29

The tiny slivers of sample tremble in the vial, clinking against the polycarbonate loudly enough that Ophelia’s external mic picks up the sound.

She braces herself, preparing to be yanked off her feet or repelled backward.

But then she realizes it’s just her hand shaking. The pieces aren’t vibrating with the desire to fly forward toward their home. They’re just sitting in there like the bits of inert material that they have been all along.

The towers themselves remain silent and still. No sudden hum or light show or mouth opening up to devour its scattered bits. Not even a faint rumbling of activity.

Ophelia feels the pull again, the temptation to let go and move closer. Little Bird, you don’t have to suffer anymore. Just come to me.

She shudders.

But that’s it, though.

Did they get this completely wrong? Maybe whatever is in them, whatever is causing this, isn’t from the towers at all.

But she saw the shape; it’s the same as the towers. All these little pieces adding up to these huge structures. Millions, billions? What was their purpose?

Her comm channel crackles. “Maybe try getting them closer,” Kate says.

“Don’t,” Ethan responds immediately.

“I’m not suggesting she tackle it,” Kate snaps. “Just maybe get some of the pieces within range for it to recognize them.”

“How?” Ethan demands.

Kate makes an exasperated noise. “I don’t know, try chucking them.”

A gurgle of a laugh escapes Ophelia, the absurdity of the situation again striking her. It would be funnier if her heart weren’t pounding like she was running for her life instead of just standing here with her trembling hand extended. The calm from before is definitely gone, overridden in the moment by her amygdala screeching at her to get out of there.

This isn’t a bear or a saber-toothed tiger or even the sound of rushing footsteps behind her on a darkened street. But that primal part of her brain certainly recognizes it as a danger and wants nothing the fuck to do with it.

With a grimace, Ophelia pours a few of the slivers into her palm. She half expects them to come alive and try to burrow through her glove. But they don’t. They’re just pretty, shiny rocks.

“Do it,” Kate insists.

Ophelia lobs them underhand at the black wall in front of her.

The wind skews them slightly over the few meters between, but they still connect, clicking when they hit the smooth surface.

Right before they fall to the ground and vanish into the new accumulation of snow at the base.

Damn it.

“Did you throw them hard enough?” Kate asks.

Ophelia turns her head to glare at her. “I don’t know, I missed the training on pitching rocks at potential extraterrestrial entities.”

“Just let me do it,” Suresh says. “I can—”

“Ophelia.” Ethan’s voice holds an odd note. Preoccupied, uncertain.

The others must hear it too because they shut up, the comm channel going quiet.

Ophelia twists away from the tower, from the throb of its presence like the pull of leaving gravity for the first time, to find him.

He’s still behind her, about three meters back, but staring at something off to her left, at the far edge of the tower, right where it curves out of sight.

“Do you see that?” he asks, without looking at Ophelia.

She can’t see anything other than the long base of the tower. She’s too close.

Careful to keep the remnants of the vial steady and upright, she moves toward him, turning to follow his gaze as she does.

“There’s something over there,” he says, pointing, as she approaches.

For a moment, she’s certain she’s going to see that shadowy figure from before, the one that she caught a glimpse of when they thought Birch was missing.

But no. Ethan’s gesturing toward the squared, straight-line edge of something not made in nature. Covered in a thin layer of snow and ice, but clearly separate from the tower. Maybe waist high. As Ophelia shifts to get a better look at it, a light flashes on it for a brief second, then disappears. Is someone else out here after all?

She freezes. Nothing happens. But when she moves closer to Ethan, the light reappears. This time it holds steady as she keeps her gaze on it.

“It’s just a reflection,” she says, with relief. “From our helmet lights.”

“No,” he says. “It’s a reflector.”

Ophelia frowns. “What difference does that—”

He starts toward the light and the mystery object.

“Hey, what’s going on? What are you doing?” Kate asks.

“Just stay there,” he says, his tone brooking no argument.

Ophelia follows him, making sure that neither of them is unconsciously being drawn too close to the tower as they go. This doesn’t seem like a trick or a lure, but thus far, nothing about this assignment has been what it seems.

When he reaches the corner of the tower, he stops.

Ophelia joins him a moment later, halting at the sight before them, confused.

It’s the missing rover, parked at the short end of the closest tower. The structure has shielded the rover from the worst of the weather, but it’s still deeply crusted with snow and ice. Just not quite enough to make it an unrecognizable lump.

