NAOMI
THE ELIMINATED FINALISTS ARE GONE BY MORNING. THERE’S no farewell breakfast, no exchanging of email addresses and cell phone numbers like on the last day of summer camp. They are just . . . gone, their belongings and presence wiped clean from the Hab floor. I feel a pang of regret that I didn’t get a proper good-bye with Asher. When he left the cafeteria after the announcement, I was sure he would come back, that we’d have one last dinner as a team. But he and Katerina never returned. And now it’s just me, Leo, and Beckett sitting around the breakfast table, with Lark between us as a buffer. While Beckett peppers her with questions about what’s next, I turn away, my eyes taking in the half-empty room.
“Hey.” Leo nudges me gently. “How are you feeling?”
“I—I’m not sure.”
The truth is, it feels like my mind is toying with me. I knew I wasn’t ready to leave yesterday, not yet, not with my discoveries still hanging in the balance—and not with Leo still here. But as I imagine an alternate reality with me as one of the eliminated ten, I’m overcome by a wave of sadness. I could have been on my way home this very moment. I could have been minutes away from my family’s arms. And now . . . who knows when I will see them again?
“What about you?” I ask, changing the subject.
Leo takes a deep breath. “It was tough to see Asher go. My room feels weird. Empty.”
I nod, thinking about Suki. “I know the feeling.”
“But I’m hopeful, too.” Leo leans in closer, giving me a small smile. “About everything.”
And as he looks at me, I feel a shiver working its way through my body—one that I know has nothing to do with space.
“Good morning to the Top Twelve!” Dr. Takumi strides into the room, and all conversation comes to a halt. “How does it feel to have made it another week?”
“Incredible!” Beckett yells. Dev lets out a whoop from the next table over, and soon the room is filling with cheers, my fellow finalists letting loose and celebrating in ways they couldn’t last night. I scan the room for the Canadian finalist, Sydney, possibly the only person here who knows how I feel. But even she looks caught up in the excitement, beaming in her seat between Dev and Ana Martinez.
“That’s the spirit I like to see,” Dr. Takumi says with a satisfied nod. “Now, since our pool of candidates is significantly smaller, we’ve done away with the teams. The twelve of you will be training together for your remaining days here, with General Sokolov taking the lead on most of your instruction.”
I exchange a look with Leo. I think we all know what this means. With the teams disbanded, it’s going to be every finalist against the others—and out for themselves.
After breakfast, General Sokolov leads the twelve of us to the Mission Floor for our first training session of the day. I fall into step with Leo, noticing the looks of steely determination on my fellow finalists’ faces as they pass me by.
“Are you feeling more competitive toward everyone else now, too?” I ask Leo. “Especially with Asher gone?”
He shakes his head slightly. “I wouldn’t say more. I mean, the competition has been stiff enough since the beginning.” He lowers his voice. “I still haven’t told you what happened during the bungee-jumping challenge, have I?”
“No. What?”
Leo glances around to make sure no one is listening before he continues. “Beckett tried to mess with my harness while we were in the air. He was—I think—trying to get me killed. It would have been the perfect accident, but the pickup plane showed up just in time.”
I stop in my tracks, feeling as though I’ve just been socked in the chest. “What? That actually happened, and you didn’t—didn’t tell anyone?”
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hi, Dr. Takumi, I think my teammate tried to push me ten thousand feet to my death, but I have no proof and I’m still here, so no damage done’?” He gives me a wry look. “It would have seemed like I was just trying to get him in trouble. Remember that talk he gave us about sabotage?”
“Yeah—exactly what Beckett was trying to do to you,” I point out. My pulse quickens. “We could get him kicked out for this!”
Leo places his hand over mine, and I’m momentarily distracted by his touch.
“I want him gone more than anyone. But not like that,” he says. “Not by weakening myself . . . especially if I was wrong about what I saw. It’s not like he’s tried anything since.”
With a flash, I remember the way Beckett looked at Leo after his showstopping performance in the diving pool. “You weren’t wrong. I can feel it.”
But there’s no more time to talk, as we catch up to General Sokolov and the others, following them through the opening in the wall and onto the Mission Floor. The general stops before one of the space capsules.
