General Stone stood at the dig site surrounded by empty vials. Nigel wanted no less than 5,000 vials of Martian soil analyzed for Earth's 118 elements. Nigel believed whatever was happening here was due to some deficiency or surplus in the planet's crust. The fact that what was happening here might be beyond human understanding had been dismissed.

  Rocky knew Peyton and the kids had visited two nights ago, but wasn't sure how to handle it. If they'd seen the Orb, they'd be back. What could he come up with to explain the Orb?

  The Orb was scary as fuck. It's light waves produced little, if any, heat. They'd unearthed it during mission four, only to find that it projected movies depicting the annihilation of a winged species. He hadn't been part of the M4 mission, back home, in the throes of chemotherapy, but Nigel had footage of the massacre. It was the same massacre Sloan had described recently in her "visions."

  Nigel called the Orb propaganda and spent an ungodly amount of money trying to prove China was funding secret missions to Mars in an attempt to scare Americans away. Stone wished China were the issue. The mission that followed, mission five, reported seeing only light streaming from the Orb. So Nigel requested they bury it.

  But mission six made it impossible to ignore the Orb. The kids' bodies were responding exactly as every adult who'd come before them. Rebecca Timberland was an anomaly. Youth wasn't the key to colonization. The Orb needed to be studied before it was destroyed. If it could be destroyed.

  Mission five had tried to obliterate the Orb before burying it. First with chemical bombs and then with flooding, but nothing worked. Stone had spent the first month after landing, unearthing it and watching it glow. There'd been moments when he thought the Orb had tried to speak to him, but he'd blocked it. The planet may have gifted him telepathy, but when he wanted to, he could reverse that gift.

  It had taken him months to learn how to block other people's thoughts, but he was good at it, the anti-telepathy. He knew Peyton couldn't read his mind and prayed that wouldn't change. The Orb, wanting to communicate with him, agitated Rocky. Thirty days lay between him and the launch back to Earth—the promise to never return, etched on his soul.

  "General Stone," Peyton said. "Can I talk to you?"

  Rocky wanted to say absolutely not! But steadied himself instead.

  "Good Morning, Peyton. Of course, we can. How are the M6 cadets today?"

  Peyton scrunched her face. He knew she hated him calling the kids cadets. It was part of why he did it.

  "Well, it's Wednesday, so they're in class until lunch, and then after lunch, as you know, half of them will be classifying rocks and the others will be out exploring the crater. I think Sloan should be pulled off crater rotation after her episode."

  Rocky thought about Sloan's episode and what he'd gleaned while reading her mind. Sloan had seen Lilly kill Trevor inside the dip of the crater. She'd somehow gotten him up in the air and then dropped him to his death. It was atrocious, even for Lilly.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "You're right. I'll work on that. She's been fine since then, right?"

  "Sloan is never really fine, sir. She has lots of personal stuff going on at home. But she's eating and sleeping well. Mia keeps an eye on her. They're close. I think she's doing well for now."

  "Excellent," General Stone replied, knowing Sloan and Mia were very close. Close enough to have sex in an empty room outside the sick bay. At least no one's getting pregnant, he thought.

  "Is there something that you need, Peyton?"

  "Well, I seem to have a computer glitch. I'm not sure. Before we left Earth, I uploaded all the prior mission files to my laptop. I read them in preparation for landing. The files are gone, sir."

  "Well, if you think someone hacked into your computer, Lilly comes to mind."

  Lilly had been the reason things escalated so quickly the night of the fire. Although he hated to admit it, she was both annoyingly persistent and too clever for her own good. Her hacking into the system forced him to come up with a story about the cancer files. Peyton seemed to buy the story of two separate missions for now, but for how long? He knew she doubted him.

  "Yeah, I get that. But Lilly wouldn't have any use for that information. It's all on Red Rock's homepage. Anyone with internet can access that. I downloaded the files because I'm that girl, you know?"

  "The space girl nerd," he said, smiling without making eye contact. "Thank God you're that girl, Peyton. These kids need you."

  "Do you happen to have another copy of the files?" Peyton asked.

  General Stone quickly slipped his hands behind his back.

  "Have you tried turning your computer off and rebooting? That's always the last thing I try and the one thing that works most of the time."

  Peyton smiled weakly. She looked down, reaching for a plastic vial.

  "Yeah, I tried that. I can try again, though."

  "Good idea. I hope it works. Unfortunately, I don't have another copy of the files. There's a library in the hub if you need a good book. It's unbelievable how many books we've collected over six missions."

  "What do they think we're going to find?" Peyton asked, holding up a plastic vial.

  Rocky shifted his weight back as he examined the vial in Peyton's hand.

  "I'm not quite sure, Ms. Lawrence. The idea is to see if Mars is composed of the same known elements we have back on Earth. And there's always a chance we'll find fossilized DNA. If something did live here, understanding how their bodies worked might save human lives."

  "And this helps with cancer research?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "And why aren't we researching the superpowers? How sure are you that radiation levels are the sole cause?"

  "Well, no one on Earth has superpowers, so the inference is the planet induces them. We know the radiation levels here are unusually high because of the lack of atmosphere. I guess it's more of a theory. No one is dying from superpowers, quite frankly, so it's not a priority."

  "But the cancer only shows up once people return home. Colonizing Mars means everyone who comes here will develop superpowers. And if the goal is to eventually stay here forever, why aren't superpowers being pursued as a matter of pressing research? You can't honestly believe bringing large numbers of people here is safe."

  The pain in Rocky's head was so intense that he could barely visualize Peyton. She was SO close to reading his thoughts. The truth was, he didn't care what happened to people on Mars. He'd been recruited for a job, and once he was done and home, he would give that job two weeks' notice and move to an island somewhere. No forwarding address. No ties to this fiasco.

  "I'm afraid some of the more clarifying details of the mission are classified, Ms. Lawrence. Trust that we have humanity's best interests at heart," he said. "Don't take on something you can't handle, Peyton."

  Then he walked away, thankful he'd erased the prior mission files during her unauthorized field trip to the digsite.