It was like being covered in lead.

Javi’s aunt Sofia was a cop, and once he’d tried on her bulletproof vest. The Kevlar had felt this heavy, except that here in the high-G zone the weight seemed to be wrapped around his entire body. Every breath struggled into his lungs, as if the air had turned thick and soupy.

But Javi could still crawl, and he made his way to the edge of the darkness, where Akiko and Oliver waited to help. Together, they dragged him out of the gravity distortion field.

Molly came staggering after, collapsing beside him in the undergrowth.

“What’s your guess?” she panted. “Double?”

Javi coughed. “At least. How did you keep standing?”

“Five years of ballet,” she said. “Gotta thank Mom for that.”

“I’ll remind you to,” Javi said.

Molly had to be worried about her mother, all alone at home. The crash would be on the news by now, of course. Javi closed his eyes, trying not to think about his own family watching TV and worrying.

Instead, he let himself appreciate the merciful normal gravity. He felt like he’d spent a week on Jupiter, and now was finally back on Earth.

But this wasn’t Earth. The laws of physics were broken here.

As Javi sat up, another dizzying wave of low G rippled through the air.

“You guys should come,” Oliver said. “I think they found Caleb.”

Caleb had fallen at the edge of the distortion field.

Of course it was at the edge, Javi realized. The poor guy wouldn’t have flown very far in double G. The only thing that had kept him from being squashed outright was the gravity device he’d been carrying. Even now it seemed to be fighting against this heaviness, sending out pulses of low G that grew stronger as Oliver led them closer to where Caleb lay.

As did the awful sound of the guy’s breathing.

“I saw … something,” Caleb was saying.

“Drink this first.” Anna was beside him inside the field, bracing her water bottle with both hands. Yoshi was next to her, sitting cross-legged, the strained expression on his face the only sign that he was in double G.

Javi watched as Caleb swallowed, then coughed. It sounded like his lungs were full of tomato sauce.

“In the sky,” he managed a moment later.

“That doesn’t matter!” Molly cried. “We need to figure out how to get you out of there!”

“We could slide him,” Oliver said. “Time it with the flutters of low gravity.”

Molly shook her head. “That could hurt him even more.”

Anna was staring at the device that lay beside him. “Maybe we can find a higher setting. Something that counteracts the heaviness.”

Javi didn’t say anything. The way Caleb lay there, his back twisted against the gnarled root of a tree … it didn’t look good. Maybe if they had a team of paramedics and an ambulance full of medical equipment—double-G Jaws of Life?—something could be done.

But out here in a jungle, with nothing but a survival knife, a first-aid kit, and some water bottles?

Javi glanced at Kira. She shook her head and put her arm around Akiko, who had started to cry.

An awful certainty was creeping into Javi. Caleb wasn’t going to make it.

“Stupid … kids,” the guy croaked. “Listen.”

“What is it?” Javi asked softly.

“The moons. They’re wrong.”

Molly looked up at Javi pleadingly.

“We know,” Javi said gently. “We aren’t on Earth anymore. But you need to—”

“No.” Caleb coughed again, but managed to go on. “The phases are wrong. They’re fake.”

Javi pictured the moons—two orbs, the red one a little larger. Both of them cratered just like the familiar pale moon back on Earth.

“And the stars,” Caleb barely managed.

“You can give us an astronomy report later!” Molly cried.

At those words, a harsh smile formed on Caleb’s lips. Another ripple of light gravity passed through the fronds around them, and he managed to slurp a quick breath.

“Urss …” he said.

Nobody answered, waiting for more.

But a moment later, Caleb closed his eyes.

“Caleb?” Anna asked. She leaned closer, her neck muscles straining against the gravity.

Nothing. Not even the rattle of his breath.

“Caleb!” Molly cried. When there was no answer, she turned to the others. “We need to get him out of there. Now!”

“Molly,” Anna said. “He’s not breathing.”

Molly stared at her. “What do you mean?”

Anna’s face went blank. “He’s not breathing because he’s dead.”

Javi turned away. He couldn’t look at Caleb, or at Anna’s expression. And most of all he couldn’t look at Molly. Her mind was still working, still trying to solve this problem.

But there was nothing to solve.

