Glow

An Ugly Duckling Retelling

One

AREINA LEAPT FROM the thick branch of the tree just as the rock hit the trunk behind her. Bark showered down on her pursuer as the branch shook, then again as she caught the pine bough only a few feet away on the next tree.

“You can’t hide up there forever!” Bryce yelled, voice frosty.

Of course she couldn’t run forever. But she could outrun that jerk any day of the week. Even if it was kind of maybe her fault he was chasing her in the first place.

Areina spun around the trunk of the next tree, sap smearing her puffy silver coat. That would be a mess to clean later, but at least it hadn’t torn. The station had provided durable clothing to resist tears like that. The next few trees were close enough to catch just as easily, Bryce running along underneath despite the hail of needles and bark.

And then a gap appeared, farther than she could jump.

Bryce laughed, the sound echoing off the trees, as she stopped short of falling the twenty feet to the ground. A rock pelted the trunk behind her, and she ducked instinctively as the bark exploded off the tree.

There was no choice, really. She would have to jump.

Areina looked down, the ground shifting beneath her, and she squeezed her eyes tight. That was a mistake. The small creek suddenly roared in her ears.

Thwack! Another rock struck the trunk, this one a little bigger than the last, and she snapped her eyes back open. Bryce raised his arm again, poised to throw another rock, and her stomach roiled. She hated heights.

She turned back to the gap between her and the next tree. Maybe she’d get lucky. She poised herself on the branch, then leapt forward, pushing off from the trunk behind her and lifting off the branch.

And then she was practically flying through the air. She felt like she was floating, almost like she had wings or like her body shifted and morphed somehow to push her forward.

Somehow, impossibly, her feet landed on the opposite branch, and she was clear. She slid down the trunk and was off and running away from Bryce before he could even think to cross the creek.

She almost relaxed, almost released her breath, but she wasn’t home free yet. The creek was only a delay.

Plus there was the fact she was glowing like an emergency flare in the dark—the very reason most of the students teased her mercilessly. She wouldn’t be safe just because she was surrounded by trees here.

Bryce would be able to see her anyway if she didn’t get home, and quick.

Areina slid around a rock, the soil loose underfoot. One of the introduced fauna had probably been digging here. She picked herself back up as a splash echoed between the trunks, and only paused long enough to find her feet again.

It wasn’t that she had anything against Bryce, not really, but he’d made it his job to be her rival in every sense. When she got an A, he had to get an A+. When the station assigned them to plant, he had to plant twice as many vegetables as she did. And when she started making friends, he made them like him more.

It was probably the most aggravating thing she’d ever had to deal with. Especially since there really weren’t that many kids on the station. And she and Bryce were the oldest. They should be friends. They should have always been friends. But it was like Bryce was holding something against her but refusing to tell her just what that was.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, not really, except that lately he’d shifted his rivalry and teasing to something meaner. Crueler.

Like alternating between telling the younger kids that Areina was a banshee or a ghost and telling them that she was an alien sent to infiltrate the humans so the aliens could conquer them.

The little neighbor kid, six-year-old Mia, hadn’t spent more than a minute with Areina since that one.

It wasn’t like she could stop, let alone hide, her glowing hair and skin. But she had hoped that after spending her whole life here, she’d have at least one friend.

Bryce.

The trees thinned out ahead of her, and she hurried forward, toward the edge of the trees. If she ran, she might make it home before Bryce made it to her.

She broke through the last of them, and the compound appeared before her, only a few hundred feet down a small slope. Overhead, through the shining, glimmering field that shielded them all from the intense radiation and cold, Jupiter stared down at her, its stripes bright against the darkness of space. But through the shield, its vibrant stripes and swirls were muted, almost white. It took special lenses to filter out the light from the dome. Most days, Areina would have stopped to stargaze, to planet-gaze. But today there was no time. Not with Bryce.

She ran forward, across the sloped field of corn and potatoes, the sprouts not even knee-high in this field. Her hab was just past the field on the edge of the compound.

“Hey, Ice Queen!” Bryce’s voice echoed toward her from the trees.

Areina glanced over her shoulder, her heart thrumming. Bryce took off down the slope toward her, sliding along the soil and gravel, and she doubled her pace, sprinting the last bit of distance separating her from safety.

She slid around the corner of one of the other buildings, nearly falling, but managed to catch herself just as Bryce’s steps thundered into the compound behind her.

Run, run, run!

Somehow, she managed to stop in front of her door, slap her hand against the scanner, and tumble through the door before Bryce could make it to her. She slammed the door shut behind her, leaning back against it even though the lock re-engaged with a click.

Slowly, Areina slid to the floor, panting, pulse pounding in her ears. She was safe. Sure, Bryce would never seriously hurt her... not while anyone could see. At least, she didn’t think so. But still, it was a relief to be behind a locked door.

“Glowworm?”

Areina looked up to see her father standing from the desk, packed with his monitors and overflowing samples and notes, as usual.

“You okay?” her father, Terrance said when she didn’t answer.

She flashed him a stiff smile as Bryce’s fist pounded the door behind her. “Fine.”

Her father, Terrance, quirked an eyebrow at her, then slowly sat back down in front of his computers. “If you say so.” He bit his lip, staring into the distance for a few moments. “You know if you’re having trouble, you can tell me, right?”

Areina pushed herself to her feet and brushed off her hands. Tell him? Sure, she could. If she wanted Bryce to start telling the other kids she was a total baby who tattled every chance she got. “Of course. But everything’s—”

“Fine, I know.” Terrance’s eyes flicked down to her coat. “You may want to deal with that tree sap before it hardens.”

She glanced down at herself. She’d already forgotten about the sticky mess on her coat. Rubbing a hand over it, she nodded absently and made her way to the small mudroom off the side of the kitchen. There were plenty of waterless stain removers for between laundry days, a necessity for field scientists, like Terrance, and children. Especially in this environment, where every drop of water was precious, hard won from the icy ground or the salty brine almost thirty kilometers below their feet. Below the ice.

Areina pulled her coat off, then her boots and puffy, water-resistant, tear-resistant pants and placed all her outerwear—except her coat—on the designated hooks in her cubby. Then, she pulled the stain remover out of the box and started scrubbing at the tree sap.

The warmer air of the hab began thawing out her bones. The cold had already settled into her, making a home, though she had barely noticed it until she came inside. It didn’t bother her as much as most of the others—something the few other children at the station teased her about, as if they needed something beyond the glowing. There were only six of them, but half of the other children were convinced she wasn’t even human because of her cold tolerance.

That was only more fuel for Bryce’s rumors.

But Areina liked that it didn’t bother her. She liked being able to sit outside on the hillside, staring up at the stars, dreaming about what it would be like to be out among the stars, to truly dedicate her life to seeing what was beyond the station’s protective dome. To drift among the stars like the scientists had on their way here before any of the children had been born.

But somehow it was more than that, more than a purely academic interest. It was more like... a need.

She sighed, scrubbing at the sticky mess on her coat with a little more vigor. The sap only came out partway, but it would have to do until laundry day. Surely one of the station’s other citizens would be able to restore her coat to its usual pristine state.

Areina looked up at the camera on the wall, the one pointed at the main door where Bryce had been only moments before. He was gone now, as if he’d never been there. But he’d be back in her business tomorrow, when they all met in the schoolhouse.

She replaced the coat on her hook and wandered back into the single room she shared with Terrance. Her “room” was sectioned off with a cloth partition, and she made her way there with only a brief stop at the kitchen for a glass of water. Terrance didn’t even look up, completely distracted by his notes. It must have been a good day of research.

She pulled the partition closed behind her, set the glass on the bedside stand, and dropped onto her bed, pulling her tablet from the drawer in the stand and powering it on to read one of the hundreds of books in the community’s shared library. For a moment, she looked up at the stars—or glowworms, like Terrance sometimes joked—painted on her ceiling, glowing the same cold, sad blue as she was. Then she pulled her thick blanket close around her, nestling into the soft nest of her bed. It was night, technically—the time she felt most alive.

She let herself fall into the world of classic science fiction, into a world far, far away from here, out among the stars and planets, and somehow found herself more at home than anywhere else. And slowly, her cold blue glow settled into a warm, serene white instead.

***

THE CURTAIN JERKED back, and Terrance stood in the gap. “Time to get up, Glowworm!”

Areina groaned, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She cracked one of them open just enough to see the clock next to her. It didn’t make her feel better.

Terrance dropped the curtain and disappeared back to the kitchen. The scent of fritters was already strong in the hab, pushing Areina to swing her legs over the side of the bed and attempt to start her day. She would be expected at the schoolhouse in an hour, and someone was sure to come knocking if she didn’t show up.

She sighed. Maybe it would be different if she just had one friend there. But Bryce had made sure that would never happen.

She shuffled to her drawers and pulled her thermal shirt on, tugging it into place before throwing a hand-knit sweater over top. The sweater was the most colorful thing she owned: bold stripes of orange, yellow, and red, mimicking the swirls on Jupiter above them. Terrance’s late wife had made it before Areina had ever existed. A woman she’d never met. He’d given her the sweater once she grew big enough to fit it, like a few other pieces the woman had owned.

Areina slid a pair of dangly earrings into her lobes—another gift from Terrance—and pulled her second sock into place before making her way toward the kitchen. Terrance stood over the small range, flipping the vegetable fritters. They were filled with corn, of course, but she could also see some spinach, carrot, and scallion poking out of the batter.

Areina settled into one of the two chairs at their small kitchen table, and Terrance slid a plate of fritters in front of her. A larger bowl of oatmeal steamed between the place settings, and she spooned some of it into one of the durable metal bowls with a splash of milk. Terrance’s violin sat nearby on the counter, a sure sign he’d been waiting for her to wake up before playing. He used the time in music to ponder scientific questions, and it was one of Areina’s favorite things. He could have been a professional—if he hadn’t decided to move to Europa.

“Did you manage to finish your report?” Terrance asked, settling into the chair opposite her and preparing his oatmeal exactly the same.

Areina winced, spoon halfway to her mouth. “Technically.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Technically?”

“I... wrote it.”

He simply stared at her a moment longer.

“It’s a first draft.”

“Isn’t it due today?”

She shrugged, which was all the answer he needed. But he was a firm believer in letting her make her own way—mistakes and all. And if she was quite honest, she couldn’t quite see herself running calculations or studying Earth history for the rest of her life. The classes she really cared about—astronomy and astrophysics—were still a bit above her grade level.

She sighed and went back to the oatmeal and fritters.

Two

AREINA WIPED HER boots on the mat just inside the schoolhouse door, then hung her coat on one of the hooks and took the seat she’d been assigned at the beginning of the school term. There were only a few days left until the term break, but each day felt like it was years long. She kept her head down, hoping no one bothered her and she could just get through this last bit.

“You know why she’s so blue, right?” one of the younger kids said to another. “When they found her at that abandoned research station, she was actually dead. But her ghost followed Dr. Little back, and we haven’t been able to get rid of her since.”

Areina almost rolled her eyes. At least that rumor was kind of creative. True, her skin had a bit of a blue cast compared to everyone else. But that didn’t mean she was a ghost.

The rest of it, though—the part about the abandoned station—was partly true. She had been no more than an infant when her home station went dark and Terrance led a rescue team to see what had happened. No one was there, except for her. They never did figure out what happened to everyone.

At least, that was the official story. Except Areina had seen the way Terrance couldn’t quite meet her eyes whenever he repeated that tale. How the other scientists dodged the question. And how the records were kept confidential from the general population. Only the scientists who’d gone and the station’s commander really knew the truth. And none of them were talking.

As for the other rumors, they’d varied from day to day and year to year, depending on which one Bryce was attached to at the time: Areina was an alien. Areina was a science experiment gone wrong. Sometimes she was even a psycho murderer, though how she would have managed to kill everyone at the station and dispose of their bodies before she could walk was a mystery even more baffling than what had actually happened to the people at the station.

