The Final Six (The Final Six #1) - Alexandra Monir Page 0,58
for a rainy day. I, on the other hand, am the type to pack a portable electron microscope whenever I travel. It may sound weird, but you just never know what you’ll find when you leave home. A foreign insect or an unusual pebble in the streets of somewhere new becomes a form of art when placed under a microscopic lens. And I’m about to find out just what kind of art is hiding in this radiation-resistant bacteria.
I pull out the microscope and a miniature bottled water from my backpack, bringing them both to my desk. My eyes flash to the door, double-checking that it’s firmly shut, before I pour a drop of water onto the microscope slide. My heartbeat quickening, I retrieve the RRB vial from my pocket and unscrew the top, revealing the icy-blue, viscous serum within. I empty a bit of the serum onto the slide with the drop of water, place the glass coverslip over it—and then I peer into the lens.
Impossible. I shake my head at the sight before me, blinking rapidly to try to clear my vision. Bacteria cells are prokaryotes—they’re not supposed to have a nucleus. And yet . . .
I take a breath, wait for the thudding in my chest to slow, and then return my eyes to the lens, expecting something different this time. But still I find three unmistakable nuclei . . . where there should be none.
The RRB is a literal exception to every rule of Earth’s bacteria.
Thirteen
LEO
AT BREAKFAST, NAOMI SLIPS A PIECE OF PAPER INTO MY HAND under the table. My stomach jumps as her fingers brush mine, and I spend the rest of the meal fixated on the message in my grasp, wondering what it says. As soon as we’re excused from the cafeteria and my teammates push back from the table, I unfold the paper and read her words, scrawled in blue ink.
Found something. Plan to meet me on the Telescope Tower after dinner. Make sure you’re alone.
I draw in my breath. How in the world am I supposed to wait until evening to find out her news?
It takes every ounce of my focus to stay present during training as Lark shuttles us between the Mission Floor, the Altitude Chamber, and the VR lab. My mind is already up on the tower with Naomi. When we finally make it to dinner, she leans in to murmur in my ear, “You go first. I’ll be a few steps behind you.”
I nod, glancing up at the clock. Only twenty minutes to go. But then my eyes catch on something else: Beckett, watching the two of us from across the table. I give Naomi a warning look before turning away.
I take the spiral stairs up to the tower two at a time, and as the wind sweeps against my neck, I realize how much I’ve missed the outdoors. Back in Rome, I tried to spend as little time as possible inside, in the wreckage of our pensione. As much as I hated the sea that stole my family from me, somehow looking at the sky and the stars comforted me.
I make my way to the telescope now, peering through it until I find the constellation I’m looking for—the one that always reminds me of my parents and sister: Orion’s Belt, with its three blinking stars. Maybe they’re out there, watching over me.
I take a deep breath and shift the telescope to a different angle—toward Europa. I’ve just caught the colorful sphere of Jupiter and the grayish speck of its moon behind it when I hear the sound of footsteps.
“Hi,” Naomi says behind me. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“Of course.” I turn away from the telescope, noticing how her face glows in the moonlight. A flush creeps up her cheeks, and for a moment we just stand there, our eyes locked. And then she looks away, taking a breath before launching into what she has to say.
“I looked at the RRB. And, Leo—it had three nuclei.”
At my blank look, she continues, “It’s a law of science that bacteria on Earth, like all prokaryote organisms, does not contain a nucleus. Just like it’s a law of human physiology that we don’t have, for example, fins. So just as we wouldn’t be considered human if we had fins, the fact that the radiation-resistant bacteria has three nuclei theoretically means . . .”
“It’s not from Earth?” I finish her sentence, the words sounding implausible as they come out of my mouth.