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Rose blinked as she entered the med bay. The harsh fluorescent strips cast an institutional glare across the space, a harsh contrast to the dim emergency lighting permeating the habitat corridors. Duke was attending to one of the Io’s crew, a middle-aged man whose skin had taken on a waxen yellow hue. But his eyes were open.

Rose’s heart leaped. “They’re waking up?”

Duke straightened, pulling the stethoscope from his ears, a groove deepening between his eyes. “They are but…”

He turned to the man lying in the bed, whose hands lay limp on the bedsheet. “Please excuse us.”

Duke tugged a thin curtain on rings around the bed.

Rose was grateful when he motioned them to the far side of the room, where they could talk in some semblance of privacy.

“They’re awake, but there’s damage.” Duke’s voice dropped, professional calm warring with concern. “I’ve got them all sedated. They all woke up around the same time and, for a moment, it was a bit hairy. Pressure of speech, irrational behavior, extreme irritability. The symptoms are all indicative of frontal brain damage, although none of them has suffered any brain injury.”

Rose’s fingers balled into fists. Her sister’s research had done this.

“I haven’t come across this before, but my team has.” Duke rubbed the skin between his eyes. “When the Ceto cyanobacteria was first discovered.”

“Fuck yes. The Ceto habitat.” Luca bounced from foot to foot, his mouth thinning to an imperceptible line. “Some of the crew went batshit crazy. Killed our commanding officer, Chief Hayne.”

“God, Luca I’m sorry I didn’t know?—”

Luca paid her scant attention. “The Io crew. They’re infected?”

“We’ll know more once we get them to the surface. The sooner the better.” Duke waved at the limited equipment around them, his frustration clear. “The facilities here are for emergencies, not in-depth investigation. And this?” He glanced at the curtained beds. “This definitely needs an in-depth medical investigation.”

“We need answers from my sister,” Rose said, her throat hurting.

Luca’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Finally, we agree on something.”

“How is she?”

Duke glanced over Rose’s shoulder to the furthermost curtained bed on the far side of the room. “It’s hard to assess. She’s not cooperating.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “She’s pissed off, but it’s different from the others. If I had to take a guess, I’d say she’s not infected.”

Not infected .

“Well, what a surprise,” Luca muttered under his breath. The hum of medical equipment almost masked his words, but not the acid in them.

She shot him a glare, but her heart wasn’t fully in it. The cold doubt that had been growing since she’d seen the swarm crystallized. What if he was right? What if she had Thea all wrong?

Only one way to find out.

“Can I speak to her?”

“Be my guest.” Duke’s eyebrows rose. “She’s been nothing but a pain in the ass. Making demands like this is a five-star hotel.”

Luca grunted. “How thoughtful of her to demand VIP treatment after giving everyone else the deluxe murder-bot experience.”

Rose let his comment slide. She doubted she could win a word war with him.

“Thanks.” She shot Duke a smile and steeled herself. She made her way across the room, painfully aware of the Io’s crew, pallid and vulnerable looking in their beds.

She pulled back the curtain on the furthest bay. Her pulse tripped and faltered as her eyes landed on the empty bed.

She pressed a hand to the mattress. The sheets were rumpled, still warm. Had she mistaken which bed Thea was in?

The sound of running water splashed from across the room.

Thea appeared in a bathroom doorway, drying her hands on a small towel, her expression unreadable.

“Well, look who’s getting the full spa treatment,” Luca commented under his breath.

“Luca.” Rose glared at him, her voice muted. “You’re not helping.”

He took a half pace retreat and made a zipping motion across his lips.

“Rose.” Thea padded toward them trailing the incongruously delicate scent of lavender hand soap. She climbed back into bed with deliberate movements, arranging her pillows as if she had all the time in the world. She appeared untouched by her time unconscious.

She closed the worn paperback open on the bed, and Rose glimpsed the title. The Invincible .

Thea tucked loose hair behind her ears. “Is everything okay? The med bay went dark last night before the emergency generators kicked in.” Her voice held polite interest, nothing more.

“We found your research, Thea.”

Thea regarded her, her face completely smooth, devoid of expression. In the clinical lighting, she could have been a stranger.

“Don’t you have something to say about that?”

Thea sighed heavily. “Like what?”

“You—” Luca surged forward, his restraint finally cracking.

Rose threw a restraining hand across his chest. Anger vibrated through him like a live wire. She understood what drove it—the need to protect his team, his family, from whatever Thea had unleashed. The truth was heartbreaking. The bonds these men shared ran deeper than the blood she shared with her sister.