Areina pushed ear buds into her ears, hoping to block out the gossip until Mr. Carmichael was ready to start class. When he stood in front of the smart board at the head of the class, he pointed to her, then his ears, and she pulled them out reluctantly. His eyes lingered on her just a few moments too long...watching. Just like everyone else. At least the adults didn’t tease her—they only stared at her, like she needed an eye kept on her.

Before Mr. Carmichael could actually start the lessons, the ground shook underfoot, a tremble from the ice thick beneath the station.

Areina jumped out of her chair, throwing herself under her desk, heart hammering in her chest. The overhead lights flickered as the ice bucked under the ground of the station, and she clutched the leg of the desk as Mr. Carmichael darted past her to the emergency phone by the door. The other students huddled under the desks like her, fear covering their faces.

Areina was sure her face mirrored their own, all features contorted in terror. She couldn’t imagine being trapped in the ice, stuck far away from the stars, from the open air. Her vision grew spotty at the thought, the ice shivering below them again as the lights dimmed, then returned to normal.

Icequakes were common, sure, but the lights had never flickered like this before. Was this one of the big ones? A quake so massive it would split the ice under the station and either drop them into the brine kilometers below or shoot plumes of water straight up into their bubble?

The lights flickered again, then the classroom plunged into darkness. A few of the youngest children screamed, and Areina squeezed her eyes closed against the black of Europa’s eternal night, tears squeezing between her lids.

The quaking stopped, and the room quieted, except for Mr. Carmichael’s low voice on the phone. Areina forced her eyes back open. There were no cracks in the floor, at least not that she could see, but the lights were still out and the emergency lights hadn’t kicked on like they were supposed to.

But as her eyes adjusted to the dark, Areina’s eyes picked up a hazy glow around her. Great. As if she needed everyone staring at her again. And this time, the glow was a bright yellow—fear. Had they pieced together yet that the colors of her glow matched her emotions?

She caught her breath, heart leaping, only this time not from the icequake. This definitely wouldn’t help the ghost hypothesis of the day.

As quickly as she could, she yanked her collar up to cover as much of herself as possible and tucked her hands into the pockets at her hips. Luckily, it seemed no one had noticed. Yet.

The old fears resurfaced, adding to the fear of the dark. What happened to the other station? Why did she glow?

Was there really something to those rumors?

Her breathing came fast and shallow. Her panic was just barely contained. Was this why Bryce tormented her? Was it all true?

What the heck was going on? And where were the lights?

Mr. Carmichael hung up the phone and pulled a small flashlight up from his hip, clicking it on and aiming the beam around at his students. “Is everyone all right?”

Various grumbles responded, and lucky for Areina, the glow of the flashlight was enough to drown out the glow from her skin and hair. For now.

But if they saw the glow? If she reminded them how different she was? Would they try to blame her for the outage?

“You can come out,” he continued. “Go back to your habs for the day. The quake wasn’t a bad one, and the station is intact, but some systems are down. Obviously. You can turn in your reports tomorrow, assuming the electricity is back up. Class dismissed.”

Areina sighed in relief. Before anyone could question or harass her, she bolted from her place, snatched her things, and threw on her coat as she fled the building.

Outside, the station was dark. Jupiter loomed overhead, now somehow menacing. The shield overhead glinted in a few places—their only protection from the massive radiation Jupiter threw at them. The light outside reflecting from the ice around them was dim, just barely enough to guide her pounding steps back toward home. Red lights flashed around the station village, and a few alarms blared into the stillness.

This wasn’t a normal outage. Something was truly wrong here, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

And then she stood in front of the door to her hab. Inches from the safety of home.

She took the key ring from her pocket, something she almost never needed, and pulled open the emergency panel under the scanner. The scanner was dead, of course, but the access port below beckoned her with a tiny yellow light. She slid her metal key, programmed specifically for her, into the lock, and the door clicked. She retrieved the key, then pushed the door open and hurried inside, locking it behind her as fast as she could before she let herself relax.

The hab was just as dark as the classroom had been, and there was no sign of Terrance. That wasn’t so surprising; he probably had his hands full at the lab.

It was better this way anyway.

Her heart still pounded as her body cast that dim glow around the room. Every rumor she’d ever heard about herself cycled through her mind. She could almost believe that she’d brought something here with her—something hidden in the other station.

She bit her lip, pushing back the racing thoughts while trying to come up with some sort of explanation. Terrance wasn’t here, but even if he was, would he know what was happening? Would he even tell her?

But there was one thing she could still look at, something that didn’t need electricity. One thing she could read without Terrance. Something that had always been forbidden to her. Something she longed more than ever to read.

The field notebooks from that first mission. The one when they found Areina.

Who would know if she just took a peek? After all, the book she wanted was about her, wasn’t it?

She pulled off her outer gear and hurried to the desk near Terrance’s bed. He kept all his logbooks in the same place, and unless they made him archive them, they should still be there. She couldn’t explain why, but she had a gut feeling that the books were still there. Though the glow she was still emitting was enough to get her to the desk, she needed to pull out the emergency lantern to actually read anything.

Areina set the lantern next to the dark computer monitor and scanned the spines of the notebooks stacked in the back corner. The dates on the earliest notebooks from twenty years back were Earth dates, though Europa’s time worked differently. After the first few years, the spines reflected both Earth and Europa times, the Europa times developed to keep a more normal schedule in sync with both places.

There! One single notebook, slightly crusted with salt, wrinkled from water. The only one with dates spanning the mission to the ghost station.

Areina slid the notebook out of the stack and flipped it to the first page, a list of the book’s contents. But just as she began scanning, the door clicked behind her. She snapped up straight, shoving the book behind her back just as Terrance stepped inside, a swinging light glowing on his belt.

“Areina?” he said, pulling the door closed behind him. His face took on an eerie, too-bright cast in the LED light. “Are you all right? I assume they sent you all home until we can sort out the power.”

“Yeah, of course,” she responded, her voice high and tight. Lucky for her, Terrance didn’t seem to notice.

He crossed the room and set a tablet on the desk next to her. “Will you be okay here for a bit? They need me to work on the backup generators.”

“You? But you’re an anthropologist.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “We’re all many things here. You know that.”

Her heart pounded hard against her chest and she nodded. Of course she knew. Why did she say that? She had to play it cool, or he’d know she was up to something.

The phone at Terrance’s hip suddenly beeped, its screen flashing to life. He pulled it out of the holster and tapped a few times. Areina stood at the desk, notebook still tucked behind her back, and bit her lip, waiting for Terrance to either leave or walk away so she could put the book back.

“Bad news, Glowworm,” he said suddenly, eyes still on his screen.

Areina jumped. “What?”

Terrance sighed. “The damage is bigger than they thought. The generators are cracked. And so are the backup generators.”

Areina’s heart sank. “Cracked?”

That was bad. Really, really bad. There would be no new power without generators. And cracks? What could repair those?

“C-can they be fixed?”

Terrance shook his head slowly, shoulders slumping. He turned the screen to face her, and with that one image, she could feel the hopelessness.

The generators weren’t just cracked. They were broken in half. There was no repairing those.

Terrance’s phone blipped again, and he glared at the screen, brows lowering. “I need to make a trip.”

“A... trip? What do you mean?”

For several long moments that felt like ages, he didn’t speak, didn’t even look at her. Only sighed, long and mournful. Resigned. He finally looked up. “I’ll have Dr. Cartwright check in on you.”

Dr. Cartwright. As in, Bryce’s mom. A woman who seemed warm and caring on the outside but was just as suspicious of Areina as the rest of the station was.

Terrance continued. “They need someone to go get the old generators at the Beta station.”

The Beta station. Where she had started. Where the mysteries were thicker than the ice. And just like always, Terrance gave away no clue as to what waited there.

But he knew. She could see the worry. The uncertainty. He knew. And now he was returning to the very place that could explain everything.

Not that he would tell her.

Three

AREINA TAPPED THE screen on her tablet over and over, but it wouldn’t turn on. The battery had finally run down.

Drat. She was supposed to finish her report.

Since the power was still out, the school was still closed. Terrance had left her with the warning that she’d better use the extra time to revise and edit that report, but it was hard to focus with him out of the station, potentially in danger.

He’d told her there was nothing there. That she shouldn’t worry about what was before, only what was now. That would have been easier if now didn’t include the taunts of her peers and the stares of her elders. Like she didn’t quite belong here. Like they knew something she didn’t and refused to tell her.

And now Terrance had gone back to the very place he’d told her to forget. She felt sick at the thought of losing him to the same ghosts that had eaten her past. He was all she’d ever had, the only family she’d ever known. The only one who’d ever accepted her as part of their little community, who never saw her as “other” the way her peers—and even the other scientists—did.

What would happen to her if he didn’t return?

She shoved the tablet aside. Terrance had been gone a full day already, but she’d been too anxious to look at the notebook again. But now the tablet was dead, and there would be no charging it until the power came back or the commander figured something out. There were no other distractions.

She looked out toward the desk, visible where she had her curtain pulled back. She could see the notebook she’d been snooping around, its corner still sticking out of the stack where she’d hastily stashed it before he left.

She swung her feet over the side of her bed, her socks soft on the floor and protecting her from the cold that had seeped into the hab with the loss of the power. A strand of hair fell in front of her face as she moved, glowing into the darkness, and her heart leapt. Had it gotten brighter? Quickly, she tucked it back behind her ear where she couldn’t see.

She padded across the floor silently, even though she was home alone. Then, she grabbed the notebook out of the stack and scurried back to her corner of the hab where the light was bright enough to read. Luckily, the battery on her lantern lasted much longer than the one in her tablet.

Settling back into her bed and pulling her blanket around her shoulders, she ran a hand over the cover of the notebook, feeling the wrinkled edges of the labels and the heavy history and hard work the book had been through.

Areina flipped open the cover and scanned the first pages. She skimmed past the issue information—the person who’d issued the notebook to Terrance, the date, all those little regulatory details the Agency back on Earth required—and the table of contents and went straight to the first page of actual data. It was set up as a field journal, the first page laying out the purpose of the entire book: investigate the communications silence from Station Beta.

She flipped the page, skimming over more background information and details that seemed irrelevant until finally arriving at the first page mentioning the station itself. She skipped the details at the top like the date and coordinates; she knew those already.

We arrived at the station at 0832, Earth EST time. The lights were dark and power systems were down. Cartwright approached first, unlocking the airlock with the manual control and master key, and we followed her inside.

Wait... Cartwright? As in... Bryce’s mom?

Well that was new information. Areina shuddered. So now Bryce’s family was involved in her past, too? Could that have anything to do with how mean Bryce always was to her?

What did Dr. Cartwright see?

Birds called from the planted forest, but there was no other sound. The generators were definitely down, but if the birds were any indication, whatever had affected the power did not affect the wildlife in the biosphere.

Since we entered on the far side of the dome, we followed the road through the fields to the settlement, but even the fields were empty of activity. The machinery was still between the rows, the plants unmoving without a wind to stir them.

We made it to the settlement about thirty minutes after reaching the dome, and from all appearances, it was completely abandoned—

A knock pounded on the hab door, and Areina jumped, dropping the notebook on the floor with a loud slap. Her heart slammed into her sternum, and she froze, closing her eyes to gather herself.

The knock pounded again, and she took a deep breath. Opening her eyes, she reached down to collect the notebook, setting it back on the desk. Before whoever it was could knock again, she quickly crossed the hab and pulled the door open with the manual release, straining to pull the heavy metal to the side before leaning around to peer outside.

“Areina?” Dr. Cartwright leaned to see her the same way she did. “I’m here to check in on you. How are you doing?”

Areina peered past Dr. Cartwright, trying to get a glimpse of anyone else out and about. Nearly twenty meters behind her neighbor, Bryce stood with arms crossed, staring up at Jupiter through the dome’s ceiling. Dr. Cartwright seemed distant, disconnected, as if she didn’t really care how Areina was faring, and Bryce looked like he’d rather be out in Europa’s radiation and freezing cold than checking in on his neighbor.

