of why Colony had stopped the abort process once it had been started. I tried slotting the facts together, arranging the clues in some readable order, but raw fear and leftover adrenaline made it hard to think. And other, older problems kept invading: Oliver was dead. Colony had sent for us. And something else…

I traced the thread of concern to back before the creature’s appearance. Something bad had taken place prior to the tractor coming for us—something that seemed to tug at my subconscious for attention.

Then I remembered.

That single gunshot.

• 31 •

More Dead

I could see the huddled forms of Mica and Peter on the small rise before we reached the fire pits. They were right where we had left them: close by one of the shaft walls. One body was bent over the other and a mournful moan—barely audible—emanated from one of them.

We forgot our exhaustion from the long jog up the mine and broke out in a run, the light from my flashlight bouncing with my gait but increasingly unneeded as we approached the wan reach of daylight.

As I got closer, I could see that it was Peter draped across Mica’s body, his shoulders shivering in time with the sobs. Leila and Tarsi reached him right before Kelvin and I got there. Their hands went to his back, trying to comfort him for his loss.

Both of them pulled their arms away as if burned by the touch. Leila yelped, and Tarsi covered her mouth. I came to a stop as Mica’s arms moved across Peter’s back.

She was alive.

The shivering and sobs were coming from her.

Jorge began cursing as I tried to help the girls tend to Mica. As weak as she’d been an hour before, we had a difficult time prying her arms off Peter. She probably would’ve chosen to stay there until the weight of him on her ribs finished her off.

We finally got Peter’s body free, and two of the boys laid it by the black stain of an old fire. Mica’s moans turned to wails. She sat up, the front of her soaked in Peter’s blood. It looked like her bruises and injuries had leaked right through her clothes, but I had a glimpse of the damage on Peter’s chest—it looked like something had erupted through him and out his back.

Tarsi and Leila tried to calm Mica down, and I moved in to help, but Vincent stepped in front of me, blocking me off. He knelt beside Mica, leaned forward, and wrapped her up in his arms. He began sobbing along with her. Mica’s hands went from fighting the girls to clutching Vincent’s back; her fingers squeezed the folds of his shirt into frantic clumps.

The two of them shook from the hard cry, and I could hear Vincent whispering something to Mica between the sobs.

I stood there, completely ineffectual. Someone thought to cover Peter’s body with a scrap of tarp, but I continued to remain rooted in place, my arms at my side as I watched two of my friends grieve together.

I wanted to join them. I wanted to beat my fists against the mountain. I wanted to pound the image of Oliver’s death out of my memory. Part of me wanted to unleash pain on myself for failing my friend. For failing my profession. All the words and advice, all the grief tactics I’d tried to use with Vincent over the past few days as I attempted to chip away at his sullen silence—the very same things I had been about to employ with Mica—they all crumbled away like loose rock.

Replacing them was the knowledge that even though such things were useful, the first thing Vincent had needed—and what I needed right then—was someone to feel his pain. An honest outlet for his heart-rending torture. He needed something the rest of us had worked as a group to protect him from, maybe because we were scared of it ourselves. He needed to feel it. To be allowed.

There were times when I wanted to grieve with him, to share just such an outpouring of sadness, but I had walled it off. I had hid it away with that secret me I had become ashamed of. Maybe I was wrong to have done so. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried so hard. Maybe it was the death of my former friend on top of so many other gruesome ordeals that finally had me realizing that maybe—

Maybe I wasn’t broken after all. Maybe the things I was scared of could be part of some solution, rather than a problem.

Tarsi and Kelvin sought me out, the numb confusion I felt  reflected in their faces. And that’s when I saw that I wasn’t alone, that I didn’t have to suffer by myself. I reached for them.

And I cried.

• 32 •

The Reason

We sat in a cluster by the mine’s entrance as the day outside began to fade, the sun slinking back behind the mountains. Vincent and Mica had fallen asleep—passed out, really—in each other’s arms, and none of us could stomach to move them. Some of the others had taken Peter’s body deeper into the mine. The thought of him back there—dead and covered in a tarp—made me feel sick. It made me think of Oliver and the other enforcer. I took a deep, shuddering breath, but my face was already chapped with a week’s supply of tears.

“It’s getting cold,” Leila said. I looked over and saw she was addressing Jorge. He still had his shirt off and bundled around the gun, which rested in his lap.

She helped him with it. They unwrapped the weapon, and it clattered to the stone floor. Nobody moved to retrieve it as she flapped the shirt in the air, trying to work the kinks out.

Those who had drifted off into their thoughts hours ago took notice of the sudden activity—several of them frowned in Leila’s direction. She held the shirt up in front of her and I could see her face through the large holes that had been eaten away from it. Our eyes met, and we both looked to the gold gun in front of her.

She reached out. “Don’t touch it,” I said. I crawled forward to inspect it. A light sheen remained on the weapon; it still looked as if it were covered in a layer of wax. “Let me have the shirt,” I said. I became numbly aware of the audience stirring around me as I took the ruined article of clothing from Leila.

I rubbed the side of the gun with the shirt and the shiny stuff came away.

“What is it?” Kelvin asked, leaning forward to inspect it.

“It’s wet,” I said.

Jorge leaned forward and showed us one of his hands. Several of his fingers were bright red and raw-looking. “Shit burned me,” he said.

“An acid?” Tarsi asked.

I shook my head, but not to answer her question. I could feel bits and pieces of a larger picture coming together in my mind, like drops of condensation flowing downward with the pull of logic—meeting and growing and becoming an awful realization:

The reason.

“Am I going to be okay?” Jorge asked me. “What do you think it is?”

“The reason,” I repeated to myself, thinking aloud.

“Yeah, it burned me. I thought it was just hot from firing. Am I gonna die?” Jorge looked around at us. “Aren’t one of you a chemist or something?”

“Quiet,” Kelvin said. I turned to see him staring at me, his hand on my shoulder. “What is it?” he asked me. “The reason for what?”

“For aborting the colony,” I whispered. “For changing its mind. For everything.”

Before anyone could respond, I added, as it had just occurred to me: “It’s the reason for the rocket.”

I sat back, leaving the gun where it was, and tossed Jorge what remained of his shirt. I pressed my palms

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