Page 47 of Rupture

Luca backpedaled, his eyes narrowing. He gave a dismissive grunt. “Whatever.”

Finn kept his body angled as a barrier between the two as Luca packed up his tools.

Ethan scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Liev, Luca—hotfoot it down to the shuttle. We need those repairs sooner than ever now.”

Luca’s shoulders stiffened, tendons popping in his neck.“I’m not a goddamn?—”

“Luca.” Ethan’s tone dropped to something cold and unyielding. The iron backbone that had sustained him in special forces. “Get down there and shut it.Now.”

A muscle twitched in Luca’s jaw as he muttered under his breath. The sound of his boots striking the metal floor echoed as he stalked toward the exit. Finn tracked every movement, his own muscles remaining taut until Luca was well clear of Rose.

“Welcome to the concept of teamwork,” Liev said dryly, following in Luca’s wake. “We’ll be on comms once we begin repairs, Ethan.”

The door closed behind them with a pneumatic sigh, but Finn didn’t fully relax until their footsteps had faded completely, the ghost of adrenaline humming under his skin.

Ethan turned back to Finn and Rose, his expression expectant. “All right,” he said, crossing his arms. “Now. The shit stuck to your clothes?”

Finn’s stomach gave a slow, queasy turn. The dried remains on his sleeve were still tacky under the lab’s lights, an unsavory reminder of their earlier encounter. He didn’t want to relive it, not yet. His gaze flicked to Rose, catching the same shadow of unease in her eyes. “It’ll be easier to show you. We were in the main research lab.”

Minutes later,they stepped into the main research lab. Finn entered behind Ethan. The air was thick with the stomach-turning stink of exploded critter. Disgusting, but better than it being alive and trying to eat his face.

His boots crunched on glass, the sound oddly loud in the otherwise quiet room.

Ethan paced the lab in silence, taking in the carnage piece by piece. The shattered glass shards. Streaks of jellied yellow liquid that definitely weren’t in any science text Finn had ever read. And everywhere, those exploded critter remains in grotesque glistening patches.

Finn followed, his senses on high alert, nerves prickling like static under his skin. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, trying to avoid the stench and the cloying sense of wrongness pressing down on him. Everything about this lab felt off—like a clock ticking out of sync or a painting hung just slightly crooked.

But it wasn’t just the room. It was this place. The Io facility. Something here wasn’t right, and this lab was the epicenter of whatever was setting off his internal alarms.

Ethan’s jaw hardened as he surveyed the destruction. “What the hell happened here?”

Finn didn’t answer. He didn’t have one. His eyes snagged on the largest fragment of the dead scorpion, half-hidden in the far corner. Its jagged shell gleamed under the fluorescent light with an unsettling metallic sheen, as if the material wasn’t entirely organic.

Rose’s voice severed the silence. “Scorpion. From one of the specimen jars.”

“One scorpion made all this mess?” Ethan spread his arms.

“It was a big fucker,” Finn said quietly. Like it had been hitting the gym and taking questionable supplements.

Rose nodded grimly. “It wasn’t normal. The specimens were augmented. They looked metallic. I’d make an educated guess they resulted from combining organic and inorganic elements. But how, I don’t know.”

Ethan turned from studying the broken specimen jars, his expression dark. “This is what your sister was working on? Animal experiments? How the hell does this connect to the Io going dark?”

Rose shook her head, but there was something in her expression that made Finn’s instincts sharpen. He might have only met her a short time ago, but he recognized evasion when he saw it. She was holding something back.

“There’s more to it than this. And what Luca just showed us only confirms it.” She was choosing her words carefully.

“So what?” The edge in Finn’s voice surprised him.

“I don’t know yet.” She scratched the back of her neck.

“But you have an idea.” Finn was aware he was sounding belligerent, but the words pushed out anyway, driven by the nagging sense that they were all missing something crucial.

Rose’s fingers drummed once against her neck. “Not an idea. It’s nothing.” Her tone hardened. “Speculation wastes time. We need answers.” She shot him a determined smile that made his heart miss a beat. It was genuine, that smile, despite everything.

“Finally, something we agree on.” He returned the smile, stretching against the tension in his shoulders.

She pulled a stool to the nearest workstation. There were no keyboards, just matte black tablets with pens notched in a narrow groove at the side. When she lifted the stylus, the screen woke to life, revealing the Triton logo weaving a lazy figure of eight.

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