“If they stay on schedule.” She turned, pulling him gently back towards the station. “Which, knowing Cass, means they’llprobably arrive early. She’s been sending me messages every few hours, asking if she can leave sooner.”
Rhyx’s lips curved in what she had come to recognize as his version of amusement. “She misses you.”
“The feeling is mutual.” She felt a pang of something bittersweet—joy at the prospect of seeing her friend, mingled with the ever-present awareness that their reunion had to be carefully orchestrated. Cass knew about Rhyx, knew where they were hiding, but their location remained a closely guarded secret. Even Cass and Zach would need to take a circuitous route to ensure they weren’t followed.
The monitoring station had been a godsend. Abandoned years ago when the company that built it went bankrupt, it sat in a natural bowl between rock formations that made it nearly invisible from the surrounding terrain. Addie—the Judge’s wife, a woman whose network of contacts continued to astonish Alina—had helped them claim it legally through a maze of shell companies and bureaucratic obfuscation. On paper, the station was now owned by a research collective that existed primarily to provide cover for exactly this sort of off-grid scientific work.
In practice, it was their home.
And it was perfect.
“She will be pleased with your progress,” he said as they walked. “The samples you took—they have exceeded your expectations, yes?”
She laughed softly. “‘Exceeded’ is an understatement. Rhyx, they’re growing faster than any Martian vegetation has ever grown. Faster than should be possible, even accounting for the enriched environment I’ve created.” She shook her head, stillmarveling at it. “It’s like they were waiting for permission. Like the terraforming unlocked something dormant in their biology, and now they’re making up for lost time.”
“The planet is waking,” he said. “As I told you.”
“I believe you now.” She glanced up at him. “I’m not sure I entirely believed you before—not because I doubted you, but because it seemed too… much. Too miraculous. Plants that have been dormant for millions of years suddenly thriving? Life emerging from what we thought was dead rock?” She squeezed his hand. “But I’ve seen the data. I’ve watched the growth rates. Something is definitely happening, and it’s not just natural biological processes.”
They reached the station’s main structure—a series of interconnected domes that had once housed weather monitoring equipment and a small crew. Alina had converted one dome into a laboratory, another into living quarters, and a third into storage for the supplies that Addie helped smuggle to them at irregular intervals. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was theirs.
More importantly, it was safe.
“Come,” he said, steering her past the domes towards the cliff face that rose behind the station. “I want to show you something.”
She followed without question, curiosity piqued. The cliff was why they had chosen this location—or rather, what Rhyx had created within the cliff. In the early weeks of their settlement, he had used his strength to excavate a cave system in the rock, carving out chambers that now served as her primary research facility. The caves maintained a stable temperature, protected her samples from radiation, and—most importantly—could besealed against detection by any scanning equipment GenCon might deploy.
The entrance was hidden behind a natural rock formation, invisible unless you knew exactly where to look. He had shaped it that way deliberately, and she still marveled at the precision of his work. For someone who had awakened with no memories of his own culture’s technology, he had an intuitive understanding of engineering that bordered on the supernatural.
Maybe it is supernatural,she thought as she followed him through the narrow passage.Maybe everything about him is.
The cave opened into a chamber roughly twenty meters across, its ceiling lost in shadows above. But even in the dim light, she could see what he wanted to show her.
The plants.
They had spread.
“Oh,” she breathed, stopping short.
When she had last visited the chamber—three days ago, an eternity in terms of Martian botanical development—the samples she had transplanted from the original cavern had occupied perhaps a quarter of the available space. Now they covered nearly half the floor, vines climbing the walls, mosses carpeting every surface, leaves unfurling in shades of blue and silver and deep purple that shouldn’t exist on Mars.
And in the center of it all, a new growth had emerged. A structure she didn’t recognize—something bulbous and organic, pulsing faintly with bioluminescence.
“When did this appear?” She moved towards it, her scientific instincts overriding her shock.
“Last night.” Rhyx remained near the entrance, watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite read. “I felt it happening. The vibrations in the rock changed, became… rhythmic. Like a heartbeat.”
“A heartbeat.” She knelt beside the structure, studying it without touching. It was roughly the size of a human head, its surface covered in fine, hair-like filaments that swayed gently despite the still air. The bioluminescence came from within, a soft golden glow that reminded her uncomfortably of Rhyx’s scales. “This is new. This isn’t anything from the samples I took.”
“No.” He moved closer, his footsteps silent on the moss-covered floor. “I think it grew from the conditions you created. The combination of the original plants, the water you introduced, the minerals in the cave rock…” He crouched beside her, his eyes fixed on the pulsing structure. “You gave it everything it needed to become something new.”
“I didn’t create this.” The words came out sharper than she intended, edged with something that might have been fear. “I just transplanted samples and maintained growing conditions. This—whatever this is—it’s doing it on its own.”
“Yes.” Rhyx’s voice was calm, soothing. “The planet is waking, Alina. You didn’t create the process. You simply… encouraged it.”
She sat back on her heels, struggling to process the implications. As a scientist, she had spent her career working within established parameters—hypothesis, experiment, data, conclusion. What was happening in this cave didn’t fit any of those frameworks. It was organic and chaotic and alive in ways that defied her understanding.
And it was beautiful.
