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  I sighed and ran my fingers through my tangled hair. The mass of our dead ship weighed on my shoulders. Leo had traveled deep in his fantasy. It would take a long, harrowing stretch to bring him back. “I’ll fix it.”

  Leaving Mom in the kitchen, I passed my messy excuse for a room and followed Leo to his.

  He sat on his bed, fingers wiggling in the air in front of him. Behind him hung a holopicture of a city from Old Earth. Skyscrapers pricked a golden orange sunset as blue waves crashed on a shore with real, smooth sand, not the prickly black crystals of Paradise 21. Carnival lights illuminated the corner of the picture with red and white striped tents and a circular ride that brought people skyward to touch the clouds...what was it? Oh yes, a Ferris wheel.

  Sometimes Leo acknowledged me as a rival in his altered state, and sometimes he didn’t seem to notice me. I knocked on the doorframe to get his attention and figure out which imaginary scene we had to play out.

  “Leave me alone, Lila. I need to practice.”

  Oh yes, this one.

  I sat beside him and pretended to be Lila from his dreams. “You need a break. Just look at your fingers.” I turned his hand over and took on an admonishing tone. “They’re all swollen and sweaty.” In reality, he had the same soft, pale fingers everyone had on the New Dawn. None of us got enough true sunlight.

  He shot me an accusatory look. “You’re just trying to make me stop so you can win.”

  “Leo—”

  He shrank back as if he didn’t know me. “My name is Lewis.”

  “I’m sorry. What was I thinking? I meant Lewis.” Why couldn’t I remember all of his alternate reality identities? “You know I don’t want to win. I can’t stand performing in front of large audiences.”

  “You can’t stand it, but you sing so well. It’s like your feed off the audience’s energy.”

  Never in a million years would I have thought I’d sing for a profession. They just didn’t have jobs like that on the New Dawn. Way too trivial when survival was the priority. Which was why I knew these little fantasies were just figments of his confused mind. “I’m not entering the concerto competition. Not this time.”

  There, that should calm him down.

  “What about your ‘Queen of the Night’ aria? You sound like a goddess.”

  Queen of the night? I typed it into my locator and searched the files from Old Earth. A strange language popped up and I hit translate. Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart. It was the second aria sung by the Queen of the Night, a soprano coloratura part, in Mozart’s opera, “The Magic Flute”.

  How did he know antiquated junk like this?

  Leo had gone back to wiggling his fingers in the air. I played along by pressing imaginary piano keys. “Mozart’s never been my favorite.” In reality, I’d never sung classical music. I sang mostly pop songs from the last century on Old Earth and a few songs I’d written.

  “Yes, but you excel at the classical literature, whereas romanticism is my forte.”

  He made just about as much sense as Asteran. I put my hands over his hands and stilled them. “Relax. Let me sing a song for you.”

  “If you do, will you leave me alone to practice?”

  I winked. “You bet.”

  “You’re such a showoff.” He leaned back on his bed and waved his hand at me. “Whatever. Go ahead. Bring the house down.”

  Where did he learn such outdated slang? I took a deep breath and engaged my diaphragm muscles to control the air. If I wanted him to come back to us, then I had to make this good. I imagined a techno beat and smooth, synthesized chords.

  “Flying on a journey across the stars

  No one knows what to expect,

  Our hearts look ahead and not back

  The end is near...”

  He blinked quizzically and scratched his head. “I don’t recognize this.”

  I used my talking voice. “Yes you do. Focus and pay attention.”

  He crossed his arms impatiently. “I’m all ears.”

  I brought my hand up as high as I could then spiraled it down to our carpeted floor.

  “Diving through the violet clouds

  Our ship breaks apart.

  No one knows what we’ll find

  In this land of paradise...”

  “Purple Earth” was a song I had written specifically for the ceremony after we landed on Paradise 21. I sang it during the after-party for Andromeda’s lieutenant-hood crowning, after she saved the colony from the microbes found in the pod plants. I never finished it, because Nova had run in and interrupted to warn everyone about the arachnid ship. At the time, I’d wanted to rip her throat out for stealing my spotlight, but it turned out she was right. Besides, if I hadn’t gone with her on that mission, I never would have met Asteran.

