposed to unleash the drones on its own—why would he ever risk going underwater again?”
“Because someone still needs to set up the submersible on the seafloor and determine the strike zone and targets,” Jian says grimly. “The drones are timer-controlled, so Beckett will be out of there in plenty of time.”
Listening to them talk, I realize what I must do, and I freeze up. A small voice reminds me that I don’t have to be the hero, that I can stay safe up here—with Naomi.
But we didn’t come all this way to a new world only to destroy it.
I pick up my pace before losing my nerve, letting the low gravity send me half flying toward the edge of the crevasse. My hands shake as I undo my space suit, revealing the pressurized wet suit underneath. Jian snaps into action, opening two vials of RRB and slathering the serum across my wetsuit. Naomi steps forward, her lip trembling as she fastens a chain around my neck. A vial hangs from it, like a macabre pendant.
“You’re making jewelry now?” I try to joke, though I can barely manage a smile.
“The chain was my grandmother’s,” she says. I feel something squeeze in my chest, knowing how much that means to her.
“I’ll keep it safe,” I tell her before lifting off my space helmet, leaving just a diver’s oxygen mask to protect me from Europa’s atmosphere.
“Te voglio bene assai,” I hear her whisper in my headset, and I turn to drink in her face one last time, before I step off the edge and into the water.
My first thought, when I feel the punishing cold splash against my suit, is that the last time I did something like this, I was hoping to die. And now, on this other world, jumping into treacherous water is my attempt at living. It’s like everything is upside down when you’re no longer Earthbound.
I slip my head underwater, and the current pulls me down with surprising force. I swim against it, following the shadow of the submersible, and that’s when I hear the hum.
It’s a sound that prickles the senses, a different tone and key than any voice or instrument I’ve ever heard. There’s
something almost hypnotic about it, and I start following the sound, just as Naomi’s voice breaks through my earpiece.
“Something’s coming,” she says urgently. “We can hear it through your mask-cam, and the rhythm is speeding up slightly as it gets louder. I think it means they’re on the move—”
But I’m on the move too, transfixed by the hum that’s creating vibrations in the water, like a chorus in my wake. It’s like a lure, beckoning me forward even as the conscious part of me warns to be careful. The sound is leading me somewhere, and I’m powerless to resist.
Something massive looms up ahead—it looks like a dark cloud blanketing the ocean. It grows as I swim toward it, stretching taller and wider, while the hum around me reaches a deafening pitch, drowning out the voices that I know are calling me from the surface. And then, through a flash of red light, I see what’s climbing and skittering around the growing black cloud.
It’s the alien anemones. But where before there were just a dozen, now there are hundreds.
I quickly press the flashlight on my wrist monitor, sending a beam through the water. And my stomach jolts as I see another face, pale and familiar, on the other side of the black cloud.
Beckett doesn’t seem to notice me yet as he scans the water around us, no doubt checking where his drones could do the most damage. He studies the anemones, an idea forming in his eyes, and I speed forward, toward the underwater cloud.
“Black smokers!” Naomi shouts the same phrase three times in a row before I can make out what she’s saying in my earpiece. “That cloud looks like black smokers—hydrothermal vents that lead to the deepest part of the oceans. They’re alive, Leo. Watch out!”
Across from me, Beckett readies his weapon, adjusting the submersible’s position on the seafloor. There’s only one way for me to get close enough to stop the destruction before it happens—but it means moving through the climbing, breathing fog.
I choke back a scream as I swim through the black smokers, feeling the fog respond to my touch. A flurry of bubbles rise from it, foreign particles crawl against my skin. And then, with a shudder, I’m on the other side, next to Beckett. His eyes blaze at the sight of me.
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