The Final Six (The Final Six #1) - Alexandra Monir Page 0,3

around me. Elena raises an eyebrow.

“At least you remembered to take off your shoes before you jumped in. Why not drop the clothes, too?” Two pink spots appear in her cheeks. “That came out wrong, I meant—um, let me get you something to dry off with. Wait here.”

“Thanks.” I avoid her eyes but not out of embarrassment. I can’t look at Elena without seeing the empty space where my sister should be. And now I wish I’d never followed that stupid boat, that I’d never ended up here.

Suddenly, a thunder of footsteps descends on the elevated walkway, accompanied by raised voices. I crane my neck to look. My neighbors are awake far earlier than they should be—and they’re heading straight for the top-floor entrance to Palazzo Senatorio.

This day just keeps getting stranger.

Elena returns with a large overcoat, and I drape it over my drenched clothes. I can hear the beginnings of a question forming on her lips, but I interrupt her.

“What’s going on? Who were those people in the ESA boat, and what are they doing in Rome?”

Elena stares at me. “Do you really not know?”

“Apparently not.”

“It’s the calling of the draft. The Twenty-Four are being announced today!”

“The Twenty-Four?” I repeat. The words are familiar, like a long-forgotten taste on my tongue. My mind rushes back in time, before the sinking of Rome, before I lost everything. And then—

“Europa.”

Elena nods, a slight smile lighting her features.

The memories feel like snippets from another life. I can remember sitting around the TV with Angelica and our parents, the four of us glued to the live United Nations press conference, where world leaders declared a state of war between humanity and our environment. I remember the government official showing up at our door with the Europa Mission & Draft pamphlets, outlining a plan to deploy young astronauts to build a new home on Jupiter’s most promising moon, Europa. Then came the strangers, infiltrating our school the following week—“scouts,” they were called—who studied us in their search for the perfect teenage candidates for the Europa Draft. Because, as the scientists said on TV, “Only the young can tolerate the radiation-resistant bacteria that will enable humans to thrive in the current conditions on Jupiter’s moon. Only the young will still be fertile and able to procreate on Europa by the time it is terraformed and ready for a full human settlement.”

Those heady days are a blur, like a dream washed away by the flood. I guess I never thought they would actually go through with the whole extravagant idea.

I turn back to Elena. “So you’re saying they already picked the finalists? But why wouldn’t ESA and NASA just announce the names online? Why come all the way—”

I stop short, the realization practically knocking the wind out of me. “One of the finalists is from Rome?”

“Yes! Thrilling, isn’t it? Unless it’s me—then I’ll have a heart attack.” Elena shivers. “They’re going to announce who it is in a live-streaming press conference at five thirty.”

“Are you serious? We have to get inside!”

I break into a run, ignoring Elena’s protests that I can’t enter the Palazzo barefoot and dripping wet. There’s no way I’m missing this, not when one of my friends or neighbors is about to be named a finalist to go to Jupiter’s moon. I can just see my father pumping his fists in pride that a Roman was chosen, while my mother would clap her hand over her mouth in her usual dramatic way, torn between the excitement of it all and pain for the parents left behind.

The city hall’s portico entrance sank in the Great Flood along with its lower floors, so I run straight from the dock up to the covered arcade that leads into the piano nobile, the new main floor. Inside, the old masters on the walls are caked in a coat of film from water damage, while the elaborate painted ceilings are marred with cracks. But the old hum of activity remains, and I follow the sound of voices into the Neo-Gothic Salon, a large foyer still standing with the support of its marble columns. A glass chandelier swings tenuously from the ceiling, a shaky vestige of the pre-flood days.

Filling nearly every square inch of the room are fellow survivors: “the Last Romans,” as they call us in the media. Everyone watches, rapt, as the Italian military officer and her companion from the ESA boat approach the podium at the front of the room, flanked by the prime minister and