She returned her gaze to Dr. Cartwright. “I’m fine, but my tablet’s dead.”

Dr. Cartwright frowned. “Did you finish your report?”

Jupiter’s storm, did Terrance tell her everything?

She pressed her lips together and shook her head slightly. She was saved from answering as the radio on Dr. Cartwright’s hip suddenly squawked into the still air of the village. Areina’s ears pricked, and she listened intently in case it was any news about Terrance’s expedition.

“Cartwright and Levinson, report to command. Repeat, Cartwright and Levinson, report to command.”

There was something behind the commander’s voice, a tension taught as the strings on Terrance’s violin.

Something was wrong. And since nothing inside the station had changed, that probably meant...

Terrance.

Dr. Cartwright pulled the radio up to acknowledge receipt, then briefly turned back to Areina. “I’ll see what I can do about getting your battery charged. In the meantime, let me know if you need any help with food or the hab, okay?”

Areina nodded, but her thoughts were kilometers away, out on the jagged, dangerous ice with Terrance. Could he be in danger even now? She had to know more!

And there was one way she could find out. Standing right in front of her. Areina bit her lip. Dr. Cartwright would never tell her, though. She’d have to find out on her own.

“Good. I’ll check in later.” And then Dr. Cartwright turned and jogged toward the command center. Bryce started to follow her, but even Areina could tell when he was dismissed with a stern finger stabbed toward his own hab.

She waited at the door, watching for several long moments as they both vanished, then quickly ran back to the mudroom for her outerwear. She shoved her feet in her boots and her arms through her coat sleeves, then followed as quickly and quietly as she could. Dr. Cartwright was going where there was more information on Terrance.

No one was out in the village, everyone either hunkered down in their own habs or out tending the fields and research labs set up around the station. Still, she kept her guard up, intent on avoiding any questioning or delays.

Her heart raced. Whatever was up, she could feel it had something to do with the scavenging mission, though if someone had asked her she wouldn’t have been able to explain why she thought so.

She made it to command undetected and slipped in through one of the side doors that led to the community spaces. Dr. Cartwright was out of sight, but if she’d been called by the commander, chances were good they were in the command hub.

Where she didn’t have access.

But Areina knew a thing or two about the command center. She ducked around behind a stack of crates filled with backup computer parts and knelt in front of the vent to a duct. She pried open the vent and squeezed through, making her way along the ductwork in the general direction of the center until she could hear Commander Zheng’s voice. She stopped there, worried she might make too much noise if she got any closer. But from here, she could just barely see their forms through a secured grate in the ceiling over them. Her stomach sank at the huddle of scientist and sentries around the commander—definitely not a good sign.

“The radios cut out three hours ago, and we lost the feed an hour ago,” Commander Zheng was saying. “We haven’t been able to get it back. We haven’t hit the critical mark yet, but the icequake was big enough that we may need to send out a search party soon.”

“What about the girl?” one of the scientists asked. “When do we tell her?”

Areina’s heart flopped. Did he mean her?

Commander Zheng shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we know for sure. I don’t want her to worry if it’s just a glitch or interference. If Terrance’s team really didn’t make it through the last quake, then we’ll take care of it.”

The commander’s words grew fuzzy, staticky. Terrance’s team. They did mean her. Something had happened out there, another icequake, and now the scavenging team had lost contact.

Areina blinked hard against the burning in her eyes as tears fought to fall. Sparks danced in her vision. What would happen to her if he really was gone?

She shook her head, trying to clear it. No, it couldn’t be. But from the sound of it, they weren’t planning on sending help yet.

Terrance could be gone by then, for sure.

Areina pushed herself back out of the duct, then slid back out into the cold of the station, racing back to her hab without really seeing or hearing anything around her.

Four

AREINA SLAMMED THE door behind her and fell back against it, heart pounding, world spinning out of control.

Everything was falling apart.

She slid to the ground and forced herself to take a few deep breaths, to ground herself in the reality of where she was. She was home, in the hab. The air was cold, but not as frigid as outside. There was still no power.

Her skin glowed with the same sickly yellow as when the first icequake struck.

She closed her eyes, shaking her head lightly. One thing at a time, and that one thing had to be Terrance now.

So what did she actually know? Well, one, Terrance and the scavenging party had fallen out of contact with the station. But it hadn’t been that long yet. Two, the commander would send another party soon to try to find them. Three, it was dangerous out there, and no one really knew what existed beyond the dome, even after living here for twenty years.

Wasn’t that always part of Terrance’s research? Figuring out if life existed here, somewhere deep below the ice, in the great brine ocean? Or even out among the ice. From the stars. Anything.

And what had he found in all that time? Nothing, that she knew of. And she’d never know, not while all the field notes were classified and returned to Earth without distributing them around the station. Maybe more of the adults knew, but it certainly wasn’t a lesson at any time in her last fifteen years.

What if he had found something? What if there were creatures beyond the dome, and what if those creatures were responsible for the disappearance?

She shook her head again. No. Occam’s razor, right? The simplest answer was probably the right one.

And that simplest answer, at least the way she could see it now, was that the ice had opened beneath the party and swallowed them whole.

Tears pricked her eyes, and she collapsed forward on her knees, burying her face in her arms. Had she lost everything?

***

EVENTUALLY, AREINA’S STOMACH grumbled, and she forced herself to uncurl from where she’d collapsed at the door. Her eyes had mostly adjusted by now, and she could make out every line of the furniture, every small emergency light reminding her the power was down. Those small lights were the only electricity they’d been able to restore to the habs.

Including a light next to the door where they received station messages. It must be on the emergency circuits.

Sniffling, she turned to the small amber light and felt for the button. But even as her fingers explored the panel, her eyes grew sharper, the outlines of the panel brighter.

She could... see? In this dark?

She froze, fingers poised over the message replay button. She’d been glowing as long as she could remember, but this was new. Now she could see in the dark?

She touched one luminescent hand to her temple. All this mystery and uncertainty was really giving her a headache. Trying not to give it another thought, she stabbed the message button.

“This is a message for all residents,” the commander’s tinny, recorded voice said over the speaker. “You may know by now that the station power is still down. To ensure everyone is properly cared for during this dangerous time, hot food will be served at the station command’s all-purpose room, and social games will be provided. Students are encouraged to bring their electronics to charge so that lessons may resume as soon as possible. Solar generators will be available for this purpose. I request all residents to check in before Phase 2 and 1500 hours Europa time. Thank you.”

Areina flipped her wrist over to see her station-issued watch. It flashed both the Earth hour and the Europa hour, a system the station had implemented to keep up with mission command on Earth and to regulate the station time regardless of Europa’s day, which was much longer than Earth’s, something the human body hadn’t adapted to. They’d split the Europa day into multiple phases to accommodate the eighty-five-hour day, but the station still functioned on a twenty-four-hour cycle. Even the kids had to know Earth times for their eventual communications with their home planet.

She had fifteen minutes left to check in. With a sigh, she grabbed her tablet and turned back to the door to yank it open. All her gear was still on, since she’d never made it more than a few steps past the door.

As she made her way toward station command for the second time that day, Areina scrubbed at her face, trying to remove all traces of her tears. If Bryce or the others caught on to how upset she’d been, she could only imagine the teasing.

Outside was still just as quiet as it had been earlier, the hum of the power banks too silent, though now she could at least hear the smaller, lower buzz of the solar generators. They weren’t providing quite as much as the geothermal generators did, but as the commander had said, it was enough to get them charged up and serve everyone a hot meal.

A few other residents were still trickling toward the all-purpose room, and Areina let out a relieved breath. She wasn’t last, and she wouldn’t be going in alone, at the mercy of whichever of her classmates might be there.

As she approached the door, she offered some of her neighbors a tight, forced smile and followed them straight for the check-in station. Then, following her nose, she headed for the small buffet that had been set up at one end of the room. Someone had provided plenty of staples and warm, filling dishes, like oatmeal and pasta and dough filled with potatoes and spices they’d been able to grow in the dome. There was even some macaroni and cheese left, one of her favorites.

Much better fare than what she’d have had in her own hab: cold grains or bread.

As she piled food onto her plate and poured herself a glass of water—purified from the station’s desalinators, which apparently were still up and running, thankfully—she surveyed the room. People were clustered around small tables or on cushions on the floor, many of them scientists gesturing to their tablets or notebooks, deep in conversation and debate.

And then her eyes fell on her peers, all of them gathered around Bryce as he told them a story, gesturing wildly with his arms. As if he could feel her gaze on him, he met her eyes and smirked, like he already knew about Terrance.

Maybe he did. Maybe everyone already knew. Maybe they were all just too nice or felt too awkward to say anything to her.

But that certainly wouldn’t apply to Bryce.

“Areina,” came a voice behind her. She turned to see her teacher. “Glad you made it out. I was beginning to wonder... Never mind.” He gestured toward her grouped peers. “The charging station for students is set up over there. Why don’t you go join the others? We can get a game going soon or something.”

Leave it to Mr. Carmichael to try to make them get along. Still, she found herself nodding and taking her food and her tablet to the grouped students. Hopefully all traces of her tears were long gone by now. She took a place on the edge of the circle, trying to stay out of anyone’s attention, and set her tablet on the charging station. The battery symbol flashed to life, telling her it was eating just like she was about to.

“Well, well,” came a cold voice. “If it isn’t the resident freak.”

Areina raised her eyes slowly to meet Bryce’s icy blue eyes. A chill slithered down her spine, but she forced herself to sit up straighter despite the waves in her stomach. He still hadn’t gotten her back after she’d frozen his boots.

“If it isn’t the resident earthworm. Go eat dirt, Bryce.” Her words were bold, but could he hear the tremor in her voice?

He narrowed his eyes at her, but she picked up her fork and started eating. Maybe he’d leave her alone this time.

She hesitated a moment, fork halfway to her mouth. Would he really just go away?

To be safe, she scanned the room for adults. Their teacher was nowhere in sight, likely fetching whatever game he had mentioned, and none of the other adults were paying attention to the students.

Her stomach dropped.

She took another bite of her dinner without looking at her classmates, still stupidly optimistic. But before she’d gotten more than a few bites in, Bryce was suddenly in her face.

“What are you doing here, freak?” he snarled. “No one wants you here. Why don’t you go eat in the barns with the cows? They aren’t so picky.”

Areina paused. That was it? Some name calling? She shouldn’t respond, shouldn’t respond, shouldn’t... “Who needs to go to the barns when there’s a cow right here?”

So much for lying low.

Bryce leaned even closer, almost nose to nose with her now, and she forced her eyes up to his. “What did you just say to me?”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. “What, didn’t you hear me the first time?” Stop, don’t do it! “I called you a cow.”

Bryce pulled back so suddenly that she flinched. His face was calm. Too calm.

Stupid big mouth. Why couldn’t she just shut up once in a while?

The next thing she knew, Bryce was yanking her plate out of her hands and dropping it to the floor with a clatter. She sat completely still, fork still in hand, heart pounding furiously like the pumps on the desalinators.

“Oops,” Bryce said so softly that only she could hear. Then, louder, as the others in the room looked in their direction, “Oh, Areina! You’re so clumsy.”

The rest of the room, with varying reactions ranging from nothing to rolling eyes at children’s antics, went back to their conversations.

Bryce leaned back in, lowering his voice again. “Watch how you speak to me, or it won’t be so clean next time. And maybe think about being a little less obnoxious. After all...” He smirked. “You won’t have Terrance to protect you forever.”

Her heart thudded harder, blood roaring in her ears. Maybe she had deserved that one. But it was still a low blow. Terrance was out there, somewhere, and who knew what kind of trouble he was in?

Bryce went on, oblivious to the cold settling into her bones. “For all we know, he might already be gone. It’s been, what, ten hours since they lost contact? He’s probably dead below the ice, drowned in the brine.”

She caught her breath, hot tears pricking her eyes. Why’d he have to be so blunt about it?

