The Final Six (The Final Six #1) - Alexandra Monir Page 0,52

five of us as we move through our training day a diminished team. The only one among us who seems in any way cheery is, of course, Beckett. As Lark escorts us to the diving pool for another session with Lieutenant Barnes, I glance behind me and notice Beckett walking alongside Naomi and Katerina, saying something to Naomi that makes her flinch. I slow my pace until I’m in step with them.

“I mean, when you think about it, she was probably your biggest competition,” I hear him say. “I did my research on the Twenty-Four before I got here, and it’s obvious you were both up for one of the academic spots on the mission. Your chances just got a lot better now that she’s gone.”

“My friend is in the hospital,” Naomi snaps. “You think I care about who beats who in the draft?”

Beckett shrugs, unfazed.

“She wasn’t that much of a friend, though, was she? You knew her for, like, a week.”

Naomi shoots him a withering look.

“She was my roommate. Maybe it’s hard for you to care about someone you’re spending nearly twenty-four/seven with, but some of us don’t have the same trouble.”

“I’m just saying.” He gives her an appraising look. “I think you latched on to her because you missed having your sick brother to take care of.”

Fury rises within me, and I jump between the two of them.

“Hey, man, why don’t you shut the hell up?”

I want to grab him by the collar and toss him against the wall; I want to make him pay for talking to Naomi that way. But before I can, she sidesteps me and seizes the back of his shirt, shoving him so roughly that he stumbles into Katerina.

“Never talk about my brother again,” she hisses.

“Enough!” Lark swoops down on us, yanking Naomi away from Beckett. “This team has been through plenty without you two adding to the drama. Unless you want to see what Dr. Takumi is like when he gets angry, you’ll drop this fight and start behaving like supportive teammates. Got it?”

They both grumble their assent while refusing to look at each other. As soon as Lark’s back is turned, Naomi elbows past Beckett, and Katerina catches up with us.

“I know he might have acted like a jerk, but Beckett’s not all bad,” she says in a hushed voice. “I’ve talked to him a few times, and, well . . . let’s just say people wouldn’t envy him if they knew the whole story with his family.”

“I don’t care what his story is,” Naomi says flatly. “He didn’t just act like a jerk, he is one.”

“Besides, we all came here with a past and you don’t see the rest of us making enemies,” I point out.

“Yeah,” Katerina concedes. “I don’t know . . .”

Our conversation cuts off as we enter the room surrounding the diving pool, with Lieutenant Barnes waiting for us at the water’s edge. As we get closer, through the water I can see what looks like a one-seater submarine, parked on the ice that blankets the bottom of the pool. A glass dome surrounds the driver’s seat of the vehicle, while the pressure hull is a bulky steel sphere attached to battery pods and thrusters. A set of dividers lines the pool, reminding me of my racing days—and despite the morning we’ve had, I feel the faint stirrings of excitement.

“Let’s go, team!” Lieutenant Barnes beckons us toward him.

We gather around, and I’m expecting him to start by saying something about Suki, to reassure us in some way—but he doesn’t. Instead, he delves straight into the task at hand, as though there is nothing unusual about our team of five.

“Today’s focus is water survival,” he begins. “What you see before you at the bottom of the pool is a submersible: the same model of underwater vehicle that members of the Final Six will drive in Europa’s ocean after drilling through the ice.”

“Amazing,” Asher murmurs, and I nod in agreement.

“When you touch down on Europa, you will initially live in an inflatable home on the ice’s surface,” Lieutenant Barnes continues. “However, to create a habitable environment for a mass settlement of humans, we need you to drill down into the ice crust to enter the postulated subsurface ocean. With Cyb and Dot’s navigational guidance, you will locate the massive pocket between the icy surface and the ocean interior. That pocket is where you will uncover an endless stretch of rocky land, be able to produce oxygen from the nearby