Zed awoke in an all too familiar environment. He'd never been happier to see the teal-colored ceiling of the medical bay.

  Without moving, Zed took stock of his body. He could wiggle his toes. That was a good sign. He could feel the sweet absence of the cast on his ankle.

  One cast lost, one cast gained, Zed thought as he brought his hands up in front of his face. His left forearm was covered in hardened gel to the elbow. The moment that Johns had broken the bone played back with startling clarity, causing Zed to sit straight up on his cot.

  "Zed! You're awake!" came a voice to Zed's right.

  Zed looked over and saw Baat in a cot next to his. The stump of his friend's left arm was bandaged at the elbow.

  Baat noticed the glance and waved his injured arm at him. "Oh, it's not so bad. I'm right-handed, so I barely used it anyway. Besides, I think an arm for a life is a pretty good deal," Baat said, gesturing to Zed's left.

  Zed turned and felt himself involuntarily recoil at the sight of Andy Foster reclining on his cot a couple of meters away. His left wrist, absent a hand, was bandaged like Baat's stump. His other wrist was handcuffed to the cot.

  Andy glanced at Zed and then back at his lap.

  Baat cleared his throat. "Andy hasn't said anything since, well, since he lost his hand."

  Zed stared at Andy. It was so strange to see him like this. For all the negative emotions Zed had tied up with the man, now that he was past the initial surprise, all he felt was… sadness. He was sad for all the damage Andy had done. And he was sad for Andy. The once aggressive blowhard had been entirely deflated.

  Zed slid off the cot, careful to ensure that his legs still worked. A few cautious steps took him to Andy's bedside. He looked down at Andy and felt Unen bring forward what little background information he had on the man. It wasn't much—really just where he'd gone to school and a few offhand comments Janice had made. Zed felt another eddy of information swirling in the back of his mind.

  Seemingly unrelated pieces began to snap together, forming a new and strange picture: the lack of family information on Andy, his own comments before Johns turned on him about trying to make something of himself for "her," Johns' references to his boss, and the rumors Baat had mentioned about the Martian life obsessed cult forming back on Earth. With all the other pieces in place, the gap formed a clear and surprising shape.

  Zed put his hand on the edge of Andy's bed and said softly, "Jarra Gunnardóttir is your mother, isn't she?"

  Andy's head snapped up. He looked straight at Zed. It was hard to interpret the expression on his face; there was both surprise and horror there.

  "She's not going to let this go," Andy said so quietly that Zed almost missed it. "Once Johns delivers those mushrooms, she'll stop at nothing to control that cave. You can't even imagine."

  Andy looked like he was about to say more, but he just sighed, his gaze returning to his lap as if he'd exhausted his conversational reserve for the day.

  "Well, that was unexpected," Baat said from across the room. "It also makes a scary kind of sense."

  Zed nodded absentmindedly, desperately trying to make sense of the world. He realized there was one great mystery that he had been neglecting—one that he could very easily get an answer to.

  "Hey, Baat, how am I alive?"

  ***

  By the time Baat finished his story, Zed's knees were weak, and he was forced to return to his cot. Not for lack of strength, but from the knowledge of just how close he'd come to death.

  The first miracle was that they'd found him at all. The colony had no access to a GPS system to track Zed’s fiery fall through the atmosphere. They only had reason to start looking for him because a few people had witnessed his descent, giving them at least some indication of where to search. Jonah Gruene and some others had taken one of the recovered Monstros and scoured the Martian hills for two days before stumbling upon his bulb, hidden among a series of huge boulders.

  Even that miracle would have been all for nothing if not for the efforts of Commander Bao and the crew that had actually recovered a fresh harvest of Martian mushrooms in time. Based on the data they had, Bao’s team had drilled a hole just wide enough for a turtle suit to pass through directly above the main chamber. Commander Bao himself was lowered through the claustrophobia-inducing entrance only to find himself suspended above utter darkness. He continued on into the depths until he finally landed among the circles of radiation-spewing pits not far from where Zed himself had stood.

  He had been in early withdrawal when they'd finally gotten to him, but aside from the broken arm and an extra dose of soul weariness, he was none the worse for wear. Zed was released the next day and promised Baat that he'd check in on him.

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  Andy continued his stay in compliant silence. It wasn't as if there was anywhere to escape to, though. That was true for everyone on Mars now. With no communications or the ability to call down a lander, they were all prisoners to one degree or another.

  Andy was the first official criminal, however. His sentencing was brief. As the commanders were quick to point out in their judgment, there were no prisons on Mars, and likely never would be. The concept simply didn’t work here. They weren’t about to start executing people, so they had decided on a third option.

  Miraculously, no one else had died in the Chariot chase and ensuing drone attacks. There had been losses, though. The riders that Zed had seen thrown by the first drone explosion had both sustained injuries to their legs that required amputation. Another colonist had lost their sight due to a head injury from an impact. Baat, of course, had lost his arm. And then there was Alina's murder.

