“We knew the region pretty well—we’d done some prospecting out that way before we settled here. There was a lava tube we’d used for shelter once before, nothing special, just a place to wait out a storm.” Mattie’s fingers tightened around Jeb’s. “But that time, when we went deeper… we found the cavern.”
“You found—” Alina’s heart was racing. “You found the ecosystem? The plants, the?—”
“We weren’t in any shape to appreciate it,” Jeb said quietly. “I’d taken some damage in the fighting. Bad damage. Mattie had to practically carry me down there.”
“He was dying.” Mattie’s voice was flat, controlled, but Alina could hear the echo of old terror underneath. “The nanites in his system were trying to repair the damage, but there was too much of it. His power reserves were almost depleted. I thought—I thought I was going to lose him.”
“What happened?”
Another shared glance. Something complicated passed between them—a conversation held entirely in looks and micro-expressions.
“I don’t remember much,” Jeb admitted. “I was in and out of consciousness. But when I woke up—really woke up, clear-headed—the damage was repaired. More than repaired. My systems were running better than they had in years.”
“We never understood it,” Mattie said. “We had to block it to escape the claim jumpers. We talked about going back, investigating, but… it felt like something we weren’t supposed to share. Something sacred, almost. And then the claim trouble blew over, and life got busy, and…”
“You kept it secret.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Alina thought about the past few weeks. About the lies she’d told, the secrets she’d kept, the careful dance of misdirection she’d been performing to keep Martin and everyone else away from what she’d found.
“Yes,” she said. “I would. I have.”
Mattie’s eyes sharpened. “There’s more, isn’t there? Something else you found down there.”
“Something connected to Jeb’s healing. To his blood—his nanites.” Alina’s mouth had gone dry. “When you were injured, when you were bleeding—did any of it get into the environment? Into the plants, the soil, anything that might have been… absorbing it?”
Jeb frowned, clearly thinking back. “I don’t—maybe? I was bleeding pretty badly. Mattie had me laid out on some kind of moss bed while she tried to stabilize me.”
“There was this big thing,” Mattie added. “Like a pod, wrapped up in gold-colored leaves. We thought it was just a plant structure, but looking back… it almost seemed like it was reaching towards us. Toward Jeb.”
Alina’s stomach dropped.
“The pod,” she whispered. “You found the pod.”
“Is that significant?”
“It might be—” She stopped, struggling to find the right words. How did you explain something like Rhyx? How did you introduce the impossible? “I think your blood—your nanites—they might have interacted with something in that cavern. Something that had been dormant, waiting. And when your healing technology came into contact with it…”
“Dr. Falkner.” Jeb’s voice had gone very quiet. “What exactly did you find in that cave?”
Alina opened her mouth. Closed it. Tried again.
“I found—the thing is—there was this?—”
A flicker of movement in the window behind Jeb caught her eye. A flash of gold against the red-brown of the Martian rocks.
No. No, no, no?—
“Me,” said a deep voice.
Rhyx stepped into view around the corner of the habitat, ducking his head to avoid a solar panel. Eight feet of golden scales and impossible muscle, his crest-ridge catching the morning light, his bright blue eyes fixed on the couple at the table.
He was, of course, completely naked.
“Rhyx!” Alina’s voice came out as something between a squeak and a scream. “I told you to wait for a signal!”
“You were struggling.” He said it as if it were obvious. “I helped.”
