The gerouin said nothing more, simply disconnecting. I turned back to the boy. He was still unconscious, but he was breathing—barely. I crouched to get a better look at him. His hair was coated with the red dust that the wind kicked up in swirling eddies, but I could see it was curly and dark. His skin, on the other hand, appeared bleached like an old man’s, even though he was clearly young. Could unprotected exposure to solar rays have done this? The atmosphere was so thin now…

I inhaled shakily, my lungs burning. It was already painful for me to be outside, and I couldn’t have been out for more than five minutes. This boy… how did he get here?

Part I

Chapter 1

The sun’s warmth melted over me as I stepped off the bus. I paused for a moment, blinking away the startling brightness of the open air after the dim confines of the school bus. It was near the end of April II—our spring April—of my junior annum, but it was weird for it to be this warm on Mars, even during the summer months. As my classmates filed off the vehicle behind me, I rolled up my long thermal sleeves. Here in the hills, the wind was stronger, with a cooling bite, but the undercurrent of warmth to the day was still unmistakable. I grinned in spite of myself.

“Right, right, everyone, keep clear of the steps, we need to get everyone off the bus if we’re ever going to get moving with this,” my homeroom teacher, Mr. Johnson, yelled over my classmates’ chatter. “Henry, that means you. Isaak! Would you please do something about your partner in crime?”

I started at the sound of my name and glanced over my shoulder. At the foot of the bus steps, a stocky kid with long black hair and a faded t-shirt that proclaimed “FREE MARS” in what was once bold red text was streaming music on his earpod loud enough to be heard five meters away, seemingly oblivious to the world around him.

Turning back to Mr. Johnson, I shrugged. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about him.”

“I suppose it would be too much to ask you to make him behave for the rest of the day,” said Mr. Johnson. “But for a start, you can move him.”

I rolled my eyes and tromped back toward the bus. “Come on.” I nudged Henry away from the steps.

“What? What’d I do this time?”

He looked up and caught Mr. Johnson’s eye. They exchanged matching glares.

“That guy’s got it in for me,” Henry complained.

I opened my mouth to answer, but broke off as my other best friend, Tamara, elbowed her way between the two of us. “Well, maybe if you didn’t get called into the principal’s office every other day,” she pointed out reasonably.