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I unzip my outer pouch and pass over the cryptex drive to Rian. “Comm Magnusson,” I tell him. “First isn’t down here, and I need him.”

“Need him? Why?” Rian asks.

“To carry me.”

“You say that like you don’t scale cliffs in your spare time on a regular basis.” Rian’s joking with me, but I notice that he’s pretty damn careful about storing the cryptex drive in his suit’s pocket. He ignores me as I stare up at the black sky and millions of stars and wonder when my muscles will quit burning.

I’m lying flat on my back, but I hold my arms up. “You’ll do if Magnusson is busy.”

“I’m not carrying you, Ada.”

Oof, I do like the way that man says my name. Leave it to me to develop a crush on the enemy.

Rian bends down when I don’t move even after he summons Saraswati and Magnusson to meet back on the shuttle. Now concern’s written all over his face under his helmet. “Are you okay? That was a big climb, and—”

“Ugh, you ruin it when you treat me like that,” I say, scrambling up. “I’m fine; let’s go back to the ship and get something to eat. And by something , I mean everything .”

I hear a snort of appreciation from him as he sets his pace to match my own slower one.

In the distance, Magnusson approaches the shuttle from one direction—where the aft wreckage is—and Saraswati is several paces ahead of us.

“Switch over to the public comm channel,” Rian tells me. As soon as I do, I hear Magnusson reporting in—he found nothing but debris.

“Incoming,” Saraswati says, interrupting him. Her voice is pitched high. “We’re getting at least two soon. Volcanic eruption four klicks north indicates a plate shift—”

Before she finishes speaking, the earth undulates. Rian grabs my arm, holding me up. “Can you run?” he asks, already half-dragging me into a quicker pace.

I don’t want to, but I also don’t want to let this planet eat me, so I start jogging, my legs burning. In the distance I see a bright spurt of orange-red—the volcano Saraswati was keeping an eye on has erupted. Moments later, the earth rumbles. We’re almost to the ship. Rian’s about to rip my arm off, he’s yanking me so hard, but I don’t mind. The only thing that’s in our favor is that the land here is pretty flat and hard, but the only reason the land here is flat and hard is because it’s dried-up lava, and that sort of indicates we’re right in the middle of where the flow is going to reach.

Magnusson and Saraswati are already inside the shuttle when Rian and I race up the ramp. I stumble the last few steps—Magnusson started raising the ramp before I was completely off it—and Rian catches me. The shuttle lurches as Magnusson takes off, sending both me and Rian crashing onto the floor.

“Not exactly how I pictured you under me,” I mutter.

“What?” Rian asks.

“Nothing.” I push up, staggering as the shuttle shifts again. “We need to get strapped in.”

We make our rocky way up to the command center of the shuttle. Magnusson is focused on the controls, but Saraswati turns as Rian and I grab our seats and hastily harness in.

“All good?” she asks, already turning back to the controls before we answer.

“We’ll live,” Rian says. His brow furrows when he looks at me, though. My suit’s messy, but overall, everything’s working inside and out. I think. I’ll do a recharge and full diagnostic back on the Halifax .

I turn my attention to the main carbonglass window extending over the nose. The flat, black land Rian and I were just running over is starting to crack, snaking lines of bright lava infiltrating the desolate landscape.

“Oh, shit,” Magnusson whispers under his breath as the rift I just climbed out of shivers, the edges rippling. It’s beautiful, but it’s also horrific, witnessing the way a world is born, how easy it all falls apart. It will be formed again and again, the surface of this planet, and one day it will be whole and stable and perhaps even full of life. But it must break first. Again. And again.

On the ground below, the forward section of the Roundabout , including the bridge that held the cryptex drive, jostles free from the tentative position it held, crashing down into the rift. The rift itself grinds like the maw of a hungry monster, shifting and crunching as lava sprays up. It’s enough of a heat blast to blow the shuttle back before Magnusson gets it restabilized.

“That was good timing,” I say. “I mean, if that thing was going to drop into the lava, at least it waited until I had the cryptex drive first. And until I was out of the rift.”

Saraswati twists around in her seat again, straining against the harness just to give me an incredulous look. Sure, if I’d been an hour later in climbing out of the rift, I’d be dead, but that was the point of me saying it was good timing. Any timing that doesn’t end in death by lava is good timing. Obviously.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Rian says. He grips the grab bar by his seat, and even if his hands are gloved, I suspect his knuckles are white.

Magnusson tilts the nose of the shuttle up, the horizon dipping down.

“Are all your missions this exciting?” I ask as the thrusters slam us back into our seats. “I would definitely prefer a little heads-up next time. Also, remind me to negotiate hazard pay with my buddy Ursula.”

One of them snorts, but I can’t tell over the comm who it was.

· · ·

Everyone’s there to greet us in the shuttle bay by the time the area’s repressurized. The captain stands in front, but Nandina and First are at attention, tense. I’m the last one off the shuttle, and while Ursula already has Rian distracted and reporting in on the success of retrieving the cryptex drive, Nandina rushes to me.

“Your suit’s not connected to our system, so I couldn’t monitor you, but Rian let us know that you sustained multiple impact injuries in a jetpack malfunction and then rigorous activity when you—”

“I’m fine,” I say, dismissing her.

She does a once-over on my suit, coated in black dust.

“It was interesting down there,” I allow. Then I turn my attention to First. “Would have been easier if you’d been there to carry me. I had to walk back to the shuttle. And then also run. ”

“My apologies,” First says with an expressionless face.

My whole body aches, but there’s not that much I can do about it until I can get this suit off and get cleaned up. Magnusson and Saraswati are already heading up to the main part of the ship, so I trudge up after them.

Just before I go through the door, I hear the captain gasp. “ Really? ” she says in a carrying voice. When I glance over, both she and Rian are watching me.

I know what they’re thinking. I’m not a member of their elite crew, and I got the cryptex drive. And, even more surprisingly, I just handed it over to them. I don’t look back again. I don’t want or need the drive in Rian’s hand. It’s locked, and they can’t access any of the information on it unless they find the cryptex key, and they have no idea where that is. And now that the forward part of the ship fell into a river of lava, there’s only one place left for them to search—through every single cargo crate and piece of debris scattered over the volatile earth from the aft section.

In my bunk, I carefully peel away my suit. The moisture-wicking inner liner smells rank; I’ve pushed that to the limit for sure. Before I do anything else, I hoist my life-support unit and jetpack up to the rechargers, then do a thorough inspection of the suit itself.

My body is sore from the climb, but there’s a different sort of tension winding in my shoulders now.

Everything’s falling into place.

After making sure my suit is exactly the way I need it to be, I slide into the tiny wash unit connected to my room. My body goes through the motions—scrub sponge with antiseptic, vita lotion into my sore muscles, clean comb through my hair.

Elsewhere on the ship, Magnusson and Saraswati are probably doing the same things I am. And Rian would need to get out of his suit too, get cleaned up. I think he’d trust Ursula with the cryptex drive. He must. Yes, he had to have given it to her, and she has some secure location on the ship to store it. The bridge, perhaps, just like the Roundabout had done. That standard lockbox. Ursula and First will take turns guarding that drive. They might not have if I weren’t here, but...they might.

I wonder if Saraswati or Magnusson or Nandina know what information is on that drive.

I wonder if the captain or First do.

I know Rian does.

I saw the way he took it from me, the way he looked when he held it.

He knows not only what it is but why it is so important. Beyond what he told me.

He knows.

All I have to do is make him think that I don’t.