The hangar bay of the Blackthorn Academy smells of hydraulic fluid, ozone, and the sharp, metallic tang of pressurized titanium.
The Artemis VII stealth transport sits dormant in the far corner, its gravity drive powered down and humming with a low, bone-rattling frequency. We aren't going to the Indian Ocean trench. The biological leviathan is buried beneath seven miles of crushing, lightless ocean, and the physical pressure of the deep, combined with the density of the Earth's crust, would instantly liquefy my healing synapses if I tried to interface with it directly.
Instead, we are going to the Moon.
"Luna, I cannot ethically clear you for this launch," Margot says, her voice tight with clinical terror. She is standing beside the airlock, holding a ruggedized datapad. Her face is dr
