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Luca’s elbows jutted at his hips in a stance that set off every warning bell in Finn’s head.

“You tried speaking to your sister and asking her about this shit?” Luca glared at Rose. The fluorescent lights cast harsh shadows across his face, making his expression even more threatening.

“No, I—” Rose’s voice wavered, and something protective and primal surged through Finn’s chest.

Like hell. Finn took a deliberate pace forward. Behind him, Rose’s breathing was quick and shallow. He wanted nothing more than to comfort her. But now was not the time or place. “It’s been a long day, Luca. Why don’t you give it a rest?”

Luca backpedaled, his eyes narrowing. He gave a dismissive grunt. “Whatever.”

Finn kept his body angled as a barrier between the two as Luca packed up his tools.

Ethan scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Liev, Luca—hotfoot it down to the shuttle. We need those repairs sooner than ever now. ”

Luca’s shoulders stiffened, tendons popping in his neck.“I’m not a goddamn?—”

“Luca.” Ethan’s tone dropped to something cold and unyielding. The iron backbone that had sustained him in special forces. “Get down there and shut it. Now .”

A muscle twitched in Luca’s jaw as he muttered under his breath. The sound of his boots striking the metal floor echoed as he stalked toward the exit. Finn tracked every movement, his own muscles remaining taut until Luca was well clear of Rose.

“Welcome to the concept of teamwork,” Liev said dryly, following in Luca’s wake. “We’ll be on comms once we begin repairs, Ethan.”

The door closed behind them with a pneumatic sigh, but Finn didn’t fully relax until their footsteps had faded completely, the ghost of adrenaline humming under his skin.

Ethan turned back to Finn and Rose, his expression expectant. “All right,” he said, crossing his arms. “Now. The shit stuck to your clothes?”

Finn’s stomach gave a slow, queasy turn. The dried remains on his sleeve were still tacky under the lab’s lights, an unsavory reminder of their earlier encounter. He didn’t want to relive it, not yet. His gaze flicked to Rose, catching the same shadow of unease in her eyes. “It’ll be easier to show you. We were in the main research lab.”

Minutes later, they stepped into the main research lab. Finn entered behind Ethan. The air was thick with the stomach-turning stink of exploded critter. Disgusting, but better than it being alive and trying to eat his face.

His boots crunched on glass, the sound oddly loud in the otherwise quiet room.

Ethan paced the lab in silence, taking in the carnage piece by piece. The shattered glass shards. Streaks of jellied yellow liquid that definitely weren’t in any science text Finn had ever read. And everywhere, those exploded critter remains in grotesque glistening patches.

Finn followed, his senses on high alert, nerves prickling like static under his skin. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, trying to avoid the stench and the cloying sense of wrongness pressing down on him. Everything about this lab felt off—like a clock ticking out of sync or a painting hung just slightly crooked.

But it wasn’t just the room. It was this place. The Io facility. Something here wasn’t right, and this lab was the epicenter of whatever was setting off his internal alarms.

Ethan’s jaw hardened as he surveyed the destruction. “What the hell happened here?”

Finn didn’t answer. He didn’t have one. His eyes snagged on the largest fragment of the dead scorpion, half-hidden in the far corner. Its jagged shell gleamed under the fluorescent light with an unsettling metallic sheen, as if the material wasn’t entirely organic.

Rose’s voice severed the silence. “Scorpion. From one of the specimen jars.”

“One scorpion made all this mess?” Ethan spread his arms.

“It was a big fucker,” Finn said quietly. Like it had been hitting the gym and taking questionable supplements.

Rose nodded grimly. “It wasn’t normal. The specimens were augmented. They looked metallic. I’d make an educated guess they resulted from combining organic and inorganic elements. But how, I don’t know. ”

Ethan turned from studying the broken specimen jars, his expression dark. “This is what your sister was working on? Animal experiments? How the hell does this connect to the Io going dark?”

Rose shook her head, but there was something in her expression that made Finn’s instincts sharpen. He might have only met her a short time ago, but he recognized evasion when he saw it. She was holding something back.