He didn’t know where to look, so Javi watched as a glowfly buzzed past. It drifted into the darkness of the high-G zone, was captured instantly, and fell to the ground.

It was a while before anyone spoke again.

“We should get back to the bonfire,” Anna said. “It’s getting colder.”

“And just leave him?” Molly asked.

Nobody had an answer. The thought of going into the heavy-gravity field again made Javi’s stomach churn.

Anna shrugged. “Nature doesn’t need help burying the dead.”

There was that word again. Dead.

People wound up dead in a place like this. That was how nature wanted it—every animal and plant one misstep away from becoming part of the food web. Javi could feel it all around him, the patient hunger of the jungle.

Molly looked like she was about to argue, to say they should have another funeral or even bury him. But then the rain started—a clattering sound, high in the leaves.

It built steadily, but Javi couldn’t feel any drops. The thick jungle canopy was protecting them for now. He let the rumble of the rain numb his mind.

“Okay.” Molly sounded relieved that a fresh problem had come up. “I guess we need to find shelter.”

“Not this close to him,” Javi said gently. None of them would sleep.

Molly led them away from the distortion field, to a spot where the jungle canopy was so thick overhead that there was no glimpse of sky. The rain was finally starting to trickle down through the leaves, forming cold, squishy puddles underfoot.

Molly and Anna bent a few of the lower branches closer together and bound them with bungee cords into a makeshift shelter. Everyone huddled together on the roots of the tree, which bulged up high enough to stay dry. The undergrowth here was sparse, which gave the tanglevine less cover to sneak around underfoot.

But tanglevine wasn’t the big worry, of course. There was still that foghorn beast out there in the distance, or maybe nearby, its footsteps drowned out by the rain.

Yoshi said he would stand watch and wake one of the others in a few hours. He sat cross-legged at the edge of the roots, facing the trees.

The downpour built until it was too loud to talk. Soon the glowflies had retreated to wherever insects went when it rained, and darkness overtook the jungle.

As she refilled her water bottles from a dripping branch, Molly leaned close to Javi’s ear. “It was my idea, him going up to check the stars.”

Javi had been waiting for this. “That doesn’t make it your fault.”

“He’d never even used the device before.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t know about these …” Gravity sinks? Thundersucks? Javi didn’t feel like coming up with a name just now. He could still feel the awful weight in his bones, like he’d never crawled out of the high-G zone.

Like the darkness itself had grown heavy.

“I pushed him,” Molly said. “He didn’t even want to jump.”

“It was just bad luck.”

Molly shook her head. “You can’t say that.”

“That’s what it was.”

“But that’s even worse than it being my fault!”

Javi stared at her. “Why?”

“Because if I made a mistake, no matter how bad, we can learn from it.” Molly closed her eyes, her breaths coming short and sharp. “But if something like that can just happen here, then we’re all …”

She didn’t finish, but Javi didn’t want her to.

“Listen,” he said. “We’re going to get out of here.”

Molly just shook her head, like it was all too much.

“You’re going to get us out of here,” Javi persisted. “You’re going to get us home!”

“From an alien world?”

“Caleb said the moons were fake. We’re back to not knowing anything about where we are.”

“That’s not useful! At least an alien planet is a workable theory. Otherwise everything we’ve seen is just … crazy.”

Javi shrugged. “Sometimes stuff is crazy.”

“How can you deal with nothing making sense?”

He laughed softly. “Have you met my family?”

“Your family are the sanest people I know,” she said.

Javi gave her a sidelong look, but didn’t argue. Molly looked like she was about to cry. And it wasn’t fair, arguing about whose family was crazier.

In a funny way, Molly and her mom were the same. Neither of them had ever gotten over how a random disease had just appeared out of nowhere to take Molly’s father away. The only difference was, the experience had made Molly a lot more rational—needing to know the whys of everything—and her mother a lot less.

“Caleb’s gone, but he helped us,” Javi said. “We know that those moons are fake. That has to mean something.”

“Right,” Molly murmured, curling up. “You’re right. We’ll figure it out.”

He watched her close her eyes. Almost by accident, he’d said the right thing—that Caleb had at least given them a clue, a promise that this strange new world could be understood.

But what if that wasn’t true?

Javi stared out into the formless dark. There were monsters out there.

He listened to the rain until he managed to fall asleep.