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B efore Magnusson and I leave the broken remains of the bridge, Rian’s voice fills the comm unit. “Yadav, Magnusson, carry on with your mission. And if you find the recorder box, grab that, too.”

The recorder box transcribes all the data of a flight mission, a digital record of everything that happens. It could tell them why the ship crashed in the first place. If they find it, and if it’s not too damaged. The box is supposed to be on the bridge, near the captain’s console, but it’s not there now, so it may already be burned up by now. Anything could have happened to it.

“I’m switching Lamarr to a private channel so your chatter doesn’t distract her,” Rian continues.

“Before you go private,” Magnusson starts, but I can’t hear him because Saraswati speaks at the same time, their voices clattering together.

Rian cuts through. “One at a time.”

“Yadav, you go,” Magnusson says. He gestures for me to start climbing down out of the ship. We go slowly around the ragged metal, then reach the twisted steps we took to get up to this level.

“I said before—this job isn’t worth risking your life over,” Saraswati says. I can see her below, on the ground, her helmet tilted up to us. Worry leaks into her voice, crackling through the communication channel.

“Actually, you said the job isn’t worth your life,” I say. “Mine, on the other hand?” I jump down out of the ship, landing on the slick obsidian rocks below, my boots skidding. I manage to remain upright, even as Saraswati rushes over to help me. At least Rian isn’t here to see that less-than-graceful descent. Magnusson takes his time climbing out of the rubble, and even though he doesn’t say anything, I can feel his aggravation at me radiating over comm.

“No one’s going to die,” Rian interrupts. “Switch channels.” There’s a slight hiss in my ear, and then it’s just Rian. “Hey, Ada.”

Oh, it’s Ada now, not Lamarr. And don’t think I missed that “mission” bit from before everyone got all squeamish about death—the other two are now searching for the second “item” they’ve been sent to find. Never waste a moment. Well, I can’t blame them. The nose of this ship is going to fall into the rift any minute—if they think something else they need is hidden in the rubble, best find it before the whole bridge flops into the lava river.

“Yadav is right,” Rian continues, “you don’t have to try for this.”

“So, you don’t think the box is worth it either?” I quip.

Rian’s silent for a beat too long. And in that space, I know: He does think this is life-or-death. “You don’t have to do it,” he says finally, which is not an answer to my question.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I say. “You guys are all extremely dramatic; has anyone told you that? It’s a box . I can handle a box.” I check my jetpack levels, analyzing how much thrust I’m going to need, inputting the variable heat radiance I’m expecting when I go down. “You don’t want to admit it, but this job is just scavenging. You’ve fancied it up, but it’s still looting.”

“And you’re good at looting.”

“The best,” I say. “When a ship like this crashes, there’s a lot to take. You have to train your eyes. Can’t take everything, not at once.”

“I heard you. One goal.”

“Full speed,” I add.

“That really doesn’t sound like good logic, and—”

I boot my jetpack on and shoot straight up.

“Okay, we’re doing this,” Rian mutters.

I adjust my helmet. Like I said, everything here’s custom-fitted to me and what I need. I may cheap out on some things but never on my suit. Rian has some idea of this. He had to have been the one to scan my suit in the med-bay locker, downloading all the info and specs. But there’s a difference between knowing what an object can do and seeing it.

I swoop over the ridge, analyzing the heat differential. A jetpack that operates on land through hot air propulsion is going to fuck up over a lava river. That’s why jaxon fuel makes a difference here. Thermodynamics still apply, but the cold burn is more stable.

I came prepared.

Full speed, I think, shooting straight down toward the lava. Meters flick by in seconds. Twenty down, forty, sixty.

One goal , I think, veering close to the ridge side.

My targeting array is focused on the box, locked in with a constant stream of data scrolling through the left side of my vision, blocking out much of the lava stream. Thankfully. Don’t really want to be reminded of how if my jets fail, I burn alive. No suit I’ve ever seen can withstand a dip in a river like that.

I flex my fingers. My gloves are thincraft too but not thin enough. Not like real skin. That can’t be helped, though. Not only because there’s no oxygen on this planet, and taking the gloves off means breaching the suit; the thincraft material is doing what it can to protect me from the heat.