“Of course,” he went on, “there’s always the possibility they just had an equipment failure. But how long do you really think they could survive out there, alone and lost? You might as well pack your bags now. You’re as good as orphaned. Again.”

Areina leapt to her feet. No, no, no! Terrance was fine. Would be fine. She wouldn’t be alone. Couldn’t be.

But what if Bryce was even a little bit right? And what if the commander didn’t act in time?

Maybe Areina could do something. Maybe she could find them. Bring them back. Could she risk waiting? Could she risk losing the only person who’d ever accepted her?

She spun on her heel and bolted toward the door, flying past the shocked silence of scientists and laborers and even her teacher, finally returning now that the bullying was already over. But none of it mattered.

She had to get home. Had to make a plan.

Had to save her father.

Five

AREINA GRUNTED AS she yanked on the door, cursing Jupiter, Neptune, and even poor Pluto in her desperation to get inside and prepare to leave the station.

Waiting could mean the end of her world.

Finally the door slid aside with a groan of screeching metal, and she tumbled inside. She ticked off items in her head, all the essentials she’d been taught she would need outside the station: a hab suit, provisions, solar generators, radio, and an icecar, the sleek vehicles that had been specially designed by a team of scientists and engineers back on Earth to cross the jagged ice and deep crevices of Europa.

The icecar would be the hardest. While she could use Terrance’s code to get into the station’s garage—a code he didn’t know she had—she would definitely have to steal one and get it through the airlock. The sentries were sure to notice the airlock opening—not to mention a car speeding past all the sentry posts on its way out.

She took a deep breath. It would have to be done. She would find a way.

Areina hurried around the hab, grabbing one of the protective backpacks that could store electronics and provisions alike, safe from the intense radiation and cold on the outside. She threw open the cupboard door and shoved emergency rations in first, then as much water as she thought she could reasonably carry to the garage. Her tablet was useless, still on the charger at command, but Terrance’s sat on the desk, and she dropped that in with the LED lantern she’d been using while the power was out. She froze at the desk, hand still on the lantern as her eyes fell on the notebook. Should she take that, too? Could she need it? What if he was already at the other station and something... weird... happened?

With only another moment’s hesitation, she snatched that, too, and shoved it in behind the tablet. Finally, she snagged the emergency kit from the wall and clipped it to the outside of the bag, then outfitted herself with her warmest gear.

Areina ran through her mental list one more time. She had everything she could get from the hab, and the rest should be stored in the icecar. Each one was fully stocked at all times for emergencies.

Her eyes fell on her wardrobe. While her suit would be appropriate for the cold temperatures outside, especially while she rode in the icecar, sometimes utility wasn’t everything. With a sigh at her sentimentality at a time such as this, she crossed to her part of the room and threw open her drawer. Sitting on top was the most extravagant thing she owned: a faux fur sweater with a high collar, one that had again belonged to Terrance’s wife, one he’d gone to great pains to have shipped from Earth. It was unnecessary and a little bulky, but... it would still fit inside the suit. And probably even keep her warmer.

Without giving herself a chance to change her mind, she threw it over her head and returned to her packed bag. With one final look around the hab, Areina stepped outside into the cold, pack on her back, and pulled the door closed. She re-engaged the lock, then ran around to the back of the hab, where it stood against a field of corn taller than her head. She slipped into the silent crop, letting the stalks hide her from the view of the village as she cut through on her way to the garage.

The entire station was far too quiet. Usually there was chatter, the clanking of tools, the buzz and hum of the generators.

Now, there was nothing except the occasional rustle from the animals roaming the forest outside the village and a few birds calling. The entire station was a self-contained ecosystem, each plant and animal carefully chosen to sustain itself indefinitely. While the early experiments into biospheres decades ago—no, nearly a hundred years now—failed, the issues had largely been worked out, the teams balanced with a variety of professions and specialties from farmers to scientists and engineers to surgeons and therapists. Everyone depended on each other to keep the gentle balance.

Her breath huffed out in a puff of steam. Obviously, given the station’s current status, the engineers hadn’t accounted for everything, at least not on Europa.

The stalks rustled around her, pieces cracking underfoot with too-loud snaps in the unnatural quiet of the station. Surely someone would hear her and come to investigate, maybe assuming she was one of the animals eating the crop.

But somehow, she made it through the field to the other side of the village undetected.

Areina slipped out of the field and toward the racks of tools and the sheds where the icecars were stored when not in use. There weren’t many of them to begin with, and one was already checked out with the scavenging team. Two more stood in the center of the garage compound in pieces, clearly in the middle of maintenance when the power went down, leaving only one shiny car ready for the taking.

She bit her lip, heart pounding, as she hesitated in the shadows. Was she really going to do this? Steal an icecar and leave the station with no functional vehicles?

Her skin prickled, like she could feel eyes on her from somewhere, and she slowly spun in place, surveying her surroundings. The mechanic was nowhere to be seen, probably huddled in her own hab. A sentry paced along the other side of the garage, but he didn’t seem to notice her.

“What are you doing?”

Areina jumped and spun to face the voice. “Bryce?”

Bryce crossed his arms and glared at her. “What are you doing?” he repeated.

She rolled her eyes. There was no time for this. She had to snag the icecar and get out of the station before anyone else showed up.

“None of your business,” she snapped, voice low. She turned back to the compound, ducking down behind a crate of spare parts. The sentry was gone. Perfect.

“We’re supposed to stay at our habs.”

“No one cares, Bryce.”

For a moment he was blessedly quiet. That moment was far too short. “Is this about Terrance?”

She snapped her head around to glare at him. “Didn’t I say it was none of your business? Get out of here already.”

“Not until you tell me what you’re doing!”

Instead of answering, Areina stepped out from behind the crates and dashed toward the icecar. She didn’t have any keys to worry about, but hopefully the car wasn’t locked with a code she didn’t have.

A boot scuffed on the dirt behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder. Bryce was on her heels.

“If this is about Terrance, what do you even think you could do about it?” he hissed.

She didn’t bother answering. Instead, she darted around the car where the door stood, thankfully on the opposite side of the car from where the sentry had disappeared. Her heart pounded so loud she could barely hear Bryce behind her, but he was still there. Just like always. Ready for a rude comment or an insult.

She turned her attention to the door, hoping he’d get bored and leave. A futile wish, but a girl could dream, right?

Her heart stuttered. He was more likely to call the sentry over.

Areina pulled the panel open to expose the door’s handle, recessed to protect it from breaking in the extreme landscape outside.

She grabbed the handle and twisted, yanking on the door just as the sentry reappeared on the other side of the shed.

“Hey!” he yelled.

How had he seen her? But even as she formed the thought, she knew the answer.

Bryce. Standing in the middle of the garage like he hadn’t a care in the world.

“Argh!” She gave the door another tug and leapt inside, dropping her pack on the floor and sliding into the driver’s seat.

The car rocked as Bryce jumped in after her.

“No, absolutely not!” she hissed, trying to remember the instructions for operating the car. They’d learned in their engineering class last year, as an emergency measure, but none of them had really gotten a chance to put it into practice. “Get out!”

The sentry’s steps pounded across the compound, sending up small puffs of dust. He’d be here any second.

Areina growled low in her throat, unsure what to do. She couldn’t remember the ignition sequence!

She pounded the dashboard in front of her in frustration, and a shock passed from her to the console in a spark of white light. She jolted back, pulling her hands away, but the car roared to life, the lights flicking on one after another before her.

Did she do that?

The sentry was less than ten meters away now.

“Areina, seriously,” Bryce said, voice low. “You’re some kind of stupid, aren’t you? Just what do you think you’re going to do? Gallantly ride to your dad’s rescue? Newsflash: not even the commander knows where they are!”

She shook her head, glaring ahead. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find them.” She glanced over at him. “Either get out or shut the door!”

“What?”

She gripped the wheel and pressed her foot down on the pedal. The car swerved as she aimed it for the road that led to the largest airlock. The sentry leapt out of the way, and Bryce nearly tumbled out as she spun the car around, but somehow he hung on. Unfortunately. Also unfortunately, he slammed the door closed instead of jumping out.

“You’re going to be in so much trouble when they catch you!”

“They’re not going to catch me,” she mumbled under her breath, pushing the pedal down closer to the floor.

She steered down the road at breakneck speed, hoping none of the fauna was unlucky enough to jump out in front of her. But they made it across the compound without incident, arriving at the airlock before the sentry could find anything to chase them with.

Areina turned her attention back to the dashboard as she brought the car to a stop outside the door. Which button opened the airlock?

Before she could even finish the thought, one of the buttons depressed, and the inner door of the airlock whooshed open.

Bryce’s eyes went wide. “How did you do that?”

Areina’s heart stuttered again. “Do what?” she said innocently, even though she had the same exact question.

She pulled the icecar into the airlock and pressed the button again. The door shut, and air rushed around them, pouring back into the station. The thermometer on the dash dropped steadily as the environment slowly adjusted to match the outside.

Faces appeared on the other side of the airlock door, but they were too late. The process had already started, and they were on their way. They’d be long gone before anyone could even don one of the environmental suits that would be needed outside.

Finally the rush of air around the icecar stopped, and the outer door opened. As one, Bryce and Areina turned their eyes to the bright ice outside.

Six

THE WORLD OUTSIDE the dome was one Areina had only seen a handful of times, despite being a native Europan, living in the station her entire life. The settlement was toward the center of the station, leaving them only with a view of the endless black sky and the enormous sphere of Jupiter overhead.

Here, it was completely different. Ice stretched in every direction to the horizon, bright blue-white against the black of the sky. Small ridges, only a few meters high, covered the ground, and the ice was streaked with yellow and red, deposits of minerals embedded in the ice. There was basically no atmosphere, so the only motion came from occasional shifts in the ice and sudden plumes of water erupting from cracks in the ice in the distance. Even Jupiter looked different without the dome’s filtering light; it was more vibrant and dangerous-looking, looming above them like a vengeful god.

It was dangerous out here, too. At any moment, the ice could crack beneath them, the plumes hit the icecar and send them flying.

Was that what had happened to the scavenging party?

Areina shook her head lightly, gripping the wheel. There was no time to wonder. Only to search. It was only a matter of time until the commander found a way to send someone out here after them.

“Now what, genius?” Bryce snapped.

Areina glared back at where he lounged in the other seat, arms crossed over his chest. “Hey, I never asked you to come. So you can keep your comments to yourself.”

He pushed himself forward, hands on his knees. “I wasn’t going to come! But someone needed to keep an eye on the station’s resident freak!”

Areina flinched and turned back to the front, pushing the pedal to the floor. “Better a freak than a jerk.”

But her words were weak, too quiet. Terrance had told her that countless times, that it was better to be considered weird than hurtful, but the words rang hollow now that she actually said them herself. Her heart wrenched, stomach sick as she thought of Terrance. If he was gone...

She shook her head and focused on the horizon. She just wanted to get a few kilometers away from the station, then she could pull up the navigation screen and get them headed in the direction of Station Beta. That way, hopefully no one would be able to take over control of the icecar, a built-in safety feature each car had.

And if they were lucky, they’d find the missing party along the way to the derelict station.

Bryce was still prattling on about how stupid she was, how no one liked her, how she was going to get in so much trouble that they’d ship her to Earth, blah, blah, blah. Why had he even bothered to follow her? Was it really just about “keeping an eye on her” as he’d said?

Or could there be more to it?

Areina did her best to keep her eyes on the ice and the dash, keeping them from hitting any large ridges or crevices. The icecar was equipped with a hybrid system that allowed it to roll along the ice on spiked wheels and hover over deep cracks, keeping the rig relatively stable, but there was always the chance they’d hit something too big for the car to handle.

Finally, the station was more than two kilometers back, and she slowed the icecar to a stop. Bryce hadn’t stopped ranting at her the entire drive, and her jaw was beginning to ache with how much she was clenching it.

