Darkness.

I couldn’t see anything, and I felt like I was lying in my bed. One way in, and no way out. Sinking into mud tended to have that effect. My heart’s frantic pounding against my ribs annoyed me. I’d learned that freaking out wouldn’t solve anything. All it would do was tire me out and waste my energy. It would be better to just lie there forever. Calmly.

A few minutes later, I was still sinking. How long would it be before I ran out of air? Without my visor, I didn’t have access to artificial oxygen. I exhaled the breath I’d been holding a few seconds previously. Now my lungs were burning as they demanded air. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t rebelling like those quitters. In fact, I wasn’t doing anything. What was the point?

Then my leg broke free. Somehow all of the mud that had been restricting it had vanished. I wiggled my foot, confirming that it was free. This pit wasn’t bottomless.

My other foot joined the first in freedom. Maybe I wouldn’t die here after all! I wiggled my legs to speed up the process. Slowly but surely, I was emerging on the other side. When my stomach escaped the mud, I knew it was time to brace myself.

No one remembered what it was like to be born, but everyone had an idea. Time to see how accurate my idea was. My face slipped out of the mud, freeing my whole body. I flailed as I fell into darkness. Then I shielded my helmet and tucked in my knees. Hopefully this would prevent my death.

I gasped as I collided with the ground. Pain choked out what little air was left in my lungs, and I writhed. My fancy suit absorbed most of the impact. That was the only reason I survived the fall. It didn’t absorb much of the pain though.

I sat up then fell back down due to an aftershock of pain. I’d forgotten how possessive pain could be. I sat up much more slowly this time. The ground beneath me was hard and damp. I dug into it and scooped up a handful of platinum dirt. Its bright surface was the only source of light in this dark place.

My suit wouldn’t work when I was in the mud, but maybe it would now. I brushed off the numerous flecks of that stuff that were still clinging to me, took a deep breath, and willed my visor to return. The familiar energy trickled in from the corners of my helmet until it all came together and solidified. It took a while, but at least it worked. I willed my shoulder lights and wristlight to burst into life next.

The ceiling was covered in sharp stalactites, which surrounded a silver puddle. It was the one that had dragged me down here. I wouldn’t be getting back through there.

A soft scratching sound alerted me. I swung all my lights forward and caught a glimpse of something before it scurried into the cavern. What the heck? This planet was supposed to be uninhabited, so it must have been a bug. I scanned the cave walls and found that they were almost as bright as the ground. At least I wasn’t totally blind down here, wherever “here” was.

“Gross, I think I swallowed some of that crap!” said Anderson’s voice behind me.

I whipped around and saw him there, hacking on the ground. His suit was sprinkled with little globs of silver, which were similar to the ones I’d already brushed off mine. I glanced down and realized that some of the specks had stuck to me. What the heck was this stuff?

“What are you doing down here?” I asked him. That was when I remembered that I had seen him lying in the puddle. That wasn’t the question I should have been asking. “I mean, why were you in that mud?”

“Are you serious?” He jumped up, winced, and stumbled as he clutched his back. I had almost forgotten about the fall. I was constantly in pain, so I considered the dull thump in my back normal. Anderson jabbed a finger at me as he continued to wince. “What was with you, Locke? Why didn’t you fight that bot when it came up to you? You would have died if I hadn’t flung you into that turd puddle. Since you’re so heavy, I tripped and fell in too. It’s your fault that we’re down here!”

He’d saved me? Once again, it had been up to one of my allies to save me? This really was my fault. I’d believed the bot to be Exo, and I’d frozen. I really wasn’t ready for this.

“I’m sorry, okay?” I smacked his finger away. “It won’t happen again. We’re stuck down here together, so now we’ve got to find a way out. Together.”

He scoffed. “You’re mistaking me for one of your friends. I’m getting out by myself. Ben doesn’t need both of us. Follow me if you want, but I’m not following you.”

He stomped off into the cavern, disrupting the soft ground with each step, so wet dirt clung to the bottom of his suit. I didn’t want to follow him, but we had to go back together. His attitude had done nothing to change that. It had made me hate him more, though.

As Anderson and I marched through the dark cavern, I wondered what its origins were. Had it formed naturally? Had the robots made it? They had come from underneath the water, so they must have used this place as a hideout. Perhaps there were more down here.

My ears kept perking up from the occasional scratching noises. Every time I swung my wristlight toward the source, it stopped, and I was left shining a light on a wall.

“Locke, quit wasting that light,” Anderson said. “That thing drains your suit, which is why I’m not using mine.”

