Neither of them moved.
“Three days,” she said again, more for her own benefit than his.
“Three days.” He leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers in a gesture of affection that felt more intimate than a kiss. “Return to me, Alina. I will be waiting.”
“I will.”
She forced herself to turn away, her movements mechanical as she ran through the safety check and started the vehicle descending down the mountainside.Don’t look back. Don’t look back.If she looked back, she’d never leave.
She looked back.
He stood at the mouth of the cavern, silhouetted against the pale morning sky. He raised one hand in what she assumed was meant to be a wave, and something in her chest twisted so hard she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.
I’ll come back, she promised silently.I’ll find a way to make this work. I’ll?—
The rover’s engines hummed, and she forced her attention back to the controls. The navigation system blinked reproachfully at her, displaying a route back to Border Town. Familiar. Safe. Boring.
She hated every kilometer of it.
The drive took just over an hour. An hour of watching the barren Martian landscape scroll past, of replaying the last few days in her head, of trying to figure out how the hell she was going to explain any of this. The storm had given her an excuse for herabsence, but it wouldn’t cover the gaps in her story. The unusual readings from her equipment. The fact that she’d somehow survived for days in a cave without proper supplies.
She needed to talk to Cass. Cass would know what to do. Cass always knew what to do.
Border Town appeared on the horizon just as her anxiety was reaching critical levels. The collection of prefab buildings and pressurized domes built up around the escarpment in the center of the valley looked exactly as it had when she left—utilitarian, efficient, and vaguely depressing. Home, for lack of a better word.
Not anymore, a traitorous voice whispered.Home is back in that cavern. Home is wherever he is.
She pushed the thought aside and guided the rover towards the hangar.
The airlock cycled with its familiar sequence of hisses and clanks, and then she was stepping into the settlement’s interior for the first time in days. The recycled air tasted flat and metallic after the rich oxygen of the cavern. The artificial lighting felt harsh after the soft bioluminescence. Everything seemed too bright, too loud, and far too human.
She managed to make it back to her lab without anyone seeing her, only to find Cass with a pack on her back and a worried look on her face.
“Cass! I’m so sorry I was gone so long. I hope you weren’t too worried. I have so much to tell you—” The rush of words died as she noticed the big cyborg ranger standing quietly behind her friend. “Oh! Z-542. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Alina!” She barely had time to brace herself before Cass slammed into her, wrapping her in a hug fierce enough to crack ribs. “Where have you been? We were about to come looking for you!”
“It’s… complicated.”
Unable to bear her friend’s scrutiny, she carried her sample case to her workstation and started unloading it, apologizing for her reckless behavior.
“What was so important, and where have you been all this time?” Cass demanded.
She wanted to tell her friend everything but with Z-542 still present, she simply admitted to the discovery of some organic material. Even that was a shocking discovery, but she trusted the cyborg ranger’s discretion to that extent. But then Cass took his hand, and she realized that their previously prickly relationship had changed.
“I see things have changed while I was away,” she said dryly and Cass explained that they too had been trapped by the storm.
Cass told her that they had discovered plant life as well. “But we also discovered something else entirely,” she continued. “Something alive.”
A wave of dizziness washed over her. Were there more like Rhyx?
“Alive and not… not a plant?” she asked frantically. “What happened to him—it?”
“It’s dead,” Z-542 said bluntly, and her knees gave out, collapsing down into her chair.
It wasn’t until Cass mentioned claws that she realized they had encountered something completely different—a large predatory species.
“That’s incredible,” she murmured. “All these life forms emerging at the same time.”