“I don’t understand,” she says. “Why would they leave this out here?”

“What is it?” Kate asks.

“The rover from hab,” Ophelia answers when Ethan doesn’t.

“Oh, shit,” Kate says.

Ethan doesn’t respond, just strides forward into the too-narrow gap between the rover and the tower.

“Ethan!” Ophelia scrambles after him.

He manages to stay clear of the tower, though she sees the sway in his steps, the magnetic pull of whatever this thing is that wants them to come closer, and she feels it in herself as well, as she trails after him.

Let go. Join us, Little Bird. Aren’t you tired of being alone?

Ethan reaches the approximate location of the front passenger side door and scrapes at the snow and ice with his glove.

“Jesus, careful, please.” Ophelia winces, imagining the tiny slices in the fabric and the slow slip of air from his suit, because from what she’s heard, a lot of small tears are much harder to patch than one big hole.

But he soon unearths a door handle and pulls on it with both hands.

The door remains shut, but the sharp sound of ice cracking ricochets through the air like shots fired. It’s frozen shut.

After carefully setting the open sample vial aside, upright in a clumpy patch of snow, Ophelia moves up to stand next to him. He shuffles over a step to make room, and then they both set their feet and grip the handle.

“On the count of three,” he says.

“Right.” She nods.

“One. Two. Three.”

Her booted feet slip at first as she pulls, but then she manages to find some purchase.

The ice on the door creaks and pops, and then before she can adjust her stance, the door releases with a hideous shriek of cold metal hinges.

Her feet slide in the snow with the sudden change of leverage, ripping her hand off the handle and sending her legs shooting under the rover. They collide with something solid, stopping her forward progress, and she lands hard on the ground, her head banging around inside her helmet.

She tries to pull in a breath, but her lungs feel stuck together on both sides, the air completely knocked out of her. She can’t move.

But she can see. With her head tipped hard to the left, she can make out a familiar shape under the rover with her.

Legs. In a silvery white envirosuit. Booted feet still locked in a half-crawling position, as if they’re scaling a sheer wall.

A body. There’s a body under here with her. That—not a tire or other piece of machinery—stopped her from sliding farther.

Blood rushes to her head, filling her ears with a roaring noise, and her lungs ache with the need to breathe.

“What’s happening, Ophelia? Your vitals are all over the place,” Kate says.

Dimly, Ophelia can hear the alarms signaling inside her suit. Involuntary goose bumps rise all over her body, a shiver running through her. She jerks her legs back and her knees slam into the underside of the rover. Fuck.

Bracing her hands in the snow, she scoots backward to free herself, all the while expecting to hear a harsh skittering noise, followed by a cold, hard hand latching around her ankle.

“Doctor?” Kate presses.

Ophelia manages a tiny sip of air, and then another.

“I slipped,” she croaks. “I fell.” The beeps begin to slow. “I’m okay.”

But whoever is under the rover is most definitely not.

The alarms in her suit stop, and Ophelia gathers herself up, outside the shadow of the rover. Knowing she’ll regret it, she pushes up to her knees, and then, with a deep breath, she bends her head down to look beneath the rover.

A full person in an envirosuit is stretched out beneath, arms flung to either side. A pinnacle patch on the shoulder tells her it’s a member of their team. The helmet is facing the other direction, though. Did they just climb under and freeze to death? When the rover was right here?

Ophelia straightens up. Her head is pounding, and she tastes blood, coppery and fresh in her mouth. She must have bitten her tongue when she hit the ground. She has to work hard against her gag reflex at the taste.

“Ethan.” She stands, breathless, expecting to find him flung in the opposite direction.

But he’s up already, or maybe he managed to hold on to the handle the entire time. He’s leaning over the edge of the door to peer inside through the gap between the door and the frame.

Carefully, Ophelia staggers toward him. She’d slid toward the back end of the rover, farther than she’d thought. “I found. Underneath the rover. There’s a body.”

“Did you say a body?” Suresh demands.

Ethan doesn’t move, just stays behind the rover door, staring in at something she can’t see.

“Did you hear me? I said I—” Ophelia cuts herself off as soon as she reaches the rover’s open door and looks inside.

At first, her brain can’t make sense of it, like letters flipped upside down and backward, turning something as familiar as your own name into gibberish.

