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Areina wailed from inside her leaking suit. All this for a piece of garbage? And now, if she didn’t get back to the icecar in time, if Bryce didn’t help her, she’d die over it?
Terrance...
She wheezed, dropping the trash to the ground and forcing herself to her feet. Swaying, she turned toward the icecar. She’d never make it.
Bryce was right next to her, and for the first time in her life, he actually looked... sorry? Scared? At least more than she’d ever seen.
Every moment they were out here, alone and away from the station, it was like she could see who he really was. He tormented her there, but it was clear out here, where the stakes were literally life and death, that he didn’t want her to die, no matter what it was he seemed to be holding against her. He was digging through the small bag at his belt, likely trying to figure out which of the emergency components inside were for fabric repair, but it wouldn’t matter. By the time he’d sealed it, the last of her air would be gone.
Resigned to her fate, she took one of her last steps forward, back toward the car.
But instead of collapsing, she began feeling stronger with each step. Like nothing had happened to her suit. Like her lungs weren’t starving for air. There was a tightness in her chest she’d never felt before—nothing like fear or anxiety, nothing like the constriction of suffocation. No, this was almost as if... as if her lungs had stopped functioning altogether.
So how was she still conscious? How was she still moving forward?
And the glow was back, brighter than ever, a gleaming blue-white that filled her suit and escaped through the tear in her suit. It was a shade of light she’d never seen before, one she couldn’t explain away by any emotion.
She glanced at Bryce, but he was so absorbed in keeping pace with her, in rummaging for supplies, that he didn’t seem to notice the glow or the impossible happening right next to him, that she was out of air and behaving like normal. Glancing at the gauges on her wrist only confirmed her suspicions.
She had no air. Yet she was moving. Walking. Functioning. And, somehow, she wasn’t even scared. It felt... almost natural.
What... what was she? Because if she was functioning like this? Without air? Was she even... human?
Areina set her jaw and stepped forward more quickly. They had to get to Station Beta. If she was right, there was more there than just Terrance and the missing scientists.
It could hold the answer to every secret that had been kept from her.
They finally arrived at the airlock, and she settled into the seat across from Bryce calmly, too calmly, while he kept panicking. He’d given up on digging through the bag, but every movement of his was harried and anxious, unlike her fluid, smooth, measured ones. As soon as they were inside, he slammed his palm against the activation button, and the door snapped closed.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he mumbled through the microphone.
She quirked a half smile, but she didn’t want to tell him. Not yet. Not when she didn’t even understand what was happening to her.
The thought brought a frown right back to her face. Maybe her classmates had been right. Maybe there was a reason she was the only survivor all those years ago, before she could even remember.
What if she had somehow caused their deaths?
She slumped in the seat, leaning her head back against the wall while they waited for the air to return. She couldn’t do anything about the past, especially one she didn’t remember. All she could do was keep on the path the computer charted for her—seemingly using her own thoughts—and hope it would take her where she needed to go.
To Terrance. To the Station. To the answers to all her questions.
“Are you okay?” Bryce said, his voice more normal than she’d ever heard it, completely devoid of the resentment she’d come to expect.
“Yes,” she said almost mechanically, not understanding it herself. “I... I’m fine.”
He stared at her several long moments, his eyes flicking to the gauge on her suit. Surely he could see the readout, could see that she should be completely passed out by now, or worse.
“How?” he finally said. “How are you okay?”
She pressed her lips together, searching his face for the glimmers of the real person underneath. Like her glow, it shone through his usually icy shell.
He actually cared. But whether it was because he was scared of her or for her... she had no idea.
“I... I don’t know.” She dropped her eyes, bouncing her leg in her anxiety to get moving again. She didn’t want to think about what was happening to her. Too much had already happened, and it felt like just this one more thing could be the thing that made her collapse.
Finally, the hissing of air refilling the void stopped, easing them back into the quiet hum of the icecar. She bolted to the inner door and threw herself inside, pausing only long enough to drop her helmet on the floor.
She would find Terrance. She would find her answers.
She didn’t wait for Bryce to buckle in before she pressed the pedal to the ground again and jolted them forward in the direction of Station Beta.
***
THE ICE BEGAN TO BLEND with the sky as the time wore on with no more signs of life. Jupiter floated fierce and distant above the small icecar, and Areina felt more insignificant than she ever had before, nothing but a speck on the ice. The moon they called home could swallow them up at any moment, and no one would ever be the wiser.
Areina shook her head, trying to dislodge the thought. She’d never feared for her life before, not until Terrance disappeared. The station always felt safe, even though technically she knew the risks. There, she’d had more important things on her mind than the distant, faint possibility of Europa eating them like a snack. Concerns like school papers and Bryce.
She glanced back over her shoulder again at the boy. He watched her with a mix of curiosity and concern, feelings that honestly mirrored her own.
She never should have made it back to the icecar. She should be a decompressed, lifeless body on the ice, but here she was, driving a car she stole to a station she might have killed years ago.
They would make it to that station if it was the last thing she did. She had to know. And now that they were so close, she believed Terrance would be there, waiting for her. She had to expect the best, hope that when they were reunited, he could explain everything.
She swallowed and turned her attention back to the endless ridges and rills as the car flew over yet another crack in the ice.
Suddenly, the ground lurched beneath the wheels of the icecar, and a great cracking sound filled the small cab, followed by a hiss like Areina had never heard before.