  Thabisa and Bao’s judgment was this: Andy and his fellow mutineers were to give back what they had taken. They would each be assigned to a victim and do whatever was required to make up for what was lost. They would ensure that each could continue to function as a citizen of Naug. It was an awkward solution, no doubt. It bordered on a kind of indentured servitude that made everyone more than a little uncomfortable, but all agreed that it was, at the very least, just.

  Andy was assigned to Baat at Baat’s own request. Zed never heard Baat say a single angry word to the man who had cost him and Naug so much.

  Even faced with unprecedented hardship, the colony was pulling together. Zed found himself in demand as the enhanced insight and problem-solving that Unen provided became more widely understood.

  It felt good to be useful, and he was happy to help. Since Unen could only work with the information in his head, it became apparent that the more he helped and the more he learned, the easier it became to see things even more clearly. If he was going to have to spend the rest of his life in this place and this state of being, he wondered how deep that understanding could go. How far could Unen take him?

  Zed never forgot about the vision he'd had in the bulb. Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he'd try to force himself to see the faces of the shadowy others he'd seen. Whether it was a vision or just a good idea, he knew he couldn't do this alone, but until communication with Earth was restored, the commanders had forbidden anyone else from sampling the Martian mushrooms.

  Zed’s family life was, well, complicated. His mother didn’t really speak to him anymore. In a small place like Naug, though, there was no real escape.

  Zed didn’t relish the thought of living alone with a silent parent who acted more like an aloof roommate, especially in the midst of their current dilemma. With the Commander’s blessing, he was given his own space. His mother protested at first, but Thabisa seemed to be the one person that even Ana Marsh respected or feared enough to give in to.

  Even though none of this had been his plan, Zed felt happy. Probably the happiest he’d ever been. So much pain and disappointment had come his way in the last year, but as Baat had said, you had to lean into it. The moment he let go of hating his circumstances was the moment he could make use of them and stop being controlled by them.

  During the months of silence from Earth, Zed often wondered about Johns. Had he survived the trip alone? What had he told the people back on Earth? Had he gotten away with it?

  After a time, it felt like they might never hear from Earth again. While this was emotionally difficult for those with loved ones back home and logistically challenging because of the supplies they were no longer receiving, life went on. They found ways to live without.

  And so, even though it had always been inevitable, when Zed looked up into the sky one day during one of his regular walks and saw streams of fire descending from above, he was shocked.

  The Earth crew that had come down made quick work of repairing the damaged communications systems with the supplies they had brought. With the satellites at their disposal, they could see all the while that Naug was still there and that people were alive; they just couldn’t speak to anyone. Thus, it was concluded that some kind of catastrophic hardware failure must have occurred, one of a magnitude that didn’t really make sense.

  When they found Johns’ ship, they began to suspect that there was more going on than they had initially thought. The ship was empty, with no samples and no sign of Johns. Some theorized he must have blown himself out an airlock after a bad reaction to the mushrooms or perhaps out of guilt.

  Zed wasn’t so sure. Johns didn’t seem the type to let a guilty conscience get between him and what he wanted. The truth was, he would probably never know what happened, which was more than a little maddening. Naug had endured so much for what Johns had stolen. There was a certain dissatisfaction in not knowing if it had been worth it, even if only for Johns.

  Not all the news was coming from Earth, however. The topic of Andy’s mother was of great interest to the authorities back on the big blue ball. As Andy had confessed, his mother was the puppet master behind pretty much everything that had happened.

  As it turned out, Foster was Andy’s father's name. His mother, Jarra Gunnardóttir, was a reclusive and powerful mogul. It was her companies that had donated some of the more advanced tech that Naug was built around, including the CIGs. Even Andy didn’t fully know what his mother’s endgame had been.

  Unsurprisingly, by the time this information reached the authorities, Jarra Gunnardóttir was nowhere to be found.

  ***

  “I met her once,” Zed said to Baat over lunch. “I actually spoke to her. Well, technically, she spoke to me.”

  “Yes, I recall you mentioning something about an interview. How strange that you actually spoke with a woman who would influence your life in such a horrible and unbelievable way, and even she probably didn’t know it at the time. Though it’s also possible I’m thinking too small, and your meeting was no coincidence.”

  “I doubt she could have guessed I’d be such a big part of, well, whatever this has become, but you’re probably right. Clearly, she had plans. I don’t know what they were, but I know this isn’t over.”

  “So, oh truth sayer,” Baat said with a wink. He’d started calling Zed that, which was funny coming from Baat, but Zed was starting to worry it was going to stick. “What do you think we should do now? What does that little voice in the back of your mind say is the most sensible course of action?”

  Zed smiled at his friend. “You said it yourself, Baat. Way back before all of this started. Whether you realized it or not, you were right. Jarra might be crazy, but I don't think she's stupid. If she thinks there’s more stuff like that mushroom out there that humanity was meant to find, then we have to take that seriously. We’ve got to find the next rung on the ladder before Jarra does.”