“Today you’ll be performing a flight simulation that takes you through the Europa Mission’s spaceflight path in accelerated time. We’ll start with the initial launch into space on a trajectory to Mars orbit, where you’ll rendezvous with the Athena’s supply ship, followed by the gravity slingshot to Jupiter orbit. And of course, you’ll end with the lunar landing on Europa. As you know, while Cyb will be piloting the spacecraft, one of you will serve as copilot—and each of the Final Six will be needed at crucial points along the journey, especially when it comes to in-flight troubleshooting.”
I glance at Leo, and I can tell we’re both thinking the same thing: If only Asher had been here for this one.
“And that is the purpose of today’s simulation,” the general continues. “To prepare you for the journey, test our copilot candidates . . . and, most importantly, gauge your reactions when the unexpected occcurs and your mission and lives are at stake.
“You’ll be completing the sim in pairs, so go ahead and choose a partner. During the downtime while waiting your turn, each of you will be measured for Europa space suits.”
Leo nudges me. “Be my partner?”
I turn to him, feeling a sudden rush of gratitude that he is still here. “Of course.”
We don’t get any hints as to what’s unfolding in the simulations, but we can hear the screams clearly from outside. The first four pairs emerge from the space capsule looking a combination of dazed, nauseous, and exhilarated, which only ramps up my anticipation. What, exactly, is waiting for us in there?
Leo and I are the fifth pair up, and when our names are called, General Sokolov hands us each a virtual reality headset and ushers us inside the capsule. It looks identical to the mock cockpit we entered on our first training day, but with two key differences: the electronic sensors dotting the floor and blinking wires suspended from the ceiling.
“Take your acceleration seats and prepare for liftoff,” the general commands, before climbing out of the capsule to plug in from her computer.
I watch her leave, wondering if that’s really all the instruction we’re going to get, and then I slide into one of the two reclined seats in front of the glass cockpit. The seats are folded all the way back, and I turn my face just as Leo angles his toward me—so close.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Ciao,” he says with a smile, his breath tickling my cheek.
We slip on our headsets, and the ground beneath us lurches. The capsule begins to shake, rattling the interior with a power that makes last week’s earthquake seem modest. This can’t be just a simulation; it feels too real. But the roar of an engine muffles out my thoughts, and now the cockpit glass surrounding us is filling with moving 5D images, placing us at the center of a rocket barge anchored over the sea.
“T-minus zero . . . and liftoff!” a voice blares from the cockpit speakers. And then we are hurtling forward, my body nearly flying out of my chair before the strap stops me. We are spinning, our bodies turning upside down with breathtaking speed as the reflection in the glass changes from a blue sky to the inky vacuum of space.
“Something’s heading toward us,” I hear Leo say. “What is that?”
I peer closer at the glass.
“Looks like a used rocket stage . . . but if I’m right, wouldn’t that kill—”
I break off with a shout as shards of matter come flying in our direction. Through my headset it looks like the shards are aiming straight for my eyes, and I duck in my seat.
“We have to move around it,” I yell as Leo grabs the pilot’s joystick. “Do you know how to work that thing?”
“We’re about to find out.” He pushes down on the joystick and turns it to the right, sending us swerving sharply, nearly tearing out of our seats yet again. I exhale with relief as we pass the spinning shards of matter, but now—
“Do you smell that?”
Leo pauses in midair as the unmistakable stench of fire fills the cockpit. And then an enormous blue flame, as tall as my own body, starts ripping through the cabin.
“It’s not real, it’s not real,” I chant under my breath, but it doesn’t matter what I tell myself—this moment, this danger, is as tangible as anything I’ve experienced before.
Leo scans the capsule for a way out of the fire, and as he takes his hand off the joystick, we plunge downward.
“Damn it!”
“Keep steering. I’ll take care of it!” I shout above the noise.
He returns to the joystick, and we soar back up as I climb out of my seat and crawl through the shaking cabin, trying to escape the fire’s path and yelping as the flame almost singes the back of my shirt. There has to be an extinguisher in here, there has to be, right by the—
Door! A red fire extinguisher is mounted by the cabin door, and I yank it out of its case and start firing the water-based foam, until the whole cockpit is drenched and the fire simmers to ash.
“Great work!” Leo calls as I stumble back to the acceleration seat. “And check this out.”
He points to the window, and I catch my breath.
“Beginning orbit insertion to Mars,” the voice echoes over our speakers.
The red planet looms below us, a massive, bright orb. Up ahead, rotating around Mars, is a dragonfly-shaped floating satellite—the Athena’s supply ship! But as I look from the scene out of the window to the scrolling numbers on the cockpit’s navigation display, I spot a glaring flaw.