My eyes flick to the temperature gauge. The lava itself is more than a thousand degrees centigrade, but the box is more than ten meters above the flow, putting thermal flux still in the danger zone. I have to be quick about this. I’m sweating, and it’s already distracting, not just because salt stings my eyes but because I can feel my whole body slick with it, too much for the inner liner to wick away, which means it’s getting into dangerous levels for both my body and the suit to operate properly.

But it’s so close.

An insulated lockbox, teetering on the edge of a mini-cliff in the rift’s sheer side. I jet closer, closer.

Almost—

“Ada,” Rian starts.

“Shut up,” I grit out. I can’t afford any distraction. I don’t need a pep talk or a warning.

I just need to reach—

Another quake. I don’t feel it, suspended by the jetpack as I am, but I see it. The pillars of stone tremble and slide, a whole chunk of the opposite rock face falling down. I just register it out of the corner of my eye as my fingertips touch the edge of the box. The quake shifts—this time in my favor—the box sliding into my grip. I seize it and curl my arm around it, bringing the box close to my chest. Tilting my head up, I redirect my jets—

The rocks that crashed down hit the lava flow. Molten rock doesn’t splash like water, but the impact roils a heat wave my way. My jets slip—

Worst-case scenario.

Regular jets can’t handle being this close to lava, and while my jets are better, they’re not perfect. Everything fails sometimes. I have the box, but it’ll mean nothing if I can’t get out of this hellish canyon. What should be a simple grab-and-go mission would turn into hours of excruciating climb if my jets fail now . . .

Perfect, I think.

I kick the controls, hard, slamming higher to avoid the lava, my left side bouncing off one part of the still-undulating cliff face. The cry of pain that escapes my lips is real, black smearing my arm even though I don’t break my tense grip. The seismic activity is fading already, but my direction’s off, a blur in my helmet as my jets sputter. Alarms blare—I’m losing altitude, the temp’s rising, the stabilizer’s offline. I keep my left arm curled around the box, the hard edges pressing into my suit, as my right hand flails, my boots skidding off the obsidian rock, black flakes falling down before being swallowed by bloody red.

My left boot hits a sharp angle, and my foot wedges inside a crevice at the same time that my hand grabs a rock that doesn’t crumble in my grip. More alarms flash over my visor; my vital alerts. Elevated heart rate, adrenaline spike, overheating.

“Ada.” I hate how Rian’s voice drifts so softly, a question, full of fear. He’s not sure I’m still alive.

“Here,” I gasp.

“Holy fuck,” he says.

“I know.”

“Can you—”

“I got it,” I say.

“You—I don’t care about the box, Ada, you almost died!”

“But I didn’t,” I say. “And I also got it.”

There’s some cursing. A lot. It’s kind of impressive. He’s been taking lessons from Magnusson.

“Okay, okay,” Rian says, regaining composure. “You have the box. Can you get back up?” Slight emphasis on you , even though I know he means you with the box, no matter what he said before.

I tentatively check my position. I’m stable, about fifteen meters above the lava flow, more than triple that away from the nose of the ship. I shot off at an angle when I ricocheted in panic; I’m farther away from both the Roundabout and the shuttle we took to get here.

“Jetpack’s offline and unstable,” I report. I can hear him take a breath, but I interrupt. “I don’t have time for whatever you’re going to say.”

Exhale. “What can I do?”

I press my body against the rock wall, but then test my right foot against a nearby ledge. It doesn’t give. I let more weight shift, and even if my legs are spread wider than is comfortable, I feel pretty firm.

“I’m going to have to climb up, and I need both my hands.” While I talk, I work on the box. It’s a thermal protection unit, but Rian said the contents were small. I break off the first layer and let it drop below, carefully peeling up the top.

Nestled inside the box, under sheets of thincraft wrap, is a cryptex drive.

“Sure hope whatever’s on this unit is worth all the trouble,” I mutter.

“It is,” Rian says gravely. His voice is tense. I like to think it’s because he’s worried I’m about to die, but maybe it’s because I’ve taken this little drive out of its safe house. “Ada, it...” He stops talking, and I stop moving, the weight of what’s unsaid making me freeze. “Ada, that device? It’s going to help billions of people. It’s going to help Earth.”

