HELIUM-3

Chapter 06

POV: Danny

The alarm was still blaring when Lena grabbed my arm hard enough to leave marks.

“We need to isolate him. Now.”

Jun just smiled, his blue teeth glowing in the dim light. Alyssa backed away until she hit the opposite wall, while Raj started hyperventilating.

“Lena, with me,” I ordered, moving toward Jun. “Raj, disable that alarm. Alyssa, check the life support systems.”

“Are you insane?” Alyssa screamed. “We need to get out of here! Abort the mission!”

Lena was already at my side, her body tense like a coiled spring.

“We contain him first. Then we decide.”

Jun laughed, a sound that echoed like shattering glass.

“Decide what? Who dies first?”

Before we could react, he turned and bolted down the main corridor, his body moving in a strangely uncoordinated way, as if it wasn’t entirely under his control.

. . .

The control room was in chaos.

Raj was typing furiously while Lena and I tried to track Jun’s movements through the security cameras.

“Lock down Section C,” Lena ordered, her fingers flying over the controls. “Activate quarantine protocols.”

“I already tried!” Raj slammed the panel. “He disabled the main controls. Danny, look at this…”

He turned his datapad. The footage showed Jun in the communications lab; his hands, now covered in a thin layer of blue crystals, manipulating the panels with unnatural precision.

“He’s trying to lock us out completely,” I murmured, feeling the watch on my wrist vibrate again.

Lena looked at me, and for the first time, I saw genuine fear in her eyes.

“We need to stop him before—”

A loud bang shook the module. The lights flickered and died, leaving only the red emergency glow.

“Shit,” Raj breathed. “He cut the main power.”

. . .

Everything was going to hell.

My heart pounded erratically in my chest. Cold sweat drenched my forehead.

I remembered Kovac’s words, how proud he seemed of me when this all began. He really believed I’d bring something good back to Earth.

But instead, he’d sent me to die… or did he know what was happening? He wouldn’t have done this to me…

While Lena tried to restore the systems, Raj pulled me into a corner, interrupting my thoughts.

“Danny, I found something.” His fingers trembled as he opened encrypted files on his datapad. “Mission logs from Mars. The real ones.”

The images left me breathless.

Piotr, much younger than I’d ever seen in photos, inside a chamber just like ours, surrounded by crystals identical to the ones we were seeing now.

And Kovac, younger too, but with those same cold eyes, watching from behind soundproof glass.

“Commander?”

I couldn’t hold back a choked sob. I clenched my fists, overcome with emotion.

“They knew,” I whispered. “Kovac knew.”

Raj gave me a sorrowful look, but he didn’t know how to comfort me. He just kept scrolling.

“There’s more. Look at Piotr’s biometric readings.”

The graphs showed the same progression we were seeing in Jun: first the iris change, then crystals at the extremities…

“He started emitting radiation,” Raj said, pale-faced. “Danny, what happened to Piotr wasn’t an accident. It was an experiment.”

My pulse throbbed under my watch. 4:23. 4:23. 4:23.

. . .

Alyssa found us in the main corridor, her face twisted in rage.

“Did you see? He cut the secondary oxygen supply!” She pointed at the gauges on the wall. “We’ve got 12 hours at most before we start suffocating.”

Lena crossed her arms.

“Then we fix it. Everything will be fine, we just need to stay calm.”

“Are you insane?” Alyssa punched the wall. “Jun is possessed by some alien shit, the module is turning into a crystal incubator, and you want to stay?”

“And what do you suggest? What’s your big plan?” Lena shot back. “Run where? We’re 384,000 kilometers from Earth!”

“We have the escape pod!”

“Which only fits two people,” I interjected. “And it takes three weeks to get home.”

The silence that followed said more than any words. We all knew what it meant—whoever was left behind would be dead long before the pod reached Earth.

. . .

My head throbbed like someone was hammering from the inside. The music was so loud I could barely hear my own thoughts.

In the bathroom, I examined my eyes in the mirror. The irises were still green, but at the edges… a faint blue glow was starting to form.

I splashed water on my face, but it didn’t help. When I looked at my watch again, the hands were spinning wildly before freezing, as always, at 4:23.

Synesthesia didn’t work like that. This was crossing every line.

Was I slowly losing my mind?

“You’re hearing it too, aren’t you?”

Jun’s voice came from behind me. I turned so fast I almost slipped on the wet floor. He was standing in the doorway, his body glowing with a sickly translucent blue. His eyes shone like twin beacons.

“What do you want?” My voice came out hoarse.

“The same as you,” he smiled. “Make the music stop.”

Before I could answer, a scream echoed through the module.

I looked back at Jun, but he was gone.

I ran.

Raj was on the floor in the control room, clutching his bleeding arm. The panels around him were destroyed, wires exposed, circuits fried.

“He… he came from behind,” Raj groaned as Lena applied pressure to the wound. “Danny, he disabled the temperature controls. We’re losing heat fast.”

Alyssa appeared in the doorway, her face a mask of panic.

“The oxygen tanks! He opened the valves!”

Lena looked at me, her eyes pleading for a decision.

“Danny, what do we do?”

That’s when the comms panel lit up on its own.

The static screen revealed Kovac’s face. He looked ten years older than the last time I saw him.

“Helix-7, respond. I repeat, Helix-7, respond.”

“Kovac!” I lunged toward the monitor. “The Helium-3 is dangerous! You knew! You knew from the start!”

His image froze for a moment, then came back, distorted.

“…conditions… Mars… different…” his voice broke into static.

“There’s no difference!” I yelled, feeling something hot drip from my nose. Blood. “It’s happening again! Jun is transformed, the module’s infected, and I—”

My voice faltered as I looked at my hands. Tiny blue crystals were sprouting between my knuckles.

The screen flickered. For a brief moment, I saw Kovac’s face twist into something that might have been remorse.

Then the connection dropped.

And we were alone.