“The supply ship’s coordinates don’t match where it was plotted to be on our trajectory,” I tell Leo, frantically swiping the tablet above my seat until I find the Orbital Dynamics page. “You need to plug in the new numbers before we even attempt the rendezvous, or else we’ll overshoot it.”
“What?” Leo’s palm freezes on the joystick. “But how—”
“The fuel leak—it caused the ship’s orbit to start changing.” I shiver as it occurs to me: the general must be preparing us for this very scenario, one that could get far more complicated the longer the leak continues. “We need to recompute our navigation to direct us to the supply ship’s new coordinates, now!”
“Got it.” Leo’s hands fly over the touchscreen while my eyes sweep across the cockpit console, searching for the switches General Sokolov showed us in our training, the ones that deploy the robotic arm for docking. They were somewhere on the left side of the control panel. . . .
“Trajectory adjustment confirmed,” the voice returns. “Prepare to rendezvous and deploy the Canadarm.”
Leo looks at me with a frenzied expression, and then turns back to the joystick. “Here goes nothing!”
He kicks up the speed as my fingers fumble with the panel, looking for the docking controls. And then, as the gravity of Mars pulls us into orbit and we match the supply ship’s velocity—that’s when I find the docking pane. I press the Deploy button, watching in amazement as the robotic crane slowly unfurls, pulling us toward the ship.
SLAM. Leo and I jump as our vessel swipes against the side pane of the supply ship.
“We went too fast,” Leo yells. “Let me try again and decelerate this time.”
I return my fingers to the control panel, ready to send the Canadarm back into the fray. This time it works, and I feel the rush of heavy gear clanking into place as we dock. I’m just about to cheer that we did it when our capsule starts spinning once again. And now the scene before our window transforms, sending us millions of miles away in a matter of seconds. I struggle to catch my breath as we descend toward an icy, red-ridged moon. Europa.
“We have to land!” Leo turns to me, an expression of both panic and glee in his eyes. “Should I fire the thrusters now, or—”
“Now!” I gasp. “We need to reduce our velocity fast if we’re going to make the landing.”
With one hand driving the joystick and his other working the switches on the pilot’s dashboard, Leo activates the thrusters, which ignite with a deafening rumble. As our spacecraft pitches toward the moon’s surface, I scan the control panel in front of me until I find the symbol for Deploy Landing Gear. But when I press the button, a red alarm pops up: SYSTEM FAILURE.
“Are you kidding me?”
“We’re going to miss it!” Leo shouts, and through the window I can see that he is right—we’re not slowing down quickly enough; we’re dangerously close to skimming past Europa. “Hurry!”
My fingers shake as I try a different tack, entering the command for “Initiate Capsule Separation.” A green light illuminates the control panel, and then the voice returns over the cockpit speakers.
“Final Stage Separation and Descent in three . . . two—”
My scream drowns out the countdown as the spacecraft splits in two. The engines and power propulsion modules fall away into the ether, while our remaining combined capsule drops hundreds of feet, our bodies flipping upside down in their seats. And then, finally, we come careening to a stop, our wheels kicking up ice.
The glass screen fades to darkness as the voice over the speakers says, “Simulation completed successfully. You may remove your headsets and detach from the sensors.”
I pull off the VR equipment and blink in shock. It looks . . . exactly as it did when we first climbed in with General Sokolov. There’s no smoke from the fire, no water from where I doused the cabin with foam. There’s not a single hint of the journey we just went on. It’s as though Leo and I somehow shared the same multisensory dream.
Leo leans back against his seat, and we turn to each other in exhausted, delirious relief.
“Well, that was insane,” he remarks. “But we did it.”
“We did it,” I whisper.
I inch closer to him, close enough to see myself reflected in his blue eyes, and the longing catches me off guard. Something electric runs through my body, something I haven’t felt before.
He reaches for my chin, gently tilting it toward him. I am too hopeful, too nervous, to breathe. And then, softly, he brushes his lips against mine.
We draw back for a split second, our foreheads pressed together and eyes locked, as if we are both taking in the magnitude of this moment. And then I pull him toward me, desperate to feel his lips on mine again. He cradles my face as he kisses me; he runs his mouth across my neck, leaving goose bumps everywhere his lips traced. It feels as though something is exploding in my chest, and suddenly—everything makes sense.
I know why I’ve been conflicted, why my heart and mind have been pulling me in different directions.
The answer was here, all along.