  “Walking on a black crystal beach

  A jungle teems with alien life.

  The crystals infuse our soil.

  And the purple sun warms our hearts.”

  Leo seemed to be listening carefully, considering each word as if I told his story through the music. Which I did.

  Please remember. I launched into the chorus, closing my eyes.

  “A vibrant sun, a turbulent sea,

  thriving plants and wispy clouds.

  Maybe this planet isn’t so different

  than the home we left behind.”

  “Lyra?”

  I opened my eyes and recognized the familiar darkness in Leo’s gaze and the way his lips hardened into a frown. He was back.

  “Yes?”

  “Did I miss your medal ceremony?”

  Mom must have seen the early signs and kept him home. Leo’s episodes were our family’s dirty little secret. Mental illness was like a death sentence on the New Dawn. Either they locked you up for life or forced you to do some menial task that wouldn’t hinder the colony’s progress. When so many relied on so little, all it would take was one crazy person to blast a hole in the hull or poison all the food generators. Then, adios mankind.

  But Leo wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  My brother waited impatiently on the edge of his bed. “Your ceremony, Lyra, did I miss it?”

  “Don’t worry about it. The ceremony sucked like a black hole anyway. Too many speeches.”

  “I didn’t go back, did I?” He always talked about his fantasies as if he really traveled back in time.

  I considered not telling him then decided against it. Sooner or later he’d see the time and wonder where the last few hours went. “For a little bit. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Dammit.” His jaw tensed, and he pounded his fist on the bed. Some of his homework disks fell on the floor.

  “Hey, it’s okay. No biggie.”

  “It is big, Lyra.” Leo ran his hands through his hair, making it even worse. “I’m never going to get a good job if I spaz out like that.”

  “They’re not going to know. We’ve covered it for this long, haven’t we?”

  “You won’t always be around to bring me back.”

  I thought about the last mission and how I’d disappeared in the awful bowels of that arachnid ship for days. Thank the Guide he hadn’t had an episode then, but that was my second mission away. I’d reached my quota of field work and then some. What were the odds I’d have another outrageous escapade? Crophaven had chopped all the pod plants and scoured the arachnid ship for survivors. “Where am I gonna go, eh?”

  “I don’t know.” He slumped down. “I have a feeling something big is coming, Lyra. You’re gonna have to choose whether to stay or go. You choose to go.”

  A shiver crept up my back, and I wiggled my shoulders to get rid of it. Sometimes his visions gave me the creeps. I put my arm around him, reminding myself that even though he was my brother and I loved him, he was two particles short of a portal frame. “Nah. I wouldn’t choose to go and leave you here. Don’t talk like that.”

  He was crazy, wasn’t he?

  Chapter Four

  Strawberries

  A h
alo of blinking light shone on my pile of crumpled uniforms as I entered my room.

  My knees buckled. My next mission assignment.

  Anger ripped through me. Would I ever get a moment of peace?

  How could I find another way to sneak into Asteran’s room if the computer distracted me with irrelevant missions like collecting samples on Paradise 21?

  I plopped on top of the dirty clothes. Last time, arachnids abducted me and spun me into one of their metal cocoons. The time before that, I crash landed in a pod field and had to run for my life. Leo’s words haunted me. “Something big is coming.”

  Did I really want to know?

  My fingers hovered over the panel in the wall. I wouldn’t be able to sleep wondering about all the different jobs the evil computer could possibly assign and how far the task would take me away from Leo. And Asteran.

  Anxiety welled up until I couldn’t control it. Mother of a black hole. I slapped my hand over the panel.

  Fluorescent green words typed across the screen. Mission assignment for Lyra Bryan: Extract and analyze arachnid’s metallic serum. Objective: recreate synthetic substitution.

