Chapter 1

Paige

Year 3024: First All-Female Civilian Transport Ship to Mars

I ’m dead to the world, or rather, the universe. Nestled in my pod like a comfy little caterpillar, snoozing until the autopilot on our ship gently wakes us up with the good news.

Congratulations. We have arrived on Mars!

Except, that’s not how I wake up.

A bone-rattling shake yanks me out of an unconscious state and I suck in a deep breath. My eyelids weigh a thousand pounds and my body is stiff from the trip. God knows how long I’ve been in my pod. A few days? A week?

Another massive shake rattles the very delicate technology surrounding me and I realize something is very wrong.

I yank open the latch from the inside of my pod and push the glass door open. It’s an effort to drag myself from the comfortable linens and force myself up on shaky legs. My senses are on overload. Sensors are blaring, ringing in my ears from the autopilot command center in the front of the ship.

I look around the passenger chamber. Six pods. All still closed.

We’re nestled in the back portion of the ship in a rounded room attached to the corridor that takes us to the command center. Our elongated capsule pods line the wall in two rows of three facing each other. I’m the last pod on the left and I check each pod as I pass to check on my friends.

Cristina.

Melina.

Lara.

Nicole.

Ryan.

They are all still asleep and I blow out an easy breath. Maybe I was making up all the commotion.

It’s only the six of us on the ship. Six women chosen from hundreds to help start civilization on Mars. We have no pilot, just the promise of scientists far smarter than us that we wouldn’t need one. If everything went to plan, the next time we were supposed to wake up, we would be nestled safely on Mars and ready to meet our new neighbors.

The ship lurches and I nearly fall onto the steel mesh flooring. Two of the medical monitors start to beep, Melina and Ryan. This is definitely not normal.

My heart races as I head down the corridor to look around the ship. Red alarm lights are flashing where the walls meet the ceiling. I head to control to see what’s going on, not even sure if I know what I’m looking for.

Another pod opens behind me and I still. Melina.

“What’s happening?” The obnoxious alarms almost drown out her soft voice. Her dirty blonde hair is teased around her head like she was thrashing in her sleep. She clears her throat and stretches like a house cat.

“I’m not sure,” I answer. I wobble a little on the bridge to the autopilot command center, gripping every solid surface as I go. “I’m going to check it out,” I call back to her.

Inside the command pod, buttons are blinking and the radar is all jumbled, showing little dots scattered around in front of our ship. Everything is flashing, blaring and I don’t need to know how to fly a spaceship to know something is wrong.

Very wrong.

The entire ship lurches to the side and I hear another pod open in the passenger chamber. I run back, gripping the wall as the entire ship works to stabilize itself.

Ryan and her fiery red hair pops up from her pod, her ever grimacing face searching mine for answers.

“What the fuck?” she calls out.

My mind whirls, processing everything.

We weren’t on Mars yet. We’d been sleeping long enough that we probably weren’t even close to Earth either. I nearly go flying as the ship takes a hard left turn.

“What is going on? Why did we wake up?” Ryan asks again.

I shake my head. “I think autopilot is trying to avoid something. A meteor shower maybe?”

“A fucking meteor shower?” Ryan lays back down in her pod. “Wake me up when we’re really there.”

She slams the glass cover on her pod closed just as Melina joins my side.

“W-what should we do?” Melina’s big green eyes meet mine and I wonder if she can see that I have no damn idea.

Autopilot is supposed to navigate us. Even if there was a manual option to the ship, not a single one of us aboard would have a clue how to use it. Not to mention, I have no idea where we are.

The ship shakes again and this time Melina and I are thrown off our feet onto the metal grates below.

Everything is shaking as the ship seems to slam into something from the outside. I drag myself to my feet again and we awkwardly make our way to the command center, arms locked to help us stay upright.

Something flashes across the radar and my heart stalls.

“What is that?” Melina asks the question as if she read my mind, pointing a finger at the strange shape in front of us.

I shake my head, a lump forming in my throat.

On the left side of the map, a circle appears. It grows and then lengthens like a cornucopia, traveling at us faster and faster.

My eyes go wide as I process what I am looking at. My fingers grip the edge of the command board as a chill tears down my spine. Melina looks at me, her chin starting to quiver like she’s seconds from bursting into tears.

“It’s a…wormhole.”

I’m no expert, but I read enough about outer space travel to know that wormholes aren’t a good thing.

As soon as I say the word out loud, I spring into action. I grab Melina by her shoulders and push her down the corridor back to the passenger chamber.

“Get back in. Shut it tight and brace yourself.”

Melina shakes her head furiously as we get to her pod and I try help her in. She pushes me away and points to my pod. “You get in too.”

I have to check everyone else’s. If Ryan opened the latch on her pod, there’s a chance it was still partially open. Maybe someone else’s rattled free. I need to make sure everyone will be safe.

“Go!” I shout at Melina.

I look over each pod as quickly as I can and then run for my own. Melina is halfway inside hers when a shattering, screaming sound echoes through the ship. The walls shake as the floor tears from underneath my feet and a second later I’m airborne.

Melina screams as I slam into something hard. The air surges from my lungs as I try to hold onto something, anything. The ship is flying at a pace that feels like my organs are going to shoot out of my body.

We jolt again and I land on something softer. Melina screams underneath me and I realize it’s her.

“Oh God. Hold on to me!” I shout at her, but my voice is drowned out by the crashing and cracking. The metal around us sounds like it’s bending and morphing, seconds from being obliterated by the pressure.

I blink as a heavy weight pushes on us, harder and harder until I can’t move my muscles. Everything hurts.

Another massive jolt and I’m slammed into a wall, pain shooting up my cheek and flaring at my temple. I reach up and feel blood trickling down my face, my strength fading as I curl into a ball on the hard ground.

It’s too loud.

It’s too violent.

I can’t feel Melina anymore.

I can only pray that the pods will save the rest of them.

As for me?

I swallow against the nausea and surrender to the throbbing pain in my head, the clutches of exhaustion that makes all the noise fade away.