“There’s a nanobot swarm loose.” Rose studied Thea’s face for any reaction. “Not the ones in the containment column. Another swarm.” She sucked in a deep breath. “We have to contain them. ”

“I can’t help you.” Thea leaned backward into her pillows, but a pink flush crept up from the base of her throat.

“Is this why your team sealed themselves off from the rest of the habitat? Because you have an unpredictable rogue swarm of nanobots on the loose?”

“They are not a risk.”

“This is getting us nowhere.” Luca took hold of Rose’s arm. “We should go.”

“We found your hidden lab.” Rose shook him off, recognizing the same stubborn set to Thea’s jaw she’d seen in the mirror countless times. Too much rested on this. “How did they get out, Thea?”

Thea’s lips pinched, and something cold settled in the pit of Rose’s stomach.

“You released them, didn’t you?”

“Nothing can evolve in a constrained environment, Rose. You know that as well as I do. It’s not natural. It prevents natural selection. Once we combined them with the Ceto bacteria, provided it for their nano assemblers, there was a shift. Evolution. Hints of developing intelligence. The lab was too constrained.” She lifted her chin. “Science never advanced without taking risks.”

Behind Rose, Luca made a sound like he’d been punched. “Risks? You’re talking about risks while all this fuckery is going on?”

“You risked your entire team, Thea. People’s lives.” Rose gripped the bed rail, her knuckles smarting. “What kind of scientist does that? Do they even know what you did?”

“Of course you don’t understand.” Thea’s voice dripped with the same dismissive tone she’d used when they’d worked together so long ago.

“Don’t understand what?” Rose slammed her palms down on either side of Thea’s pillow, caging her sister in. For the first time, Thea flinched.

“They were learning. The Ceto bacteria changed something. I saw...” Thea’s voice softened with wonder, her eyes taking on a fevered gleam. “I saw flashes of intelligence, learning, innovation. Don’t you see? This could change everything we know about artificial intelligence, about evolution itself!”

“Jesus Christ,” Luca paced like a caged animal behind Rose. “She’s actually proud of this.”

Rose pulled back, finally seeing the truth on her sister’s face. To Thea, this was everything—the pursuit of knowledge at any cost.

“Thea, they’re dangerous. And if what you say is true, they are only going to become more dangerous, more unpredictable. We need to stop them.”

“They are my life’s work.” Thea’s voice hardened. “I will not take part in anything that will harm them.”

“Thea, we have to stop this. Now.”

Thea shook her head, the stubbornness Rose remembered from childhood arguments settling over her features.

“Why are you like this?” Rose crossed her arms tightly across her chest, fingers digging into her biceps to keep from slapping some sense into Thea. The urge to shake her, to make her see what she’d done, beat through her like acid.

Thea shifted upright, her eyes narrowing to cruel slashes. “Everything has always been easy for you. Scholarship to the best university. Science awards at school. Companies fighting to hire you when you graduated. You’ve never had to take risks.”

Rose gasped, gut-punched by the venom in her sister’s voice. “I can’t even?—”

“Evolution. Scientific advances.” Thea’s voice pitched higher, taking on a zealous edge. “They need people who can see the bigger picture. There’s a reason Triton hired me.”

“Fucking fuck,” Luca muttered.

Rose turned to see a muscle jumping in his jaw. He’d jammed his hands in his pockets, but tension pinged on his forearms where he’d rolled his sleeves up. He was holding it together, but only just.

She faced Thea again and took a deep breath. There had to be a way forward.

She spread her hands placatingly. “Okay. Let’s try to find some common ground. They’re dangerous, Thea. The behavior I’ve seen so far is predatory. They cannot be allowed to leave the habitat even if that is what Triton wants.”

Thea gave a slow shake of her head and tilted her chin upward.

Rose had nothing else. Except?—

She laid the photograph on the bed. “I found this in your room. You kept it because we have a shared history. Because I mean something to you.” Her voice wavered. “I’m asking for your help.”

Thea picked it up, a smile warping the corner of her mouth. A dark light gleamed in her eyes. “I kept it because I was a sentimental fool and the wrong things were important to me.” Her icy tone cut deep. “I’m not that person anymore.” She dropped the photograph on the bedsheet. “I think this conversation is over.” She retrieved her book and made a show of looking at it.

“That’s all you have to say?” It was painful for Rose to speak against the emotion welling in her throat.

Thea shrugged. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you? ”

Thea blinked, her expression inscrutable. Once Rose would have known what she read there. But not any longer.

She turned her back on her sister, and the scrap of hope she’d carried all the way from England—the one that had whispered she could make peace with Thea, find a way back into each other’s lives—vanished.