I’d forgotten that our suits needed charge. My old one recharged when it went into sleep mode. That meant that this one probably did too. It was not like Frost had given me a charger or even an instruction manual.

“Look, I don’t think we’re alone down here. Something’s got to be causing that scratching.”

Anderson sighed. “Why don’t you speak sense for once? I don’t hear anything besides that dripping water.”

As if on cue, a drop of water splashed onto the dirt beneath us. Well, we were under a swamp. This was basically the marshland planet.

“Then listen closer!” I deactivated my helmet and cupped my ears. The scratching was getting louder. “They might be robots, like the ones on the surface. The ones that Manning and Alhabor are still fighting. We have to get out of here and help them. If that means doing something crazy, then I’m game.”

I formed my arm cannon and pointed it at a wall. It was the source of the scratching. Maybe I was just hallucinating again, but I had to know for sure. I charged up a ball of purple energy and fired it at the wall. It exploded in a purple burst of rock, dust, and…aliens?

One landed at my feet. It came up to my knee and had a murky color scheme of green and blue. Pushing itself up with clawed hands, it stared up at me with gigantic white eyes. Compared to its eyes, its mouth was tiny. In addition, sticking out of its back were two gross bat-like wings.

“What the hell did you do this time?” Anderson backed away from the creatures. “Who and what are these freaks?”

“I don’t know. I think the light attracted them, but I’m not sure. No one’s ever been to this planet, so we have no records of…anything.” I frowned. “I thought this planet was uninhabited.”

We both stepped back, but the creature scrambled after us. After every third step, it would lunge forward, arriving at my feet again. I didn’t want to hurt it even though I’d already assaulted it in its home.

Anderson yelped, so I turned to see why. My answer took the form of a slope that descended into darkness. I couldn’t even see the bottom. So we had to choose between falling down a cliff or dealing with these little…gremlins.

I took a deep breath of the stale cavern air and stood my ground. I’d faced far greater threats than a few child-sized aliens. I might have lost on those occasions, but the experience counted. The gremlin blinked at me and then leaped onto my leg. I morphed my cannon back into a hand and reached for the alien. It raised its own creepy hand and used it to pick a glob of mud off my leg. Then it popped the mud into its mouth like it was a piece of popcorn.

This thing had just used me like a plate.

It screeched at its friends, who immediately scrambled over too. I stood perfectly still as they climbed me and ate the remaining mud off my suit. They flapped over to Anderson too, but he waved them away.

“Get back, you little creeps!” Anderson brushed his arm and gazed down the slope. “I guess we really are underground.”

“What was your first clue?” I held my finger out to a gremlin. It grabbed it and shook it as if initiating a handshake. Then it went back to eating the mud. “These guys are kind of cute. But their presence can only mean one thing: this planet is off-limits.”

I refused to create another New Earth situation. Even if the planet’s inhabitants were as simpleminded as these mud-eating goblins, we couldn’t take their home away. I’d have to let Alhabor know about this if we ever got out of this cavern.

“We’re all alone down here.” Anderson was still staring down the slope. What was so interesting about it?

“Yes.” I waved the gremlins away. I liked them, but it was time to get moving. They swiped at my arm, but ultimately flew back to chew their new mud in peace. “It’s just us. That’s why we need to get out of here. Come on. There has to be another wa—”

Anderson reached back and seized my arm. My bionic one. Memories of the fight that had gotten us into this mess came rushing back. My hair stood on end. What was about to happen here?

“What’s the hurry?” Anderson sneered. “As long as we’re alone down here, there’s no one to stop us from settling the score!”

I ducked Anderson’s swing then willed my arm to transform into the cannon. Its expansion in size and moving parts enabled it to slip out of Anderson’s grasp. I reeled back and shoved it into his stomach. He coughed and grabbed my collar. His weight added to my unstable balance, making me trip and fall into him. He fell back and I fell forward. Ultimately, we both fell in the same direction: down the slope.

My heart pounded out of control as I slid and bounced down the slope. The world was spinning around me, and there was nothing I could do about it. Each thump racked my body with dizzying pain. At least I was used to it. One final thump brought my rolling to a halt. Had I reached the bottom?

I rubbed my eyes and pushed myself up. It was hard because every inch of my body was begging me to stay down. Seriously, how had people done anything like this before space suits?

I swept my new surroundings with my wristlight. I didn’t even catch a hint of Anderson. Stalagmites littered the floor, meaning that there were plenty of places to hide. What a convenient chamber to fall into.