“And another thing,” Bryce continued. “People might like you a little better if you at least tried—”

Unable to tolerate another word, she whirled around, her hair fanning out through the air behind her. “I didn’t ask,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Now, I’m not taking you back, and I’m not going back. So are you going to shut up, or am I dumping you here for the commander to find?”

Bryce paled and looked out the window nearest him, the bright white ice reflecting in his eyes. He swallowed and mumbled something under his breath..

She held up a hand to her ear dramatically. “What’s that?”

He glared at her. “I said, I want to go with you.”

She blinked. “You want to go with me? What, so you can report back on my every move? So I can get in as much trouble as possible?”

He just shrugged, looking away. He was definitely hiding something. And the way he had paled looking out at the ice, the way he finally grew quiet, the way his hand trembled ever so slightly... For all the mean things Bryce said, the way he chased her throwing rocks at the station, he was just like any other kid. He was scared to be out here.

So was she.

“Okay then,” she said, turning back to the dashboard. “You can either sit there quietly, or you can help me figure out this system.”

He crossed his arms again and sat back, looking away, his face stormy.

“Fine.” Areina squinted at the controls, trying to block out his moping.

She took a deep breath, wishing she’d been able to dump him at the station before she left. But just like always, he was exactly where he shouldn’t have been. Always poised to ruin things for her.

Like the time she tried to leave Terrance a surprise present from school and Bryce smashed it during a pickup game of kickball in the village.

Or when some of the other students caught her sneaking berries from one of the garden patches and he ratted her out to the commander.

Or when she’d failed an Earth history test and he’d managed to snag her result and post it to every screen in the station.

She tapped at the navigation screen while she pondered what to do. She couldn’t take him back without risking her own journey, and if she left him here, he’d die before anyone got to him.

Which meant he was coming along. Which, for some reason, was exactly what he wanted.

The screen flared to life, showing her a top-down view of Europa’s surface around them, bright white with black grid lines. A green dot in the bottom left of the screen was marked with the Station Alpha symbol, and on the far right, almost off the screen, was a grayed-out dot representing the dead station. Beta.

Her birthplace. Her biggest mystery.

From here, it would take half the day, if she was careful. Only a few hours if she wasn’t. But with a search for the scavenging party, it might be even slower. She couldn’t afford to miss any of the ever-shifting cracks and crevices.

Areina tapped the location of the station on the screen, and the coordinates filled the screen as the computer plotted a course. Finally the blinking stopped, and the route appeared in front of her.

“I really hope this is the way they went,” she mumbled, preparing to press down on the accelerator.

But then the dashboard blinked again, lights flashing on and off intermittently, and the screen began recalculating, the previous route disappearing. Areina froze, watching the computer chart a new course across the ice toward Station Beta. What did it mean? Did it somehow... read her thoughts? Her wishes?

The dashboard had responded to her earlier, too, when she’d struggled to remember how to operate the icecar. Could this somehow be related to the glowing?

Her heart fluttered, and her stomach quaked. What was happening to her?

“Did the ice finally freeze you?” Bryce cut into her anxiety, not noticing how the controls responded to Areina. “Or are you going to start this thing before we both freeze to death?”

She didn’t dignify him with a response, instead gathering herself and clutching the wheel tighter. Hopefully she didn’t drive them both into a crack in the moon. She didn’t much feel like adding drowning to her ways to die out here.

With one final deep breath, she aimed them in the direction the computer indicated and pressed her foot to the pedal.

The ice sped by on either side, rattling the car with each small rill, Jupiter hanging above them. Occasionally she hit a hill a little harder than normal, jarring her teeth in her skull, but eventually the rough ride evened out and she hardly noticed.

Areina glanced back over her shoulder at her unwanted companion. He sat with his eyes firmly fixed out the window, looking a little green. She simply turned forward, smirking.

She followed the route on the screen for what felt like hours, watching the distance slowly close between them and the other station. Each icy outcropping and deep crevice melted into the next, and everything began to blur together. Now and then, a plume of water vapor would explode from the ice in the distance, but never close enough to affect them or alter the icecar’s path.

But then a bright flash of neon green poked out from the ice, and Areina instinctively slammed on the brakes.

Green in this land of white, blue, and sulfur yellow? That could only mean one thing: they’d found evidence of the scavenging party.

“Hey, what gives?” Bryce protested as he slammed into the safety harness. “I guess your driving is as good as your social skills.”

“Still better than your hygiene,” she couldn’t help but grumble back.

She could practically hear his eyes roll, but his voice was slightly less snippy than normal when he said, “What is it?”

Areina fought her own harness for a moment, fumbling for the latch with shaking fingers. “Something man-made in the ice.”

“Man-made?”

The harness came away with a clatter, and she lunged from her seat for the suits hanging in the back of the car. Her heart pounded, and she practically gasped for air as she imagined what could possibly be out there.

Was it a lost piece of survival gear? Maybe a bit of trash lost by the party?

A body?

She shook the thought from her head. There was no point worrying about finding a body when she had no way to know yet.

Bryce suddenly appeared next to her, reaching for another suit.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m not staying in here by myself,” he responded.

He grabbed a suit and began buckling in. With shaking hands, she snapped and zipped and tucked into her own suit. Finally, they both put their helmets on and entered the small built-in airlock, the icecar conserving as much of the air as possible.

It seemed to take ages for the car to pull the air from the airlock, each second ticking by for eons as Areina’s mind raced with every possibility. Bryce watched her, his face carefully scrubbed of emotion. What was going on behind that stare? Was he just scared, or did it have something to do with the real reason he’d followed her, the reason she was beginning to suspect had nothing to do with her?

Whatever his reason, he was still treating her the same as always: like the resident freak. He couldn’t see past her glow to the person she actually was, and the more time she spent with him out here, the more confused she felt about the whole thing. They should be friends; they were the same age, lived through the same things. Yet, not only did he refuse to be her friend, but he also actively kept her from making any other friends.

It was because of him that she was alone.

But still... there was a glimmer of something she almost recognized under the bravado, something the trip out here on the ice was slowly chipping open.

Just when she felt like she couldn’t take the wait any longer, the outer door slid open to reveal the frozen landscape. Since the atmosphere was so thin, there was nothing stirring. Not a breath of air blowing like it did in the station, no sound but the groaning of the ice underfoot.

She couldn’t get away from Bryce fast enough, away from his brooding and her confusion over him.

Her stomach flopped as she took her first step onto the ice, the spikes on the bottom of the boot crunching in to give her a firm foothold. Suddenly the fear she had for her father was overwhelmed by her fear of the ground underfoot—kilometers of ice on top of a seemingly endless deep brine sea.

At any moment, the ice could shift again, and they could be lost to that sea.

Somehow, even though the risk wasn’t any lower inside the icecar, it seemed more real out here with nothing surrounding them. It was just Areina, Bryce, and an endless expanse of restless ice.

She took a deep, shaky breath. Terrance needed her.

And then she took another step away from the car and toward the out-of-place green object sitting in the ice.

The ground out in the open was a lot more difficult to navigate than the ground in the station, and she was out of breath within a few meters of the car. Each step required her to navigate over and around all the jagged ridges and cracks. Luckily, they’d managed to stop in an area without any of the deep crevices that spiderwebbed around the planet. Those would have been more difficult to navigate.

A water vapor plume burst to life less than two hundred meters away, directly in their line of sight, and she leapt back. Gasping, she held a hand over her fluttering heart.

Her radio crackled to life in her ear. “We should really go back to the car,” came Bryce’s voice. “This isn’t safe!”

Irritated, she glared back over her shoulder. “Do you really think we’re any safer there?”

“It’s not the same!” he said. “Out here we could just disappear into the ice and no one would ever know!”

“That could still happen in the car,” she said, her anger building again. She stared at him, and his mouth twitched, as if he was dying to say something but unsure.

He hesitated, staring at her with a glimmer of pity and anger. Don’t say it. Don’t.

“That’s probably what happened to the party, you know,” he continued.

For a moment, all she could do was stare at him. Then the world went white as something in her snapped, and she whirled on the ice, spikes digging into the ground and helping her launch her body directly at Bryce. All her careful preparation, all her fear—it was gone in the face of her anger and worry over Terrance. She’d been successfully avoiding thoughts of the endless ways he could have died out here.

And now Bryce was reminding her. Making her face the truth.

“Take it back!” she shrieked, angry tears burning in her eyes. “You don’t know anything!”

Vision blinded by her tears, she threw punch after punch at him. Each blow landed with a bone-jarring thud, but the impact was lessened by the padding that protected the suit’s wearer from the intense radiation of the Europan environment.

Bryce threw his arms up, trying to ward off the blows, but she’d had enough of his snarky comments. He wasn’t even supposed to be here!

“If—” Punch. “You—” Punch. “Don’t—” Punch. “Have—” Punch. “Anything useful—” Punch. “To say—”

Bryce lunged toward her, pushing her backward and off balance. They went skidding across the ice, the rough ridges slamming into Areina’s back painfully.

“Would you stop for a second?” Bryce yelled, trying to stop her still flailing arms. He finally grabbed hold of her wrists, but her anger was stronger than him.

She bucked under his hold, throwing them both to the side and tumbling along the hard, cold ground again. Something caught on a particularly sharp piece of ice, and a loud rippp made them both freeze.

It only took a moment for the alarm to start blaring in Areina’s suit. She was leaking breathable air into the almost nonexistent atmosphere.

She snapped her head around to the icecar. It was a good twenty meters off by now, after their tumble across the ground. She turned her head to the fluorescent green in the ice. It was just as far away. At the rate her suit was leaking, she’d never make it to the object and back to the car before she lost air. Not at the rate the airlock functioned.

But she had to get it.

She shoved Bryce off her and ran toward the green as the air grew thinner inside her suit. As the air rushed out, the cold seeped in, encasing her in a shell of frigid air. Each breath turned to a gasp, her legs growing heavy as she approached.

She was almost out of air.

“Areina, what are you doing?” Bryce tugged her arm, but she shook him off. “We have to go back and get you a different suit. Or let me get that thing and you go back!”

Go back? When she was this close to knowing what it was? She wouldn’t even be in this situation if it hadn’t been for him and his big fat mouth! And after all he’d done to her over the years... How could she just leave it to him?

“No!” she gasped. “You go back!”

He kept tugging, and she kept resisting, each breath shallower than the last. Each ridge in the ice seemed taller with every step she took, but eventually her body seemed to block out the pain and lack of oxygen. She barely even felt her body anymore.

Just a few more steps.

The green reappeared below her staticky vision, its vibrant color almost gray against the white of the ice.

She didn’t have much longer.

Areina dropped down beside the object, reaching for it with her still gloved hands. She nearly cried as she saw what it was.

Nothing more than a fragment of an old satellite.

Seven

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.

Eight

AREINA PUSHED OUT of the driver’s seat, gripping the handles overhead to brace herself against the wild slant of the floor. The icecar trembled like the ice was still shifting beneath them—all the more reason to figure out what the heck was going on and get them out of this. But one look out the window confirmed what the lack of traction under the wheels had started: the only way they were getting free was on foot. Even worse, one glance down showed her nothing but a yawning chasm toward the deep brine sea, so deep and dark she couldn’t see the bottom even with the extreme slant of the car.

She’d stopped the car once. Could she do it again?

She closed her eyes, trying to imagine the car floating back up to the surface, trying to dislodge the car with a shake.

It seemed to have the opposite effect, instead sinking further into the ice. She couldn’t stop it, at least not without practicing whatever this new ability was.

The car was going to fall. They had to get out.

“Get your suit on,” Areina demanded.

Bryce jumped to his feet. “What? Why? You want to abandon the car? We’ll die out there!”

“We’ll die in here!” Areina didn’t spare him a glance, instead digging for a backup suit in the storage bins.

As if to emphasize her point, the metal of the car groaned.

“I thought you could stop it!” he said.

She shook her head once, fiercely. “I can’t. Not yet. I can’t control it. I don’t even know how I did it in the first place!”

Bryce finally sprang into action, resecuring his helmet and stuffing as many emergency supplies into a bag as possible, mimicking Areina.