More envirosuits, like theirs, but with that familiar, brightly colored logo. Pinnacle. Arms pitched upward from the footwell of the rover, ending in thick, lumpy black gloves over the hands. The faceplates on the helmets, the ones she can see, are blacked out. Legs in a chaotic tangle over the front seats.

There’s two—no, three people jammed into the front. One is behind the wheel, collapsed forward and turned away from Ophelia, as if they’re taking a nap before a long trip. The other two are wedged upside down and sideways on the passenger side, all higgledy-piggledy, as if they threw themselves into the rover without concern for fitting. Or as if someone else shoved them in in a hurry.

Ophelia takes a step back. “What…”

The body closest to her, the one with its arms flung into the footwell, wears a suit with a patch that says VIVIEN MARKELL, though the script is hard to read through the spatters of black on the outside of the suit.

Paint. They used black paint to cover their faceplates and their hands. Why would they—

A gust of wind whips around the corner of the tower, pushing against Ophelia and setting off mini cyclones in the recently disturbed snow at their feet.

One of the cyclones spins past Ophelia and up to the rover, where it dissipates, scattering flakes inside the rover and over its occupants.

And that’s when she sees it—snowflakes floating down inside Vivien’s helmet. The faceplate on Vivien’s helmet isn’t blacked out. It’s gone. Beyond shattered; simply no longer existent.

The face beneath is a thick mask of dried and frozen blood and fluids, the features obliterated. Her eyes, her nose, her mouth, they’re just gone.

And her hands are the same.

From the tattered remains of her gloves at her wrist, tiny black flecks shine back up at them under their helmet lights, but in the sparse gaps in the black, Ophelia catches the glimmer of white, of bone, where her fingers should be.

Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Pinnacle never even made it off the planet,” Ethan says, his voice hoarse. “Three of them here, at least one back at the hab. Two more somewhere.”

No, there’s one under the rover. Ophelia subtracts from the total.

“They might have gotten the lander off the ground, but…” He shakes his head, his throat audibly clicking.

Shock. He’s in shock. Which makes sense. Ophelia should be, would be, too, if she wasn’t who she is.

She straightens up, forcing a deep breath through her still aching lungs. “Ethan. Hey. We need to go. Right now.”

When he doesn’t respond, she makes herself step closer to the rover door. Trying not to look at Vivien, not to think about the team member under the rover. That’s going to be our fate, our future.

Ophelia tugs the door free of his hands and tries to close it. It stops well short, with another equally disturbing screech of the hinges. But there’s enough room for Ethan to move past it now.

She grabs his arm and pulls him toward her.

“Take them back, you assholes! Wake up and take it back!” Suresh screams over the growing noise of the wind. Another front is moving in. “We just want to get out of here!”

A clattering sound Ophelia doesn’t recognize echoes both inside and outside her helmet. “Suresh, stop! Stop!” Kate shouts. “Put them down.”

The sample vials. He must be throwing them at the tower.

Ophelia heads for Kate, Suresh, and Liana, yanking Ethan after her.

“Ethan, I need help, I can’t … Oh my God. Liana, stop! Come back!”

Ethan seems to wake up then. He twists his arm free from Ophelia’s grasp and pushes past her to bolt for the front of the tower.

She rounds the corner just after him.

The hum she was expecting earlier kicks in now. Only it’s not a hum, more of a high-pitched tone instead, like microphone feedback, increasing in intensity. Ophelia ducks, trying to cover her ears with her arms, though it does no good. She can feel the reverberation in her head, a bell that’s been rung and won’t stop. It feels like the bones of her skull are pulling apart, her brain turning to gray matter jelly.

She stumbles forward, away from the tower. She needs to get farther from the vibrations. The lure of peace and happiness is gone. Her father’s voice is silent. This is its true face.

“Liana!” Kate shouts, her voice faded and distorted beneath the tone but cracking with desperation.

Ophelia twists around to look for Kate. For them. Where are they? Why aren’t they running?

Ethan and Kate are hunched over, arms up in a useless attempt at defense, trying to stagger forward. Suresh is at the base of the tower, standing with his helmeted head tipped up as if listening to something Ophelia can’t hear.

But Liana—oh God.

Arms flung wide in a parody of crucifixion, Liana is pressed up against the towers, like something is holding her there. Her feet dangle a couple meters above the ground, toes pointed downward. Her head leans forward against the tower in an impossibly straight and rigid position.

Exactly like Ophelia envisioned herself before. Only there’s no white light, no sense of peace or becoming one.

And then the screaming starts.