  That would take forever. Not only that, but I’d have to enter the arachnid’s prison cell and find a way to drain the substance from their hairy legs. Why in all the universe would the computer pick me?

  Maybe Leo wasn’t the only one missing a few electrolytic capacitors. I did okay on my tests, but it wasn’t like I’d aced the chemistry part.

  Frustration boiling in my veins, I clicked the lip on my sleep pod. The cover rose slowly with a buzzing hum. Inside, I’d programmed a meadow scene from Old Earth, with small, pink blossoms and willow trees blowing in the wind. Tinkling music filtered through the speakers as I climbed in and lay on my back. My favorite.

  Wait a second.

  Something about Leo’s delusion made me bring up the settings panel with the tip of my finger. I clicked on audio selections and scrolled down to the track I’d chosen.

  Eighteenth century harpsichord flashed on the screen. I thought back to my historical studies. Didn’t Mozart play the harpsichord?

  Funny how Leo had brought up that opera by Mozart and how it had been my favorite—or Lila’s to be exact. Maybe Leo had crawled into my sleep pod and listened to my musical selection. Ew. I checked the sleep pad around me, but I couldn’t find any crumbs from the soybean wafers he liked to chew before bed.

  No, it must just be a coincidence. Still, it freaked me out enough to change the sound to natural birdsongs and rushing waters. Old Earth had happened a long time ago, and it was gone. There was no sense in dwelling on long-dead traditions. In fact, it gave me a sad, melancholic anxiety I couldn’t shake. We needed to move on, and we had by colonizing this new planet. Leo would have to learn to let go.

  Engineers had designed the sleep pods to regulate the perfect temperature, air flow, sound, and light based on individual needs. That was one thing they got right. A ship that couldn’t fly again after landing—not so much, in my opinion.

  With that thought, my mind numbed and sleep came quickly in a thick blanket.

  I stood in the biodome. Brightly colored finches and white doves fluttered from one metal rafter to another as artificial sunlight streamed down. Golden fields of wheat bent on a warm breeze to my right. Trellises covered in grapevines lined the walkway to my left, and white-blossomed strawberry plants grew in a tangle at my feet.

  Something was wrong. The grassy path had been recently mowed, and the bushes trimmed. The biodome didn’t look this tidy any longer. The biologists had moved most of the crops to the greenhouses on Paradise 21 after we landed, and allowed weeds to overgrow the fields.

  They must have replanted. Why would they come back here?

  I bent down and plucked a strawberry as big as my palm. Ever since they started using crystals to infuse the soil, our crop yield had topped the charts. Never again would we have to worry about diminishing nutrients in the overused soil we’d brought from Old Earth.

  My teeth broke through the ripe, seeded skin and sweet juice exploded over my taste buds. I’d always liked strawberries. Mom put them on my birthday cake and in my soy cereal.

  My stomach rumbled. I bent down to find another, but the plants were bare. A cool breeze blew through my hair, bringing rot and decay. The temperature controls must be acting up.

  I stood and, in the blink of a particle, everything changed.

  The vines shriveled over the trellises, and the wheat fields were bare, dry, dusty earth. Prickly weeds covered the path.

  I looked at the strawberry I’d just bitten into, and it had melted into a sour mess in my hand.

  Gross. I wiped my hand on my pants leg and spit on the ground, trying not to think about the bite I’d just ingested. How could I have been so blind?

  What had happened? Sure, the biodome was overgrown, but it wasn’t this bad. This wasteland was a complete disaster. In fact, it reminded me of pictures in my text from the ruin of Old Earth.

  A shiver crawled across my shoulders. I shook it away and hugged myself. On top of all the desolation, an eerie stillness pressed down on me as if someone or something watched my confusion with pleasure.

  I hurried down the path to the orchards. A strange, rhythmic creaking came from the bows. A dark shape hung from one of the branches, swinging like a pendulum.

  Had they just picked bags of apples? Looking around at the state of the crops, I didn’t think so.

  My stomach lurched as I got closer. That wasn’t a bag of apples. It was a human-sized metal cocoon.