The car shuddered as they stepped into the airlock. Would they make it out in time?

“We have to blow the hatch,” Areina said, eyes locked on the door.

“What?” Bryce cried. “You’re crazy! We can’t—”

She whirled on him. “It’s that or die! Which do you prefer? Because I’m pretty sure we won’t last much longer in here.”

Before he could protest any more, she slammed her hand against the emergency release button.

Air blasted from the car, sending them grasping for handles and anything they could grab so as not to lose their balance or fall into the chasm below.

Once the air had stabilized with what was outside, Areina said, “Let’s go!”

She didn’t wait to hear the tinny reply through the electronic headset, didn’t give herself time to wonder if Bryce would follow. If he wanted to live, he’d be right behind her.

Pulling herself toward the edge of the open emergency door, she peered out at the wall of ice currently wedging the car in the crack. How long would it hold? How long until the ice shifted yet again and sent them all plummeting to the brine?

Don’t look down, she coached herself. Don’t look down!

And then, like she heard a siren call she couldn’t resist, she looked down.

The crack was kilometers deep, so deep that the light faded before it reached the bottom. It was impossible to tell if the bottom held more solid ice or the chaotic waters of the Europan ocean.

Then there was the possibility that they were above a hydrothermically active area, that it was only moments until another vapor plume struck. After all, one had literally just hit them.

Her stomach lurched, heart fluttering into her throat as shaking took over her hands. She couldn’t even imagine all the ways this crack could kill them. She had to concentrate. Try to keep her panic at bay.

She shook her head, refocusing on the ice. Don’t think about the bottom of the pit, don’t think about all the potentially grisly ways to die out here. One small step at a time. The first step was just to find a way out of the crack.

The ice was jagged and rough along the walls, split in uneven ridges and pits where it had cracked, but many of the cracks were vertical—not good hand- or footholds.

Areina looped one arm through the wide handle so she could look at the controls on her opposite arm. The suit had plenty of built-in ways to address the harsh world outside the dome, but did she remember any of them? No. Not while she was panicking so much. Not while her hands trembled too much to press any of the buttons.

A hand appeared in front of her helmet, tapping at a few of the glowing buttons on her arm. She looked up, meeting Bryce’s icy eyes.

“Use the ice spikes,” he said. His voice was tight, but if he was panicking, he hid it better than she did.

A ting echoed through her helmet’s air as the spikes on the bottom of her boots deployed. Okay, so that was one problem solved. She’d be able to scramble up the side of the wall.

But how were they going to pull themselves up without handholds?

It seemed Bryce had the answer to that, as well. He flipped open one of the smaller storage lockers and pulled out a pair of ice picks, fastened together with magnets. He handed them over to her, then grabbed a second pair.

“Do you know how to do this?” she said, pulling the picks apart.

“Nope.”

Her eyes grew wide, and she snapped her gaze to the wall again. “Are you sure about this?”

“Also nope.”

Before she could protest any more, he took a running start and leapt off the edge of the car’s platform, aiming for the wall only a few feet away. For several long moments, he almost seemed suspended in the air. Areina held her breath, watching, afraid to look away.

The picks struck the ice with a resounding crunch, loud even despite the thin atmosphere. Bryce clung to the ice by the picks and the spikes in his boots, precariously dangling above the empty space below.

He turned slightly so she could see his face though the helmet. He half smiled at her, but how long could he hold on? “Piece of cake,” came his breathless voice. “Your turn. I’m not waiting for you.”

He turned back to the wall and yanked his right pick out, slamming it into the ice an arm’s length higher, then pushing himself up from his spiked feet.

It looked so easy. Surely if Bryce could do it, so could she.

Areina took a deep breath of air she wasn’t even sure she needed anymore and took a running leap out of the car, picks poised to grab the wall like Bryce had done. The icecar shook under her steps, creaking and groaning where it was lodged in the ice. As her boot leapt off from the edge of the floor, the car gave one last shudder, then began collapsing.

She wasn’t clear. The car was plummeting, and she wasn’t clear of the stupid thing!

“Areina!” came Bryce’s terrified voice through the headset.

Pieces of debris and broken struts from the car rained down around her. She stepped on one side of a falling crate, hoping to give herself extra momentum to push off, but then a metal rod support descended toward her. It struck her in the shoulder, hard, and she cried out with the pain.

She had to keep going, though. If she didn’t get away from this metal deathtrap, she’d be the next thing falling into the black.

Gritting her teeth, she redirected toward the car, smacking debris out of the way with the ice picks. Her spiked boots connected with the roof as it careened downward, and she ran across the top of the car to pick up speed again. One, two, three... jump!

Was she finally clear? She hoped so, though she couldn’t take the time to check. All she could do was hurtle through the air, toward the wall once again, only now much deeper in the crevice than Bryce was.

Her stomach was in her throat as the car fell out from beneath her again. Only this time, she was in control of her trajectory, this time she had the force of her leap behind her.

With a rewarding crunch, her picks and spikes hit the ice, biting into it solidly.

She gasped, heart racing. She’d made it. Sort of.

Areina forced her eyes upward, toward the sky, toward Jupiter and Bryce and only partial safety. There was still a long way to go.

Bryce was still in motion above her, though she’d caught him watching. He’d only turned back to his own climb when she caught him staring with wide eyes. It took every ounce of her self-control not to snap, “What?” at him.

She needed to conserve her strength. She’d need it to get out of here in one piece.

Areina looked up at Bryce’s form so far above her. It seemed nearly impossible. But there was little choice left.

And so she climbed, one hand at a time, one step at a time. She couldn’t think beyond that, had to focus on the movements so she didn’t fall.

Eventually, it all blurred together: the repetitive motions, the strain on her muscles. Her mind started circling. She’d survived. And now she had other problems. Like what they were going to do now that they were on foot and farther from the station than she’d like, what they were going to do if Terrance wasn’t at Beta, and what Bryce would do now that the crisis had subsided.

Maybe... maybe what he’d said in their moments of panic and relief had been genuine. Maybe he truly was ready to let bygones be bygones. To start over.

And as much as Areina would have loved to pay him back for the years of misery only a day ago, now that seemed insignificant. Now, she just wanted to look forward.

And to do that, she had a feeling she needed to know her past. Bryce’s past. Everything that had been hidden from them for the past fifteen years.

Bryce made it to the top of the crack at least twenty minutes before Areina did, but finally, triumphantly, she plunged her ice picks into the last few meters and, with Bryce’s help, pulled herself free of the crack. She rolled over, muscles spent and aching.

How had she even made it so far? How hadn’t her muscles given out, collapsing into the jelly they felt like now?

She closed her eyes, blocking out the dark sky above and simply recovering. For the last—however long it had been, all she could think about was survival.

Eventually, she pushed herself up to a seated position and pulled her arm in front of her, tapping on the screen to try to bring up some kind of navigation. The suits had a lot built in, but how up to date were the systems? Could it pinpoint their location? Could it communicate with anyone back home?

“No,” Bryce said.

“What?” Areina blinked, looking over at him and lowering her arm.

“I said, no. The suits’ comm system won’t reach anyone at home. It’s too far.”

Areina pressed her lips together, heart racing again like she was back on the cliff. She hadn’t said anything. In fact, her question had barely been a thought.

But Bryce heard her. And didn’t seem to realize she hadn’t spoken.

She swallowed. More weird changes she didn’t want to think about. Not yet, at least. “Ah.”

Great. Monosyllables it was.

She turned back to her screen, trying to at least find their position. It took scrolling through several menus before a map finally filled her view.

They were less than three kilometers from Station Beta, closer than the last time she’d checked on the icecar’s navigation screen.

“We can make it,” she said, raising her eyes to the horizon. Luckily, they’d climbed out on the correct side of the crack. They could cover the last distance fairly easily, assuming there were no more setbacks.

Which was a pretty bold assumption, actually.

“What?” Bryce said, an unconscious mimic of how she’d responded only a moment earlier.

She turned, rising to her exhausted feet, legs shaking. “We can make it! We’re so close to Station Beta. There has to be something there that can help us! Another car, emergency supplies, a working comm, something!”

Not to mention the answers to both their questions.

Nine

THREE KILOMETERS DIDN’T sound like much until they were less than a kilometer in and shaking with every step. Even with the low gravity, after climbing out of the crack in the ice, navigating every ridge and rill took the last bits of energy Areina had.

She glanced over at Bryce. His gasps for air were loud in her headset, his own steps slow and clumsy. Both of them needed rest, needed a break. But if they stopped now, the suits might not last until they made it to safety.

Please, oh please, let Station Beta be functional.

Step after excruciating step, they inched closer to the abandoned station, hoping against hope for help, for safety, for rest. Areina stumbled several times, and Bryce managed to grab her most of them, holding her elbow until she was stable on her feet again. Once, Bryce slid down into a ditch, nearly tumbling head over heels. Areina managed to snag the back of his suit, and they slid down together, landing on their backs staring up at Jupiter and gasping for air.

They were both so, so tired.

“Just a little more,” Areina urged after they had lain there for several long minutes.

Bryce groaned, but he rolled to his knees, and they grasped arms, using each other to push to their feet and climb back out of the ditch in the ice.

Urging each other on despite their aching muscles, they pressed on. Neither of them spoke, too tired to voice the fact that if they stopped, they could very well die out here.

Finally, after what seemed like eons, the station was within a half kilometer—not really that far, if Areina thought about it. She walked more than that in an hour’s chores at home. They could surely make it just a little farther.

But as they approached the final stretch, a large ridge of ice appeared out of the repetitive blues and yellow of the surface ice, a ridge that hadn’t been apparent until they were basically on top of it.

Areina closed her eyes, suddenly ten times as exhausted as she had felt only moments before. They’d come all this way, survived the icecar’s loss, climbed out of a crack as deep as the ice sheet itself, and now they had to climb another wall?

It was almost too much to bear.

Bryce groaned again. Areina could have sworn she heard him... crying?

“Come on,” she said. “We’re almost there.”

“You said that an hour ago!” he moaned.

She rolled her eyes so hard it gave her a headache. “And we’re an hour closer, aren’t we?”

“Yeah. Closer,” he said, bending in half to rest his hands on his knees. “Closer to knowing the truth.”

“That’s right,” she said, hoping to urge him on. “The truth. The truth we both want to know.”

She caught her breath as she said it, looking away quickly as tears pricked her eyes, too hot in the freezing landscape. She blinked quickly as the last fifteen years assaulted her memory. She was spent past the point of exhaustion, and the demons that plagued her knew it.

She didn’t belong. She never should have survived. She should have died with everyone else.

Areina caught her breath at the ferocity of the last thought. Survivor’s guilt or something, but how often had the others told her the same thing? How many times had she tried forming a friendship only to have the other children shy back from her, as afraid as if she truly were a vengeful spirit from the other station?

Biting her lip, she spun away from him, the spikes in her boots biting deep into the ice. Then, she stormed straight for the ridge.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he said into the headset.

She didn’t bother answering, instead focusing on finding her first footholds, the lowest handholds. And despite his complaints, Bryce soon appeared next to her.

He placed a hand on her arm. “Hey. Areina. I said we’d do it together. I didn’t lie about that.”

She dropped back to the ground, suddenly afraid. “What if you don’t like what we find?”

He paused. “What do you mean?”

She looked back at him. “What if it is all true? What if... what if I did somehow kill everyone? What then?”

He looked away, and instead of answering, he began pulling himself up the ice. With a sigh, she followed.

He hadn’t answered her. But at least that was better than a cruel jibe.

Silently, they made their slow, agonizing way upward.

If she really had somehow killed everyone, Bryce might go right back to the bully he’d been before. And then what? What would she do if this one little glimmer of friendship was lost forever?

Could she even take it? Could she go back now that she’d tasted a normal life?

She reached up again, but instead of her gloved fingers meeting the vertical wall of ice again, her hand fell through the thin air. A small, morose smile broke across her face, and her body found the energy to scramble up the last few steps, back onto safe, solid ground.

