Space Race (Space Race 1) by Nathan Hystad (book recommendations for young adults .TXT) 📕

I speak with Arlo?” He looked at the others. “Alone.”

“Sure. It just so happens I was getting hungry.” Luther rose, lobbing me the ball he’d been playing with, and the three of them left the room.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I was reading the files on Eris.” Bryson strolled to the window with his hands behind his back. I stayed silent. “Do you know why I bought the facility from Oasis?”

“Because you wanted to climb the ladder, and the Elurnium was enough to bring you to the brink at number eleven. But how did you manage to convince Temeletron to drop out?” I pondered.

“Very astute of you. They were already on the way down; all I did was point them in the proper direction. As for the Elurnium, it’s basically obsolete.”

“But they’re still manufacturing it.”

“SeaTech has discovered something far easier to mine, at a third of the cost. It’s what truly boosted us this high, not the purchase of the Elurnium.”

“So why buy Eris? Let Oasis suffer for the project.” I didn’t have many nice things to say about the Corporation that had recently tossed me into the street.

“It was cheap. Believe me. And…I know what they hid.” His head tilted toward me, and I understood what he meant.

“You’ve spoken to Kol?”

“I have.”

“And what does this have to do with me?”

“Don’t play coy,” Bryson said.

“Did you hear about Veera?” I searched his face for a tell, but he just stared blankly.

“Who?”

“The woman on Eris,” I said.

“I think you should come with me, Arlo.” Bryson put a fatherly hand on my shoulder, as if the act was intended to strengthen me for whatever was coming.

We strode through the top floor and passed the rest of the team as they ate together. The elevator brought us to the lowest floor, and Bryson smiled as he pressed his thumb onto the keypad and typed a code. The screen glowed orange, and we continued to lower.

“Not many of my people are privy to this. Let’s keep it that way.”

I nodded, and seconds later, the doors opened, revealing a metallic corridor. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of the same reflective substance, and the sparse lighting gave the place an ominous tension as we walked out of the elevator.

“What is this?”

“Arlo, do you believe in more than what you see every day?”

“I don’t see much outside of Capricious. Sometimes the Belt Station. Used to see a girl in my complex.” I smirked, and he stopped at the end of the passageway. A man and woman were stationed there, fingers casually draped on the guns at their hips.

“He’s with me.”

They loosened up and stepped aside, granting their CEO entry.

The room was enormous. A giant cavern with the largest window I’d ever come across, a hundred meters from where I stood. It ran the entire length of the cave, giving way to an underwater oceanic view. Fish swam by, and I saw the start of the Tubes farther in the water.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Bryson pointed out.

“I believe the universe holds many secrets, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“In a sense. Do you believe in beings from other worlds? Are we alone, as the Corporations often pretend?” Bryson walked toward the middle of the room, where a tall console rose from the metal floor. It had three computers built in, each with a clear box under the keyboard. They pulsed blue, reminding me of the Racer’s Core drive containment shroud.

“I guess I do.” I recalled the derelict vessel I’d stumbled upon and wondered if perhaps it wasn’t an encrypted test ship from one of the Primaries after all.

“Kol was going to send me footage of someone’s experiment with the organic matter they found within the deep recesses of Eris, but it never made it. He did, however, manage to send me a sample.”

“I saw it,” I admitted, remembering the green form rising within the inspection box that Kol had shared with me.

“Did it look like this?” The room had a couple of people working, each wearing blue lab coats, and they stopped what they were doing when Bryson powered up the console nearest him.

I stared at the four-foot screen, squinting as it went from dim to exceptionally bright. The image settled, showing a glass case attached to the underside of one of the SeaTech facility’s giant tubes. Inside was the same creature. Green arms and legs protruded from a bulky torso, its head misshapen.

“You have it?”

“Fifteen kilometers from here, to be exact.”

The screen zoomed in on the creature, and two small eyes opened, along with a gap where its mouth sat. The thing lifted an appendage, and the footage cut off.

“Kol had a sample of this?” I asked.

“He did. Knew it would be worth something.”

“I’ve seen that thing break through some serious protective walls,” I warned Bryson.

“If that containment box can withstand the heat of a Core, it can hold an organic being. This is the most amazing thing. She can revert to a pile of material, akin to a pile of moss. We think it’s how she sleeps. I imagine they remain in this form of stasis for thousands of years. The sample was small, but now look at her.”

“Why are you calling it a she?” I asked.

“My team has observed characteristics that tend to resemble more maternal patterns of behavior. Of course, we understand it’s too soon to tell. Many organisms duplicate, and we don’t categorize them as either sex.” Bryson tapped the keypad again, typing in a series of commands, and the image returned. Her body was gone, replaced by a patch of mossy substance. “She’s become dormant since we’ve arrived, but it seems that she’s expanded.”

“Expanded?”

“My team estimates that when she rises again, she’ll bring a new life as well. Possibly both controlled with the same mind. We’ve yet to determine this.”

It was too much. “Who else knows?”

“Only a select few from my team,” he assured me.

“And Kol, which presumably means Oasis does as well.” I stared at the mossy bedding inside the