“Waking up.” She spread her hands, warming to the performance. “Mars has been geologically dormant for millions of years, but we’ve always known that dormancy might not be permanent. The core is still liquid. The volcanic systems are still technically active. If something triggered a shift in the planetary dynamics—a change in solar output, a large impact event, even just the natural progression of internal thermal cycles—we might see exactly this kind of signature. A planet beginning to stir.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he laughed—loud, harsh, and utterly devoid of warmth.
“Oh, Alina.” He shook his head, his expression shifting to something between pity and contempt. “This is exactly why you’ll never be more than a footnote in someone else’s paper. You’re so desperate to find cosmic significance in everything that you miss what’s right in front of your face.”
The dismissal burned, but beneath the sting, she felt a flicker of relief. He wasn’t taking her seriously. Good. Let him think she was a naive idealist, seeing poetry where there was only profit.
“The readings suggest life, Dr. Falkner. Not geology. Not planetary rebirth. Life. Possibly intelligent life, given the complexity of the organic signatures.” Martin tucked the tablet back into his pocket. “And I intend to find it.”
“With GenCon’s help.”
“With GenCon’s resources.” He smiled thinly. “They’re providing equipment, personnel, and most importantly, the authority to conduct surveys without interference from Earth Government bureaucrats. By this time next month, we’ll have teams in those mountains, mapping every tunnel and cavern?—”
“You can’t do that.” The words came out sharper than she intended. “The environmental protocols alone?—”
“Don’t exist out here.” Martin stepped closer, close enough that she had to resist the urge to retreat. “That’s what you fail to understand, Alina. The rules you cling to, the principles you hide behind—they’re nothing but paper. They have no weight. No power. The only thing that matters is results.”
His hand came up, and for a horrifying moment she thought he was going to touch her face. But his fingers stopped inches from her cheek, hovering there like a threat.
“You could have been part of this,” he said softly. “If you’d accepted my offer—dinner, collaboration, a place at my side—you could have shared in everything GenCon is building here. Instead, you chose to play the moral crusader, and now…” He lowered his hand with a theatrical sigh. “Now you’ll be left behind.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a statement of fact.” Martin turned towards the door, pausing with his hand on the frame. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow to meet with GenCon’s advance team. We have planning to do, logistics to arrange. I expect to be gone for at least a week.”
He glanced back over his shoulder, and something in his pale eyes made her blood run cold.
“I’d strongly recommend you use that time to reconsider your position, Dr. Falkner. GenCon has a long memory, and they don’t take kindly to researchers who interfere with their interests.” His smile was a razor’s edge. “I’d hate to see you become… collateral damage.”
He left without waiting for a response, the door hissing shut behind him. The silence that followed felt like the aftermath of a storm—heavy and charged with unspoken tension.
“Alina.” Cass’s voice came from behind her, quiet but urgent. “What the hell was that about?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She was too busy doing the math, calculating distances and timeframes, weighing risks against opportunities.
Martin would be gone for a week. GenCon’s survey teams wouldn’t arrive for at least a month. That meant she had a window—narrow and fragile, but real—to figure out what to do.
To warn Rhyx. To get him out. To find somewhere safe before everything fell apart.
“I have to go back,” she said finally.
“To the cavern? Alina, you just got here?—”
“A week, Cass.” She turned to face her friend, and she knew her expression was desperate. “I have a week before Martin comes back, and maybe a month before GenCon starts tearing that mountain apart looking for whatever is producing those readings. If I don’t get Rhyx out of there before that happens…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t even let herself imagine what GenCon would do to him—this beautiful, impossible creature who trusted her to keep him safe.
Cass’s expression had gone serious, her earlier excitement about her own adventures with Zach replaced by the sharp focus of a problem that needed solving.
“Then we’d better figure out where to put him,” she said. “Because I don’t think your quarters are going to cut it.”
Despite everything—the fear, the urgency, the weight of impossible choices pressing down on her—Alina felt the corners of her mouth twitch.
“I was thinking somewhere a bit more… remote.”
“Define remote.”
Alina looked towards the window, towards the rust-colored landscape stretching endlessly towards the distant peaks of Olympus Mons. Somewhere out there, hidden in the ancient bones of the mountain, Rhyx was waiting for her. Trusting her. Believing that she would come back.