And as she pulled herself over the edge, she caught her breath as the most wonderful sight she’d ever seen came into view: Station Beta. And a Station Alpha icecar parked just outside. The exact car Terrance’s team had taken.

She almost cried again, then and there, her stomach sick at the possibilities that rested just beyond the door.

Bryce pulled himself up as Areina stared ahead. “What are you... Oh.” Panting, he rose to his feet and stared right next to her.

She pressed her lips together, then took off toward the station. Her heart was in her throat as her mind wheeled through all the possibilities why Terrance and the others had reached the station but hadn’t answered a single call.

What she was about to find out about her own past.

She tried to shove the thoughts aside as she ran toward the icecar, but they were insistent, like a pebble in her boot, refusing to let her hope for the best. And the car itself provided few answers. The access panels failed to open, failed to even light up, indicating the power was gone. And one look through the windows proved the car was empty.

Was that why no one had answered the calls? Why they hadn’t heard from the team? Was it simply that they had lost all power?

Areina looked back at the dome dwarfing them. The team had to be inside the station. It was the only thing that made sense, the only place they could go.

With one last glance at the car, Areina turned and bolted toward the cold metal door leading inside, Bryce not far behind her.

But as they approached, Areina’s heart sank. The access panel was torn apart, rainbow wires dangling toward the ice.

Even without power, the override switch in the panel should have worked.

Dread growing in her gut, she picked up one of the wires, tears burning in her eyes again. She didn’t know how to hotwire an access panel. Would they have come this far only to fail at the finish line?

“Let me,” Bryce said, gently nudging her out of the way.

How much longer would his kindness last? What would change once they stepped through the doors?

Reluctantly, Areina stepped aside and dropped the wire. As much as she hated to admit it, Bryce was their better hope, his scores in station electronics tests higher than hers ever since they were young.

But as he touched wire after wire together with no success, her hopes faded. Even he couldn’t get them in.

Finally, Bryce stepped back with a sigh. He kicked the metal. “Stupid!”

Then he spun and walked a few feet away, turning from her. As if she couldn’t hear him crying on the other side of the headset.

They were really stuck out here. Alone. With no power, diminishing air, no communication, and no hope for survival. Unless they could break into the station.

Areina froze. She’d had far too much power over the icecar. She had only needed a thought to get it working, to find the navigation. Maybe... maybe it would work here, too.

She turned back to the panel. How had she managed to do this before? It had seemed the car responded to her thoughts, her wishes, as if it could understand what she needed it to do.

She tried that now, imagining the door opening, letting them into the station. At first, nothing happened. She placed a gloved hand on the side of the panel, squinting her eyes at it as if that would help.

Then, the barest buzz of electricity under her skin. She could almost imagine sparks moving through the panel. And the door slid aside with a grating screech of metal on metal.

They were in.

As the door slid open, something stirred deep in Areina’s chest, beyond a fluttering of her heart. It felt oddly similar to that electric buzz in her fingers when she’d coerced the panel to open, but it almost seemed to have a direction, too.

Straight through the door.

Areina glanced at Bryce again. “Are you sure about this?”

He glanced at her, then back at the opening to the station. “We’ve come too far to turn back now.”

“What about—”

“Let’s not worry about anything until we have more facts, okay?”

She took a deep breath, trying to steady her thrumming heart. “Okay.”

The tug at her core was too strong to resist, anyway, and she almost unconsciously moved to the darkened doorway. Yet her heart still pounded with fear, uncertainty at what they would find. What was drawing her? What pieces of her past were behind this door?

She peered into the shadows, but the airlock seemed to be a normal airlock—though dirty and disorganized. Whatever had happened here all those years ago, the answer had to be deeper.

“Are you going or what?” Bryce said, his voice oddly subdued. It was as if he also sensed the heavy weight of this place, like he didn’t want to disturb the ghosts.

Areina frowned at him, but cautiously ventured into the airlock. As soon as both of them were inside, the outer door ground closed, shutting with a click so final that Areina was suddenly struck with a deep sense of dread.

Was this actually a mistake? What were they walking into?

A hiss filled the air as the airlock did its job, even after all these years, forcing breathable air and pressure into the room before the inner door could open. The only sound besides the hiss of air was the groaning of the metal around them as the ice shifted underfoot, twisting the metal of the station.

The inner door suddenly clicked, then slowly began sliding to the side. Warm air—well, warmer than the thin air outside the dome—flooded the room, slowly raising the temperature. She glanced at the readout on her arm, watching as the composition of the air stabilized to the same conditions as home. Areina and Bryce traded a look, then they reached for their helmets. With a click and a twist, Areina pulled hers off, and the door revealed the station inside.

She couldn’t take her eyes off it. Just like home, there was an expanse of trees, a wide forest. But unlike home, not a sound greeted them: no hum of electrical systems, no calling of birds, no rustle of trees. No, it was eerily, unnaturally quiet. Even the groaning of the ice sheet underfoot seemed subdued.

“Are you coming?” Areina said softly over her shoulder, barely sparing a glance for Bryce.

Bryce nodded once, swallowing hard. His skin was pale, eyes so wide they could fall out of his skull.

She turned back to the door and took her first steps onto the hard, packed earth of the station. Everything here had been shipped directly from Earth, just like at their own station, but it somehow felt... different. Foreign. The two teens were like intruders into a hidden world. Even Jupiter overhead looked somehow wrong, missing all its usual stripes, even muted though it normally was through the dome back home. The dome here must have corroded or changed somehow over the years of abandonment, the planet above them stripped of all familiarity.

But the tug in Areina’s chest was relentless, calling her forward, beckoning her to traverse deeper into the woods.

Bryce was just behind her, though Areina could see the fear behind his darting eyes, his tense movements as he followed her to the edge of the path. She didn’t need to study the dirt long to see the shallow depressions and scuffs that indicated footprints.

“How long do you think these have been here?” she said softly, studying the prints as she knelt beside them.

Bryce shrugged. “No idea. Could have been any time in the last fifteen years, I guess.”

Areina stood, following the trail with her eyes deeper into the woods. They were headed the same direction as the tug.

She stepped into the flurry of disturbed earth and began following the signs, both internal and external, toward the line of trees not far from the inner door of the airlock. If there were any animals left here, they refused to make themselves known, the planted forest as still and silent as if it were a picture. Bryce even kept any other comments to himself, though he did keep tapping his gloves together nervously.

It wasn’t long before they stepped under the protective canopy of the evergreen trees. The environmental controls were definitely failing after all this time, and frost had made its way inside, coating the trees with a thin layer of ice that reflected white in the dim light. At least the air was still stable, breathable, at least according to the instruments in their suits. Once they left the open path, the way became so dark that they were forced to bring out their small flashlights. The bright LED beams caught on the rocks and roots of the trees, all so carefully placed there by the station residents when it was established. The bright white of the light turned everything pale, ghostly.

Areina shuddered. How many ghosts lurked among these trees? Her mind traveled back to her bag, now lost in the chasm of the moon’s ice. What would the journal have told her? Hopefully Terrance had backups saved somewhere, otherwise she’d just lost valuable research.

Hopefully Terrance wasn’t far and could explain everything himself.

They made their way cautiously through the woods, hearts pounding, senses on high alert.

The light began to increase until dim gray surrounded them, and then they broke through the last line of trees. And there, just in front of them, a ghost town of habs covered in more layers of frost. If this were the station back home, plumes of steam from the geothermal units would be rising from every house, but here it was deathly still, just like everything else.

“I don’t like this,” Bryce said, breaking the quiet.

Areina took in the path of footprints leading toward the habs and shivered again. “Me neither.” She looked back at him. “Are you sure you’re ready for this? The truth?”

“Are you?” he responded.

Areina paused, boot scuffing on the ice. She chanced a look back at Bryce, and while he still looked scared and put off by her, he also looked... hopeful? Maybe things would be okay, no matter what they found here. Maybe... maybe she could be hopeful, too. “Only one way to find out.”

They turned back to the silent village, toward the nearest of the buildings.

But then the path wove through something she didn’t expect.

Mounds of soil, covered by frost and dying plants, flanked the path, each one with a rock at the end nearest the settlement. Names were burned into the rocks, probably with lasers. It was something Areina had never seen back at their own station, but she had read enough about customs back on Earth to know what it was.

They stood among the graves of the settlers, the scientists, the engineers. Everyone who once called Station Beta their home.

Everyone except Areina.

Her steps slowed as she read each name like a prayer. No one had ever told her who actually died here. In fact, no one had actually said these people died. Just... disappeared.

Why would the commander hide this from everyone?

Areina paused, suddenly aware that Bryce was no longer behind her. She turned just as he sank to his knees in front of one of the graves.

“Bryce?” she said tentatively.

For a moment, he didn’t respond. Then, his voice low, he said, “This is him.”

Areina crossed the short distance between them, turning to face the grave with his father’s name. What must it be like for him? To be here? Where the last remains of his father were buried?

She raised a hand, wanting to lay it on his shoulder, to offer comfort, something, anything, but just before her fingers brushed his suit, she pulled them back.

They’d found his father. But they still hadn’t found his killer. She could still lose this tentative peace they’d formed, this alliance, this treaty.

Eventually, Bryce rose to his feet again. Wiping at his eyes, he turned toward the buildings, hiding his face from her. “Let’s keep moving.”

She continued after him, leaving the names and the graves behind and entering the town that had been empty for almost her entire life. She turned to the left, to the closest hab door, and before she could even reach for the door panel controls, the door slid open like the airlock had. Inside was a home, just like any other.

Except, somehow, it wasn’t. It was... familiar. And not just because it shared a layout with her own hab back at the other station.

She stepped inside and made her way toward a corner near the back where what looked like a crate was set up, filled with blankets and handmade children’s toys. Including one that looked more like a sparkling star than anything else.

Areina reached a hand out to this toy, carefully picking it up, running her fingers along the soft fabric and button eyes.

Could this have been hers? Was this what brought her here? Was this the source of the tug in her chest?

And where was the scavenging team? Shouldn’t they be here, in the town?

Yet the town was silent, the footprints leading through the buildings without turning. They should have entered every hab if they were looking for parts, and Areina and Bryce should have been able to hear them, especially with how quiet it was throughout the station.

“What’s that?” Bryce said over her shoulder.

She jumped. His steps had been so quiet she hadn’t heard him follow her here.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But... I think this was mine.”

He cast a look around them. Besides the crate and the makeshift toys, nothing here looked like it was for a baby. Shouldn’t there be something for a baby here? Even if the station hadn’t been expecting an infant, surely between the 3D printers and the engineers there would be more appropriate supplies here.

Yet there was nothing. Nothing except a dusty, long-dead tablet that looked like it had belonged in one of the science labs.

“Maybe you were an experiment,” Bryce said. But unlike every previous time he’d said it, there was no cruelty in his voice.

She swallowed, reluctant to admit that there might be some truth to that idea. Something was certainly off here.

Still holding the toy, Areina turned back toward the door. “Come on.”

She swallowed as she stepped back into the empty village, toy in hand. They were headed for something, but she didn’t know what.

They avoided the other habs as the tug pulled Areina past them and closer to the central command center. Just like in their own station, the command center was the hub of all activity in the station, where all the important decisions and discoveries were made.

The faintest clang of metal broke the stillness of the village, coming directly from the command center before them. An old speaker crackled, but no other sound came out.

Areina froze, heart pounding, and Bryce slid to a stop behind her.

“What’s that?” he said, voice shaking.

“The scavenging party, I hope,” she said.

She tucked the toy into her belt, then stepped forward to the control panel. It was ripped open, like the one at the airlock, but this time she had barely even reached for it when the door swished open. It was smoother than any of the other doors they had opened so far, as if recently maintained, and just inside was the empty and dark all-purpose room, almost identical to the one back at Station Alpha.

Areina cast a look to Bryce’s terrified face, illuminated by her pale yellow glow. Was this it? The answers to everything?