“You started this, and now you’re hiding like a coward?” I shouted. My voice echoed back at me. “I’m sick of this. There’s no reason to fight. All we’re doing is delaying the mission. Ben needs us more than you need to settle a one-sided grudge.”

“Always the diplomat!” yelled Anderson from all around me. How was I going to find him with his voice echoing like that? “I’d love to settle this some other way, but you know the saying: violence is always the answer! You can’t talk your way out of this. Not after what you did.”

“For the last freaking time, I haven’t done a thing!” I stomped down, which only caused pain to shoot up my leg. “Want me to go step by step so you can point out what went wrong? Second grade, a year after I befriended Laura, she noticed you being a loner during recess. She couldn’t ignore you because she knew what that felt like, so we talked to you.”

“I didn’t ask for friends!”

“Turned out you were the new kid.” My voice wavered, but I couldn’t stop now. “You’d just moved to our side of town. You were too shy to make any friends of your own.” I smirked to myself. “The mighty Anderson Oak used to be shy. No one would believe that. Anyway, we took you in, and we made you the third member of our little group. You were our closest friend…but it seems like I was the only one who thought that.”

Silence.

“Anders—no, Andy. Just tell me what went wrong. We can fix everything. This galaxy is on the verge of destroying itself because of this stupid war, and we’ll die with it if we’re divided. The only way to survive, or maybe even save it…is by doing it together.”

“No!” Anderson leapt out of the shadows and struck me across the face. Pain gripped my jaw, and stars blinked in my eyes.

I fell to the floor. Anderson raised his foot and stomped toward my chest. I blocked him with my bionic cannon, pushing against the foot with my artificial strength and disrupting his balance. He stumbled back, so I aimed my cannon at his feet. I willed whatever power the thing contained to scale itself back then fired a purple spark. It detonated the ground beneath Anderson, launching him off his feet without destroying them. Then I jumped on top of him as he hit the ground, and I pinned his arms down. He grunted as he struggled against me. Even with this arm, I couldn’t hold him forever. I’d have to act fast.

“This isn’t going to solve anything,” I said with one big grunt. His arms were lifting off the ground, so I had to use all of my strength to push them back down. “I’ve messed up a lot, so I’ll accept that I might have hurt you. You just have to tell me what I did.”

“You…you and your perfect life were the problem.” He shut his eyes, and unclenched his fists. “You had a sister who worshiped you, parents who adored you. You were friends with the meanest girl in the second grade, and you’d even convinced me to hang with you. I wanted all of that. It wasn’t fair how you were just born with everything.”

“What?” I let go of his arms and pushed myself up. “You were jealous of me? That was why you went through all this? Of all the—”

“You don’t get it.” Anderson dragged his hand down his face in exasperation. “I had the opposite of what you had. Every time I came home, I was welcomed by my folks shouting at each other. They couldn’t stop long enough to pick me up most of the time. I had to take the bus. It made me feel like I didn’t exist. I had nothing, and I was nothing. That was why it hurt to be friends with the guy who had everything.”

I’d never known that his parents fought. I’d never known about any of that.

“You were so hurt that you pushed everything away,” I said as I connected the dots. “You started to hate me, so you left. That was when you became a bully: so that you could keep on pushing. You even bullied me in an attempt to ruin my ‘perfect’ life.”

Anderson scowled at the ground. “It was the only thing that felt right. When you feel small and there’s no way to get big, you want to bring everyone down to your level.”

“That wasn’t the only way. You could have made other friends.”

“Who would want to be friends with nothing?” Anderson’s eyes sparkled with pain as he glared at me. “What do you think motivated me to ditch you? Once you realized what my life was like, you’d get rid of the dead weight anyway.”

A pang of guilt struck me. “I’m sorry you felt that way, but it never would have happened. Not that it really matters now since all that stuff you were jealous of is gone. I have no parents, you’ve seen what my sister has become, and my life is anything but perfect. But…it’d be a whole lot better if it had you back in it.”

The way I saw it, Anderson was the one to blame for all of his problems. He was in his own head. He was the source of the voice that told him he wasn’t good enough. Breaking that cycle would be hard but not impossible. I’d be willing to help if he was willing to accept.

Anderson sighed. “Just throw me back in jail. Think I’d rather rot away than try this friendship thing again.”

“Dude, you can’t—”

My chest exploded with white. The blast threw me back and sent me rolling across the ground. My chest burned like someone had stored a piece of the Sun in it. What had just shot me?

