His lungs ached for more air.

He wanted to tear off his helmet and finally breathe freely.

Think clearly.

He unlocked the door using the emergency latch on the outside. There was no trace of the cabin pressure an intact vehicle should have had. Tayus sat strapped in, frozen solid like a block of stone. His chin rested on his chest, and from his open mouth hung a ruby-red icicle. Moon dust poured in through the shattered windshield, sprinkling across the controls and the dashboard, where several indicator lights were still flickering.

Lex stood frozen, unmoving. Maybe a minute passed, maybe two, or even longer—he couldn’t tell. Only the alarm from his suit jolted him out of his daze.

15% battery capacity

He unbuckled his dead friend and dragged him outside, laying him beside the open driver’s door. Tayus’s body stayed in the same position he’d been in while sitting—hunched forward, legs bent. The welding goggles around his neck fluttered in the wind. The dark lenses reflected the flashes of lightning crackling somewhere above them.

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This can’t be happening.

Lex wanted to scream as he stared into Tayus’s lifeless eyes.

The terror, the fear of that final moment, was trapped behind a thin layer of ice clouding his irises. His friend’s body looked like a grotesque replica, a figure made of the same material as Tayus, but everything that had made him who he was—his spirit, his soul—was gone.

Lex climbed back into the cockpit and collapsed onto the driver’s seat. He turned the key twice, and the three massive engines roared to life. He could feel the raw power of over 6,000 horsepower rumbling beneath him as he slowly drove the ore truck forward.

Most of the time, he watched the radar and the battery status on his suit, which had already dropped to 13 percent. In the back of his mind, he told himself he might still make it back in time—but probably not.

Surprisingly, he didn’t care much either way.

It wasn’t until he left the canyon and his battery was down to five percent that he realized he’d actually survive. But even that didn’t stir him. Instead, he began to question things.

What had Tayus been searching for out there?

And what punishments awaited him for leaving the crater without permission and wrecking the UTV?

At the very least, he’d be given a disciplinary procedure, which would disqualify him from the Selection Program.

The one thing that had ever given him hope for the future was now on the line, and he asked himself why he’d done it, what had driven him—because deep down, he had known all along that Tayus was dead and that this accident couldn’t be hidden from the corporation.

He cursed himself for his stupidity.

Cursed Tayus for joining the rebels.

And cursed the corporation most of all. For they were the reason he and his friends were all in this mess, now and always.