He swallowed, then nodded at her, reaching for her hand. She took it, and together, they stepped through the door.

Ten

THE LIGHTS CLICKED on as Areina and Bryce stepped inside and out of the cold. The walls of the command center groaned around them, the ice trembling deep under their feet. Another icequake?

But just as quickly as the feeling began, it ended, as if it had never been. And in its place, a crater in the middle of the floor, one they couldn’t see from the door. Chunks of ice glittered around the edges like broken diamonds, light in the facets of the ice, glowing with the same light Areina was familiar with—the same light she herself emitted.

“Areina?”

Areina spun at the voice, one she had longed to hear over the past days, one that may hold all the secrets to her existence. “Terrance?”

Terrance stood from the shadows on the far side of the room where he had been huddled with the other members of the scavenging team. But he did not approach, his movements stiff and restrained.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Instead of the joy she had hoped for—had expected—from him upon their reunion, his voice was tight, strained.

Terrified.

“What?” She swallowed as tears pricked her eyes, voice cracking. “I came to find you. To rescue you.”

Terrance shook his head slowly. “No, it’s too dangerous. We thought... we thought by now the radiation would have subsided. This is bad.” He turned away from her, running his hands through his hair.

“Radiation?”

But even as he said it, she could feel it, like a warmth in her chest.

The tug.

Bryce suddenly yelped and jumped back, his eyes fixed on the crater. The lights died, and the glow from the crater intensified, soft at first but growing with each passing second until the crater in the ice looked like it was a lantern.

She met Terrance’s eyes across the pit, hers full of confusion, his full of fear. “What’s going on?”

And then the light flashed, nearly blinding her, replacing her vision of the dark room, of the terrified scientists, with something else.

The wide expanse of space. The glimmer of distant stars.

There was something there, a presence in those stars that felt... alive. Familiar. If she focused on the stars, she could almost see humanoid shapes, close to the size and shape of the adults she’d always known, but different. Their bodies were smooth, their skin glistening like fine glitter. Pulsing patterns of light covered their skin like fine lace, and their mouths were open, as if in song. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

A song that something within her knew. Something she’d always yearned for.

The room came back into her vision, but her confusion only grew. What was that all about? Was it somehow connected to her glow? Her strange ability to command the icecar?

If only she hadn’t lost the field notebook!

The crater pulsed with the song from whatever it was she’d seen just now, filling her mind with its odd, chime-like melody. It comforted her even as it called to her, telling her without words that she belonged somewhere else. Somewhere far from here.

Daughter, came a voice, seemingly directly in Areina’s head. You are here!

“What?” Areina couldn’t take her eyes off the crater, but unlike Bryce and the scavenging team, she felt no fear. Only that odd connection, that feeling that she knew these voices.

We thought you dead, it continued. We thought when you stopped singing, it was over.

Areina’s eyes flicked up, and she sought out Terrance’s eyes again. Could he hear its words?

“Terrance?” Areina said. “Can you hear this?”

He nodded, his face morphing from fear to thrilled surprise. His eyes filled with wonder, glittering with the light from the crater as he listened to the words, the song, that Areina heard. All this time he’d been searching for life on other planets. And he’d finally found it. “I can,” he breathed, his voice full of wonder.

“What is it? What happened here?”

Areina’s heart pounded as she finally asked the question. Would he tell her what had happened? What she had missed?

Terrance swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “We... we weren’t really sure. Not at first.” He began to step toward Areina, carefully giving the crater a wide berth. “When we got here, everyone was dead. And all we could think was that it was because... because of you.”

Areina blinked, and time almost seemed to stop. It was what she’d suspected, but now... She glanced at Bryce. His face had grown carefully expressionless, as if he were hiding whatever it was he was feeling. Would this be the end of their careful truce?

“Station Beta had just completed establishment, sealing the last of the dome, but something broke through, something from space.” His eyes flicked to the crater between them, and he stepped over a broken chunk of ice. “They thought it was just a meteorite, like the small ones that crash down on Earth. So they sealed up the hole in the dome before the exposure to the air did too much damage, then repaired the roof to this building.”

Areina looked up, as if she needed to confirm his words. Sure enough, a hasty patch covered the remains of a burnt hole in the metal of the ceiling.

She returned her wide eyes to Terrance, skin gleaming, eyes sparkling. “Then what happened?”

“If the logs are to be believed, everything was fine at first. But then we lost contact with the station. And the Beta logs state that people started falling ill. No one was spared in the station. Except... except you. A baby they... they rescued from the crater.”

Areina held her breath. Was he finally going to tell her about her past?

“You were... you were intelligent.” Terrance smiled, the expression warm through his exhaustion. “And you looked human. Except you weren’t. Every now and then after we took you back to Station Alpha, you would glow. We never figured out why. Your DNA is something else, but in every other sense, you’ve always looked and behaved like a human child.”

Areina glanced at Bryce again, but where she had expected anger, fear, even hatred... she only saw grief.

Terrance continued forward. He had almost reached her.

“By the time we arrived, everyone was dead. As far as we could tell, it was something in the crater. Some kind of radiation we couldn’t detect, one we’d never encountered before. We left as quickly as we could, hoped we’d never have to return.” He looked back at the crater. “We thought it might be gone by now. Or at least more tolerable. But we were wrong.”

“What do you mean?” she said, her dread growing again.

But even as she said it, the tug drew her attention again. It felt raw, powerful, like an open flame ready to devour anything it could.

But it also felt... familiar.

As soon as she had the thought, she knew it was true. Whatever this glow was, whatever was in the crater... somehow it had come from her. She had brought it here, somehow, when she’d arrived. When she’d fallen.

And through it, the voices sang, calling for her, telling her it was time. But time for what?

He half shrugged, that sad smile back. “We still don’t know why everyone died. But the radiation... if we can’t get out of here...” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to.

And now Bryce was trapped here with them, condemned to the same fate. Areina’s heart pounded, and she looked between the crater and the others who she’d thought were like her. At Bryce, who still only looked sad—not vengeful, not furious.

What was she supposed to do with all of this? Just an hour ago, she was merely weird. Now, she’d brought some kind of plague?

And if this radiation stayed here, Bryce, Terrance, and the others would die.

But perhaps they didn’t have to. Perhaps... perhaps she could make up at least a little for what she had done, the pain she had caused, the death, by whatever horrible accident of fate had brought this to Europa.

“How?” Areina said, spinning to face the crater. If there was a chance to fix this, to atone for the past she hadn’t known, she had to take it. A tear, glowing so brightly even she could see its reflections on her face, slid down her cheek. “How do I save them? What do I do?” She hesitated before saying her last thought. “What... what am I?”

The chorus hummed for several long moments before answering. The answers are here, where you fell first.

Where she fell? What on Europa did that mean?

The glow in the crater pulsed with the songs, calling to her, and she stepped toward it. The closer she came, the warmer she felt. The singing sank into her, lodging itself in her soul.

And with the song came the knowledge. What she was. How she was here. What she needed to do.

Areina was a star. A real, true star. And the power that was here... it had come from her.

So she could take it back, take it away from the humans. And, somehow, break it down. Release it back into space, safely.

And with it, she would be able to leave Europa. Rejoin the stars. Find who she was always meant to be.

She would have to, if she was to have any hope of saving them.

She looked back at Terrance, and he squinted, holding up an arm to protect his eyes. How brightly did she glow now?

Her heart wrenched. How could she leave them? How could she leave everything she’d ever known? How could she leave this reality to become something that—up until a moment ago—she would have said was impossible?

Understanding flashed across Terrance’s face. Tears glistened in his eyes, his own version of the stars. “You have to go, don’t you?” he whispered.

Areina bit back a sob, wishing with all her heart it wasn’t true. She hadn’t planned on leaving, but now that she knew what she was, where she belonged, how could she stay?

But maybe, even if she had to leave now, she could still return one day. After she figured out who she was. After she protected those she loved.

Leaving wasn’t the end. It was a beginning.

The chorus sang louder, as if feeling her decision. And in the sounds, without the words, she could hear the truth. Yes, she would leave. But she would be free. She would learn, from others like her, how to exist, how to sing, how to, one day, return... when it was safe again.

“Yes,” she managed to choke. “I have to go. And you have to get those generators back.”

Terrance closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her. She held him, too, crying into his shoulder. She grew warmer again, and Terrance leapt back, scratching at his arm as the once-dead controls flickered back to life in his suit. She felt stronger, more radiant. She had drawn the radiation from him, added it back to herself.

There was no doubt left. Areina could save them all.

It didn’t take long for the scientists to reopen the way to space. Areina’s path home.

***

AREINA DROPPED HER helmet to the ground and unbuckled her belt. It had taken almost an hour to say her goodbyes, to draw the radiation from the other humans. But there was no time left. She didn’t know how long they could stay here without worse effects from the radiation she now held in her body, the radiation she didn’t know how to control. Not yet.

She didn’t know how long she could resist the pull of the songs, of the stars above her calling her... home.

“You’re sure about this?” Terrance said, placing his hands on her shoulders. His breath fogged the glass on his helmet’s visor. Now that the hole was open again, letting the air escape from the dome, all the scientists had suited up again. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

Areina’s non-human heart fluttered in her chest. It was a terrifying prospect, of course. To leave everything she’d ever known. To go into a harsh environment she’d always believed would kill her.

Space.

But she was ready, if she was being truthful. How much had she yearned to be free? To explore? To learn who she really was? To shed the confines of this human form and become something new?

No, not new. Become who she always was, now that she knew.

This was it. It was her chance, and she was ready. Terrance had made sure of that, with the way he’d cared for her all this time.

She unzipped her suit, revealing the fur of Terrance’s wife’s sweater. “I’m sure. But it won’t be forever.” She looked up at him, tears pricking her eyes again. Even for something good, goodbye was hard. “I’ll miss you.”

Terrance nodded, tears in his own eyes. “I’ll miss you too, Glowworm.” She almost smiled, the name suddenly making sense. “But I know I’ll see you again. One day.”

Areina nodded. She pulled the sweater over her head, leaving only the cold suit beneath. She folded the sweater carefully, handing it back to the man who had for her whole life been her father. He nodded, pressing his lips together. Sadness wrinkled his eyes, but there was more there.

Excitement. Hope. Love.

“And if this is goodbye...” he began.

Areina shook her head. “You don’t have to say it. You took care of me when I needed you. But now I have to leave. Go back to where I belong. Learn who I really am.”

Terrance leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her. She leaned into his embrace, perhaps for the last time.

“I guess this is it,” Bryce said, stepping up behind her. “Finally getting rid of you.”

Areina turned to face him, ready with a retort, but the sheepish look on his face stopped her. “I guess so,” she said instead.

He clasped his hands in front of himself. “Listen, I... I’m sorry. I mean, I was right, but... I could have been nicer to you. And you did just save us.”

She nodded. “Thanks, Bryce. Don’t cause any more trouble.”

“And Areina?”

She hesitated, watching him squirm for a moment. Waiting for him to tell her how he’d never forgive her. How any hope of a friendship, even a long-distance, short-lived friendship, was impossible.

“No hard feelings,” he said instead, flashing a smile at her.

She smiled back, brilliant in the dim light.

He stepped away, clearing a path for her to the crater, to where the hole had been reopened for her. It was time to go.

She stepped into the middle of the field of radiation, surrounded by ice sparkling in the glow. Her glow. The chorus grew in volume, and she closed her eyes. Her body morphed, and she could feel the flesh dissolving around her, leaving only energy.

Areina glanced over her shoulder at Terrance one more time. He nodded at her, smiling sadly. She smiled back, her expression uncertain, but the feeling coursing through her, shifting her body... this was her. This was right.

Her body finished its shift, becoming the same almost featureless form as she had seen of the others. The ones like her. She shed the artificial skin of the suit, stepping out of it and into a new life. A new reality.

Areina looked up through the hole in the ceiling, the stars calling her from far above. The chorus beckoned for her, and she followed, a smile on her face.