The ground rumbled and I got the answer to that question as my assailant approached. I raised my aching head and spotted a faint light. It stood out between all the stalagmites. Though it was hard to make out in the darkness, I spotted a familiar outline. That was when I realized that the light really comprised two glowing white eyes…

“Robot!” I groaned as pain surged through my chest. It must have blasted me with its arm barrel. It was holding back because, otherwise, that would have obliterated me. Did it want to take me like it had taken Sirius? How was I supposed to stop it?

Anderson’s eyes widened as he spotted the robot. He jumped up and whipped out his pistol, aiming it at the bot with shaking hands. That pistol hadn’t done a thing back on the surface, so I didn’t know what it was supposed to accomplish here.

“Stay back, scrap metal! I’m not scared of you, but I don’t want your creepy claws on me either. And, if you can talk, you’d better tell me where Sirius is. Now!”

We aren’t in the position to make demands, you numbskull!

The robot stomped over to us and raised its barrel toward Anderson. I didn’t even have the strength to morph my arm, so we’d be defenseless if it shot him too. Anderson squeezed his pistol’s trigger, blasting the robot with a shining burst of energy. The bot flinched but didn’t seem damaged in the slightest. We were cornered in so many ways.

“Anderson, get back.” I clutched my chest as the pain traveled up my throat. It hurt so much to speak. “You can’t beat it.”

“We’re not dying here! Maybe you can’t beat it, but I’m not quitting until my bro’s safe. So you get back and let me handle this.”

Did he really think he could win through willpower? That two-ton monstrosity could kill us just by stepping on us. The bot fired off another blast, but Anderson rolled away before it got him. The blast illuminated the darkness as it zoomed past us, exploding against a distant stalagmite. For just a second, I thought I saw something in the light. A creature with big eyes and wings. I knew that silhouette.

Scratching filled the cavern as a swarm of gremlins scurried toward us. They pumped their little arms and legs as hard as they could. I’d call it a stampede, but some of them were on the ceiling. Heck, some of them were flying. I tracked the swarm with my wristlight as it passed over me. Anderson looked over just as the robot reached for him. I shouted his name, and, just then, a glob of mud splatted against the bot’s head.

What?

Anderson backed away as another glob shot past him. It nailed the robot in the chest. The gremlins screeched and chattered as they flung glob after glob. What was I even looking at anymore? This was a nice distraction, but could it really stop something so powerful? Then I looked closer and realized that our assailant had stopped moving. It was twitching and beeping, but it was no longer stalking Anderson.

“Huh?” I said out loud. “The mud? Oh, wait. That’s right! That stuff messes with tech. It basically shut down my suit earlier. It’s like EMP mud or something. How crazy is that—”

“Die!” Anderson unloaded a barrage of blasts into the robot. It jerked with each miniature explosion. When Anderson paused to reload, the bot tilted back and crashed to the ground. He cheered and pumped his fist in the air. “Wait ’til Ben hears about this!”

I was glad he’d found words for what had just happened because I was still struggling to find mine. We had been about to be murdered by a mysterious robot when a mob of gremlins had halted it. Their weapon of choice? Mud. That was what had taken down the miniature tank.

The gremlins descended onto the fallen machine, picked the mud off it, and shoved it back into their mouths. Victory meal? They’d certainly earned it.

“Hey,” I said to Anderson. His back was to me. Yeah, I didn’t expect any of that to have changed things. “So, where does this leave us—”

I was cut off by a deafening clunk. A low hiss followed it. It had come from the direction of the robot. I walked over and saw that its chest had opened up. Its inside was just an empty space, reminiscent of an unoccupied cabinet. It was big enough to store a few belongings, perhaps some groceries, or maybe even a human or two…

“No way.” I reached inside the cavity. I couldn’t feel anything inside. “Is this what I think it is?”

“What are you talking about?” Anderson asked.

“This robot isn’t just a mechanical soldier. It was made to hold something. That’s why it didn’t paint the walls with our blood when it had the chance. It was going to capture us instead. My guess was right. Thankfully, these little guys saved us before that happened.”

I reached down to pet a gremlin, but it latched on to my arm instead. I wanted so badly to adopt one of these critters.

“They wouldn’t have helped us if you hadn’t been so nice to them.” Anderson asserted. He didn’t sound thrilled, but he didn’t sound annoyed either. “If it were me, I would have swatted them until they’d gone away. I never thought I’d be grateful that you were a pansy.”

“Thanks…actually, I’m insulted, but I’ll just say, ‘thanks’ anyway.”

Anderson nudged the bot with his foot. “So, do you think this was how they did it?”

I nodded. “Yeah…this was how the robots stole your brother. Sirius is inside of one of them. We just have to find out which one.”