Sophie hesitated, looking to Emanuel for support, but he simply shrugged.

“I don’t know, but they could have had untraceable implants that caused them to behave that way. I’ve heard of biological weapons that can cause the same reaction.” The words had hardly left her mouth before she realized her mistake.

“Biological weapons!” Timothy shouted. “That’s just great. Now we have to worry about going insane and ramming our heads into a wall until our skulls are crushed?”

“There is no evidence of that,” Emanuel chimed in. “If Soph—if Dr. Winston’s theory is accurate, then NTC would have used something that only affects poultry, not humans.”

Timothy rolled his eyes and took a step back from the pile of dead chickens. “Whatever you say, Doc.”

“With a large portion of our protein source gone, it’s even more vital we get the seeds in the ground,” Emanuel said, ignoring Timothy.

Sophie sighed. “He’s right. Let’s finish cleaning this mess up and head to the garden chamber. Everything’s going to work out. We just need to remember the mission. Things could be a lot worse.”

It was her job to keep the team motivated, to keep them focused, but she couldn’t stop worrying. Was it a trick? A ploy Dr. Hoffman was using to test her crew? She wasn’t sure how to answer her own questions. It was possible NTC would throw a wrench into their mission like this, testing them to see how they would handle being caught off guard in deep space, but only two days into the mission?

Sophie knew nothing short of a massive solar storm, nuclear war, or asteroid impact would have the power to knock out the emergency communication line. It had to be a test. It had to be part of the mission.

She shook her head. The past few days had been awful. Her mind was running on overdrive, and her brain was low on fuel. If she was right, then losing the chickens wasn’t that bad. Neither was being unable to connect with the outside. The problem would be convincing her team that things were okay.

She bent down and grabbed another dead chicken. The bird’s bloody eyes stared back at her. If NTC was willing to put her team through a test as sick as this one, she couldn’t help but wonder what else they had in store for her.

CHAPTER 6

LOCATION: NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON, TEXAS

YEAR: 2055

A RED haze lingered in the sky, creeping slowly across the horizon. It was beautiful in an almost divine way. Ten years had passed since she’d seen the green flicker of the aurora borealis dancing across the sky. Never in her wildest dreams had Sophie thought she would see the lights so pronounced, so different.

NASA had issued a memo to President Sandra Bolton months before, informing her that the Earth was scheduled to have its most severe solar barbeque since the Carrington Event of 1859, when solar storms fried the telegraph lines across the United States. But Bolton’s administration didn’t exactly get out the sunscreen. In fact, it had kept the memo secret until the sky started changing colors. When scientists around the world caught the drift of what was happening, it was already too late. The massive storm had the same effect on satellites as frying oil did on ice cream.