Page 35 of Alien on the Moon

Stiya rolled her eyes but obeyed. Rylan caught the furtive glance she shot at Elena but chose to ignore it. He’d spoken true, Elena was one of the best researchers he’d ever come across. The way she could work through data at a breakneck pace would be necessary if they wanted to resolve this quickly.

He also wasn’t entirely sure Elena’s loyalty lay with the project and didn’t want her relaying the issue to Arccoo before they had a solution. Rylan hated himself for thinking like that, but he had to manage his risks. If Arccoo shut them down, while they were so close, it would break him.

Hours passed with Rylan fielding constant updates and questions. He’d stolen glances at Elena for the last hour, his exhaustion interrupting his concentration. She was still hunched over her desk, one of her monitors displaying an extensive spreadsheet. She was meticulously color-coding each disease with the preliminary results Jaku provided.

Rylan’s gaze snapped away when Elena leaned back and stretched. He’d noticed she had only left her desk for refills of caffeine. Like him, she had to be starving by now.

He was just about to offer to grab some food when Sofia’s voice rang across the lab.

Damnit, Stiya!

Sofia dodged a scientist carrying a tray of seedlings and rested her hip against Elena’s desk.

“Woah, that’s quite a spreadsheet you’ve got going, sis. Impressive.” Elena looked up from her screen, doing her standard blink as she adjusted her sight. Her eyes grew wide.

“Sofia!” She jumped up, grabbing Sofia’s arm as if she wanted to drag her out of the lab. “What are you doing here?” she whisper-shouted.

Sofia blanched. “Uh, sorry? I didn’t know the lab was off limits.”

Elena met Rylan’s eyes with a panicked glance. “It’s not. I mean, not usually, but we have a lot going on. You’ll be a distraction, and we can’t afford that, uh, not that anything’s wrong, you know, we’re just…” Her ramblings trailed off and she led Sofia out of the door.

Rylan smirked. Elena’s cute propensity to rattle on when she was nervous provided a short respite from his stress.

The smirk dropped when Kyn delivered another report to his desk. With a quick glance, Rylan confirmed that the soil had degenerated further since the last update an hour ago. He sighed when the words started bleeding together on the page.

He wouldn’t be able to focus until he had some food and a nap.

Elena found him as he was entering his chambers. She wrung her hands together, biting her lip.

“Any update?” she asked tentatively. Rylan rubbed his forehead.

“All bad,” he replied. Elena followed him into his room.

“I’m sorry about Sofia,” she said. “She has no boundaries. I think I distracted her enough to forget about the ‘tense vibe’ in the lab, as she put it.” Rylan nodded, pulling his top over his head.

“Thank you. I’m going to take a nap.” He fell down onto his bed, the bunk squeaking slightly in offense.

“I’ve looked up all diseases, and I’m slowly ruling them out as the results come in. I’m going to head out to the field to see them.”

“Okay. I’ll see you later.”

Elena frowned at him; her head tilted as if she couldn’t figure out his mood. The awkwardness that had faded as they got to know each other suddenly came slamming back. The door closed softly behind her, leaving him feeling strangely empty inside.

Rylan sighed, turning onto his back and staring at the ceiling. The tile squares blurred into swirls through his fatigue.

This setback really couldn’t have come at a worse time. After the celebration, after seeing Arccoo’s pride at everything they’d managed to achieve, failure would bite worse than a yurtri serpent.

What are we going to do?The thought resounded through his mind as he drifted into a fitful sleep.

Chapter 13

Elena

“Are you kidding me?” Elena muttered in frustration, staring at the squigs that lazily squirmed along her desk. Almost all of them had stopped eating the compost, and the soil was already losing its fertility.

Worse than that, they looked engorged and sickly, like they carried some disease. But in her research, she couldn’t findany kinds of diseases they were prone to that matched their symptoms.

“What is wrong with you?” she muttered, lightly prodding at one of the squigs with a pair of tweezers. It burst open, its skin peeling back like a blanched tomato as slime oozed out of its former body cavity.

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