He hesitated when he said “Earth,” a slight sibilant hiss before he veered away from adding in “Sol” before the word. He’s not from Earth—I swear he’s got a Rigel-Earth smirk behind those lips—but he knows I am. He knows that I know what Earth is like now, how much it needs help. How much the people need help. He knows that I’m a looter, and by now, he’s surely got a strong hypothesis that I’m not the most ethically inclined person, and now he’s hoping that I care enough about my homeworld to focus all my ill-gotten skills on getting myself and the drive out of this canyon.

Some people think we should just let Earth die. It’s run its course, and the damages of pollution, climate change, and corruption cannot be undone; that’s what some people say. They don’t care about how it’s not exactly easy to just relocate billions of people, how the answer isn’t to let an entire world of people die just because others think the place they call home isn’t worth the effort to try to save it.

I guess it’s a good thing for Rian I’m not one of those people.

“Got it,” I say. “Don’t die. Or, if I do, toss the drive up first.”

“No, just don’t die,” Rian says, exasperated. Then: “. . . but yeah, if you’ve got good aim, chuck it up before you flail down.”

“Sarcasm is so sexy.”

“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” he deadpans. “Also, you think I’m sexy?”

“No, I think sarcasm is sexy. You know what else it is?”

“No.”

“Distracting.”

“Oh.” A hiss of static on the comm. “Sorry.”

“Just shut up, Sexy.” I allow myself a brief moment of triumph when I hear the soft intake of his breath catch as he forces himself not to respond and further keep me from the task at hand.

Keeping as much of my body leaned against the rock wall as possible, I unzip my front outer pocket and slide the cryptex drive inside. It takes some wiggling to get the tiny thing gripped in my gloves to go in the way I need it to be, but as soon as it’s secure, I close the zipper and grab the wall with both hands.

Tilting my head back, my helmet lets me know I’ve got about sixty-five meters of vertical climbing to get out of this hellhole.

Which is a lot.

“What are the chances you can toss down a rope?” I ask.

“We have security cable we can send down,” Rian says. “It’s the thermal flux that’s the problem, though.”

The integrity of the line is thrown off by the way the radiant heat from the lava exudes straight up. There’s nowhere else for the heat to go, after all.

“I’m tossing down the security line,” Rian calls. A moment later, I see a long, insulated cable with a claw clip dropped almost within reach. It shifts. I look up—on the ridge, I can see three people looking down at me. This endeavor’s brought Rian out of the ship, at least, and got the others to check out the show.

“But I can’t trust this,” I say grabbing for the claw and securing it at the loop harness built into my suit.

“Maybe?” Rian’s voice cracks. This line is a Hail Mary for if I slip; they can’t risk pulling me up with it.

“Climbing up is going to take a long time,” I mutter, scoping out the slick, ridged striations of the oddly formed black rock face.

“What happened to that one goal, full speed stuff?” Rian says. I can tell he’s trying to add levity to the situation, but it doesn’t help that much. I’ve still got to climb straight up a wall without falling into a river of molten rock, which isn’t exactly something I enjoy doing.

Plus it’s hot as fuck.

My hands slip inside my gloves.

I take a deep breath.

New goal. Survive.

Full speed until I do.

It’s just that “full speed” is a lot slower right now.

I look up, find a handhold, reach. Push with one foot, find a ledge to step with the other. Up. The line makes this a little easier. I know it’s just a single two-centimeter-thick cable between me and plummeting down, but two centimeters are better than nothing.

I check the read outs on my visor. The outer temperature is above what my suit’s sensors can measure, which means I’m deeply at risk for damaging my suit. But everything’s holding...for now.

Outer temperature: [WARNING]

Inner temperature: Stable

External download: 2%

Stabilizers: Neutral

Air gauge: 82%

Jetpack: Standby

“Hey, Rian?” I ask, reaching for another hold.

“Yeah?” He responds immediately, as if he’s been biting back everything he wants to say.

“I’ve got a long climb ahead. Talk to me?”