Then, the car flew through the thin air, tumbling and hurtling as Areina and Bryce screamed. Steam from a plume of water vapor misted the windows around them, obliterating the landscape until it seemed they were the last things in existence.
Her stomach whirled and spun with the spinning car, and she had to fight every instinct to keep from squeezing her eyes closed. If she let herself hurtle aimlessly, she’d be completely powerless. But what hope did she have of keeping them from falling to the ice, of crunching from the fall? Even the weak gravity couldn’t save them from the hard impact of the ice.
She clamped her teeth together, containing her screams with effort. She flipped switches, turned dials, tapped screens, but nothing stopped their tumble through space. Alarms blared so loud her ears rang, and alarming red lights flashed until the entire cab looked bloody with the glare of it.
They had to make it. She had to know.
But Europa was fierce, fighting her as if it didn’t want Areina to find out the truth.
She squeezed her eyes shut, finally giving in to her despair. If she survived this—if they survived this—they would surely be stranded.
The spinning seemed even more violent with her eyes closed, and her stomach lurched almost painfully. She gripped the armrests, bracing as well as she could for the inevitable fall to the ground, the crunch, the crash.
The car jerked, and she fell forward, nearly whacking her head off the dashboard as the vehicle stopped suddenly. She should have buckled herself in before leaving, but she’d been in too much of a hurry.
Then it dawned on her: the car had stopped. There had been no crash, no destructive fall.
Areina risked cracking one eye open, then the other. It was true. They’d stopped plummeting.
Water ran down the heated plexiglass of the windows, freezing long tracks toward the ground as the cold air of Europa overcame the heat from the car. As the windows cleared, she pressed her face to the plexiglass, peering out and down.
The ground gleamed only a few feet below them, wheels hovering over the ice. But it wasn’t the anti-grav that had kicked on to keep them from slamming to the ground. One glance at the dashboard confirmed that the plume had knocked it out, the red alarm light blinking at her silently.
She leaned back in the driver’s seat, gasping for breath as her panic subsided, giving way to hysterical laughter. Even Bryce joined in, tears running down his face. If she wasn’t so relieved herself, she might have teased him about it.
She caught his eye, and they fell from the hysterical laughter into ridiculous fits of giggles. They’d made it so far—Station Beta was only a short distance away now—yet a vapor plume still nearly took them out. It was almost too much, to have come so far.
Together.
Her laughter faded, and she looked at him again. He seemed more real, more human, than ever before. Fear seemed to be doing that for them. Humanizing each other. At least, that’s how it seemed from the lack of teasing from him.
Which brought her question back to the surface: why was he here?
“Bryce,” she ventured. “Why... why did you really come with me? You could have stayed there and reported me. You didn’t have to watch me.”
His shoulders slumped. “Maybe I just wanted to get out of the station.”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. You’re just as scared as I am. And... you seem just as motivated to make it to Station Beta. Why?”
He looked out the window for a moment, his eyes faraway. “The same reason as you, I suspect.”
She blinked. The same reason as her?
Oh. Right. He must know it wasn’t only about Terrance.
“I need to know,” he said slowly, finally turning to look at her again. “I need to know what happened. When they found you.”
“Why?”
He took a shaky breath. “My dad was at Station Beta. He was transporting supplies from Alpha, promised my mom he’d be back before the next cycle. And then... he was gone. I never met him. Mom won’t say a word. And the commander stamped a classified label on everything related to it.”
It was perhaps the most honest thing Bryce had ever said.
And his bullying suddenly made sense.
“You resented me because I survived,” she said, putting the pieces together.
He looked up at her, his expression guilty. “I guess so.”
The icecar suddenly dropped the last few feet to the ground with a squeak of shocks, jarring her spine and cutting her next words short with a gasp. She turned startled eyes back to Bryce, who had slumped forward, head in his hands.
“Are you okay?” she said.
He pushed his head up with effort, eyes so wide she could see the whites all the way around his irises. “Yeah, just... it’s all a lot to deal with, you know?”
She swallowed. “Yeah. I do.”
She looked out the window. Amid the confessions and relief they weren’t dead, she’d almost forgotten they were somehow suspended in the air.
Until a moment ago. Was it her again? Did she do this? Save them?
“What happened, anyway?” Bryce said, pulling her out of her thoughts.
Areina turned back to the dashboard and began taking inventory of the systems that were damaged. “No clue. I think we got hit by a plume.”
She heard him shift behind her, then a step on the metal floor in her direction followed by a heavy hand on her shoulder. “That’s not what I meant,” he said, “and I suspect you know that already. Areina, did you somehow do this? Stop the car from falling?”
She ignored him for a few long seconds. “Anti-grav boosters are dead. Shocks are fine, somehow.”
His hand spun her around in her seat to face her. “Areina. What is going on?”
She pulled back as much as her seat allowed. “I don’t know!”
He released her shoulder. “Okay.”
She spun to him. “Okay? Just like that?”
He lifted a shoulder with a sigh. “I believe you. I don’t know why you made it back to Alpha and my dad didn’t, but... you’re still just a kid. Like me. Maybe... maybe we should just start over. For now. At least until we get to Beta and figure things out.”
Areina was saved from responding when the ground shivered under the wheels again. Bryce gasped and braced himself on the back of her seat just as the car shuddered, then dropped another few feet, coming to rest at an awkward angle.
“No, no, no!” Areina mumbled, turning back to the controls.
But no amount of jiggling switches or turning dials did anything. The ice had swallowed them just enough to lodge the car.
They were stuck.