  My heart seized and my knees weakened. Had the arachnids escaped, into the ship? Nova had warned us against taking them alive, yet the scientists didn’t listen, insisting we could learn from them.

  Checking around me, I darted from tree to tree. Dry, rotten bark crumpled under my fingertips, and I stumbled under twisted, leafless branches.

  I reached the cocoon and peeled back a shiny layer of thin metal, the edges cutting into my palms.

  Asteran lay inside, his eyes closed and his breathing comatose.

  Not again.

  I yanked at the strands, but the layers were too thick to give way. I checked my belt strap for a laser to melt the metal, but my holster was empty. If the cocoon had been swinging, and Asteran was knocked out, then something had been here just moments ago. That something might come back.

  Asteran’s eyes flickered open, and I almost forgot about the imminent danger. Today his irises were a gorgeous violet hue with flecks of gold, much like the color of his skin.

  “Lyra, we have to stop them!”

  I did a double take. He spoke English?

  If the arachnids really were free on the ship, then I didn’t have time to ask him all my questions. I wrapped my fingers around a woven thread of metal across his chest and pulled with all my weight, to no avail. “I’m trying to get you out.” I gritted my teeth.

  His hand broke free of the cocoon and I stepped back. Impossible. The metal melted around him as Asteran stepped forward.

  I stared like a dumb desert cow as he grabbed my hand. Compared to my small wrist, his fingers looked gigantic and strong.

  “You have to come with me.”

  “With you where?”

  The lights flickered and went out. In the corner, where the tomato plants rotted into sludge, a reddish glow emanated. I knew that light. The color had burned into my mind ever since I stepped onto the arachnid ship. All of their controls were hideous red orbs.

  “Come on!” I tugged Asteran forward and we crouched behind the last remaining stalks of corn. Shadows moved on the walls as arachnids climbed down around us, closing in. I had to think of something, or we’d end up cocooned on their ship. If we woke up before they drained our blood, we’d be thousands of light years from home. Unlike our ship that would never fly again, theirs was still in one piece, crashed into a pod field several meters from our colony.

  A branch-like leg with wiry hairs came down two feet away
, sticking into the soil. A brain sack pulsed as it turned in our direction. The only thing separating us from its multiple eyes was the feeble, dried-out stalks that could blow away when the artificial wind changed direction. I had to think of something.

  My chest burned where the spire had hit, and I clutched it, gasping for breath. Asteran laid me on my back and put his hand over the scar. His touch soothed the pain.

  “Take care, Lyra. Rest now. We have a long journey ahead.”

  What journey? Where the arachnids would take us?

  I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came. The reddish light flickered all over the biodome, casting shadows in the rafters. Despite our impending doom, the birds still chirped above, flitting in between the hairy legs as the arachnids’ metal webs rained from the sky.

  All I could think of was how Leo had been right.

  Chapter Five

  Risk

  I awoke in a damp pool of sweat, my body shaking. I reached out and touched the hard plastic walls of my sleep pod. The compartment reeked of perspiration, and birdsongs clamored in my ears. Why in all of the universe were crazy roosters crowing?

  Duh, Lyra. When I’d changed the musical selection, I unknowingly changed my alarm along with it. I was used to hearing the gentle harpsichord tinkles. Way to go, cyber brain. No wonder I had nightmares.

  I pressed the lid open, eager to get out of the small space and into the clean air of my room. I hung my legs over the edge, trying to get my bearings. Last I remembered, I’d been with Asteran. He’d spoken English and the arachnids freely roamed the ship. Normally, I would have loved to dream of Asteran, but I wouldn’t have called last night’s ghoulish nightmare anything close to romantic.

  Although he did hold my hand.

  Wow, my hormones were acting up. Seriously, I had to get some sense into my head.

  I knew it was only a dream, yet I had to see the beasts in their cells to make sure. Jumping off the sleep pod, I picked up my towel from the pile of semi-clean clothes on the floor. I had to report to the containment cells in twenty minutes, and there was only one way to be sure those beasts were still locked up.