“There’s more to it than this. And what Luca just showed us only confirms it.” She was choosing her words carefully.

“So what?” The edge in Finn’s voice surprised him.

“I don’t know yet.” She scratched the back of her neck.

“But you have an idea.” Finn was aware he was sounding belligerent, but the words pushed out anyway, driven by the nagging sense that they were all missing something crucial.

Rose’s fingers drummed once against her neck. “Not an idea. It’s nothing.” Her tone hardened. “Speculation wastes time. We need answers.” She shot him a determined smile that made his heart miss a beat. It was genuine, that smile, despite everything.

“Finally, something we agree on.” He returned the smile, stretching against the tension in his shoulders.

She pulled a stool to the nearest workstation. There were no keyboards, just matte black tablets with pens notched in a narrow groove at the side. When she lifted the stylus, the screen woke to life, revealing the Triton logo weaving a lazy figure of eight.

Triton. Fuck.

He hooked a second seat with one foot and scooted up beside her. The stools evened out their height difference, so they were almost face to face. He fought the urge to lean in closer and cleared his throat. “Won’t this be password protected? ”

“That’s okay. I have a solution for that.” She dug into the small hip pocket on her cargo pants and waved a compact matte black stick at him. “I came prepared.”

She reached around the back of the curved screen of the workstation, giving Finn an unimpeded view of her athletic form. The fabric of her pants stretched taut, and he immediately regretted noticing just how well they fit.

Hot damn. He closed his eyes with rough fingers. Focus on the mission, you unprofessional idiot.

When he looked up, Rose was in her seat again, all business as she connected the device. Thank fuck. He took a deep breath, trying to purge the image from his mind and concentrate on finding answers.

A new icon materialized in the bottom right corner of the screen—a small golden trident that pulsed with latent energy. “Okay, let’s see what we have here.” Rose was all professionalism now, the scientist in her coming to the fore.

She moved the stylus across the pad in confident strokes. The logo melted away, replaced by an imposing password prompt. She didn’t pause. Numbers and letters cascaded through the password box in a mesmerizing blur, cracking the ten-digit code in less time than it took to draw a breath. The system never stood a chance.

“Impressive.” Finn tilted his head. Cade’s skills made him a high-level hacker, but Rose’s mastery was close.

“Thank you.” Laugh lines formed at the corners of her eyes and he fought the urge to skim them with his fingertips.

“Hmmm.” She clicked through what seemed to him like an endless labyrinth of files, her eyes darting across banks of text that made his vision swim.

He pushed away from the desk and found his feet again, grateful for an excuse to move. There was a reason he hadn’t become a desk jockey. Give him the open space of ocean and sky any day. He returned to the center of the room, where Ethan had activated a holographic map of the Io from a central steel table.

“Something.” Ethan rubbed the scruff on his chin.

“Something what?” Finn steepled his hands on the table’s surface.

Ethan cocked his head. “This. There’s something off about it. Something I can’t put my finger on.”

“Yeah, I’m getting a lot of those vibes lately.” Finn studied the lines of the map, scattered red dots representing his team, yellow for the crew, all safely tucked away in the med bay like expensive pieces in a really messed up game of chess.

The floor shifted beneath him. He staggered, catching the edge of the holographic console for support. “What the hell?”

Rose’s head snapped up at her workstation.

“Rose, is this you?”

“I’ve accessed a locked room.”

Another tremor, stronger this time, throbbed through the floor. Finn froze as a thick black line snaked across the floor in front of him. It curved in a precise arc, forming a circle around the room, becoming thicker, darker. He dropped to his knees and stretched out tentative fingers. Freezing air rushed up from below, chilling his palm.

“What the hell is happening?” Ethan widened his stance for balance. “Rose?”

“This isn’t her lab.” Rose pushed back from her console.

“Rose. Make sense,” Ethan snapped.

She stood abruptly, her stool clattering to the floor behind her.“It’s not her lab because Thea’s lab is beneath us.”