Preston stared at his computer screen, reading over the email NASA had sent out to them when they initiated the mission. He scanned the last few sentences over and over, detailing that this would be a secret mission and under no circumstances were the team allowed to release any details to the public, nor inquire about any further details regarding the mission. The part the Freya took as a threat that their jobs were on the line if they crossed that boundary. Sure, NASA had performed secret missions before, but something was different about this one. The way people were acting wasn’t a typical secret mission, at least the ones that knew whatever they didn’t.


Freya sat by Rotor, doing final testing on all of his motorized parts and his movements. She had been silent since walking in this morning, even ignoring his silly joke he made to try and lighten the mood.


“What is a light year?” he had asked. She didn’t respond, didn’t even look in his direction. But there was no way she hadn’t heard him.


“It’s like a regular year, but with less calories.” He chuckled at his own joke, but still, no reaction from her. He let out a deep breath and turned back in his chair.

Launch was in forty-eight hours and he couldn’t even get her to look at him. While he thought up a plan to figure out what the hell was really going on, without being detected, he listened to her beautiful, saddened voice talking back and forth with Rotor. The rover made a different space joke from his own, able to tell her mood was deflated.


She laughed.


The next day, Preston opened the door, ready to finalize everything for launch in twenty-four hours, and came to a halt just outside the door. He left it cracked open, watching Freya knelt down by the rover, talking with it. He couldn’t see her face too well from this angle, but he could hear the trembling in her voice and the sound of light sniffling. She was crying, seemingly venting to Rotor about her troubles. Or maybe she was realizing her time with him was running out. Whatever the case, he wished more than anything he could run over and hug her, comfort her, ask her to vent to him instead. Ever since their last conversation, guilt had consumed his every thought and he wanted nothing more than to go back and redo all of it. Maybe then she could actually look him in the eyes. He quietly stepped in, trying to listen.


“Oh, good morning, Preston!” Rotor exclaimed, announcing his entrance. Preston groaned, for once annoyed that Rotor was such a human-like machine. Freya whipped her head around, eyes rimmed in red but glaring at him. He averted his gaze away from her and made his way over to check Rotor’s systems – ensuring he would be ready for launch. 


“Do you wanna talk?” He asked, not turning around to look at her. Her presence behind him was felt.


“What are his chances of survival? Landing, I mean.”


“I’m not sure. Everything looks good, as far as he goes. But I’d have to talk to Christian to see where the team is at with EDL and what the risks are. Do you want me to do that for you?” He turned in his chair to look up at her, her shoulders shrugging, eyes glued to the floor to avoid eye contact. Maybe this was about Rotor, but her behavior towards him still suggested it was also still how they left things the last time they spoke.


“Do you want to talk about the other night, I-”


“No, I’d rather not if that’s okay,” she interrupted. “I’m just worried about my rover, that’s where my focus needs to be. Nothing else. After tomorrow, he’s on his own and I’ll never see him again. I can only handle so many emotions right now.” Preston’s lips pursed and he just gave her a slow nod, turning back in his chair.


“He’ll be fine, Freya.” She didn’t say anything, but he felt that she was no longer behind him.


“If it means anything, I am equally concerned about you, Freya. I also will lose a friend, and I’ve been programmed to know that it appears I will be alone on planet Mars. But no worries, we can still chat!” Preston chuckled a little behind his monitor at the rover’s words, finishing up the systems check on the rover to verify to the rest of the mission team that it was ready to go.


“Can he feel things, Preston? Emotions?” Freya called from the other side of the room.


Preston sent over the message to the team, the nerves of it all suddenly hitting him that their work was done and tomorrow, they would be watching their work fly into space. He turned in his chair to look at her again.


“You told me to make him human-like. He can feel the same things we feel. We’ll be able to monitor that from down here, though. My advice, be as encouraging as you can with him now. If you’re scared and sad, he’ll feel that.” She got back to her feet, crossing her arms, crossing the room. She approached him and her eyes met his in the first look of something other than hate since they’d had their disagreement.


“Do you think we’ll be able to go up there and bring him back once his time is over? I don’t want to lose a friend I spent so long creating,” she said softly, raw emotion in her voice.


“He’s not coming back, Freya. We don’t have the resources. This is NASA’s mission, not ours. He has years ahead of him, you’re not going to lose him anytime soon. Just make your physical goodbye with him count.” He made his way to the door, wanting to check with Christian and Marcus that their EDL plan was solid, and looked over his shoulder to see Freya sitting back in front of Rotor. He pulled his phone from his pocket, took a quick photo of the two, and walked out into the mission control room.


#


Launch was now less than two hours away, and Preston took advantage of the fact that the facility was empty for a short time period. Most of the team were at the launch area, making sure everything was clear and ready for take-off. What little of the team in the building were workers seemingly just as out of the know as he and Freya were. He snuck by the main control center, where the few present were on their computers and monitoring conditions at the launch pad, as well as space conditions prior to launch. He quietly entered the room of the project manager, Lisa Stewart, and shut the door with a subtle clicking sound. He quietly clapped his hands, rubbing them together. His breathing picked up, making his way over to the desk and plopping down in the office chair to bring the screen up on the monitor. Locked. Of course. 


Fuck. There had to be something physical, in case they lost computer data.


Files. 


He leaned over and tugged on the drawer of the desk. Locked. He went to kick the desk in frustration and barely managed to stop himself right as the toe of his shoe scuffed the metal. If he’d done that, everyone outside would know someone was in here. He steadied his breathing, his racing heart, and focused on looking for anything that would give him access to either the password of the computer or the drawer of the desk. 

He froze. A few voices reached him from just outside the door. 


He was ready to duck under the desk at any given moment, his heart rate back up and pummeling the inside of his chest. If anyone opened that door, he was out of a job. Possibly looking at charges. The voices passed by, becoming more faint the further the footsteps trailed away from the door. He gasped, breathed again, and started back on his search as silently as he could manage. He couldn’t find a key to the drawer, and definitely no password. He would have to do this the hard way, which he had figured from the start. He pulled out his laptop from the bag he’d carried in with him, using a cable to sync the two systems. He wasn’t supposed to use his knowledge for hacking purposes, unless stated otherwise by NASA. So part of him wondered for a second why he even cared if he was caught in here. Regardless, his job was gone if he found anything and brought it to Freya’s attention. But she was worth it, and as much as he didn’t connect to the rover like she did, he believed Rotor was worth it too.


It took him under ten minutes of going through the history of Lisa’s keystrokes to identify the password. Her son’s birthday, he figured. The picture of her standing with him at his graduation on the corner of her desk lined up with the date, he couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen. Once he was into the system, he found the folder labeled for their mission and opened it to an overwhelming amount of files. But what stuck out was a video file, labeled Perseverance Footage 04-15-2033. He clicked on it and a video took over the screen, showing the rover currently on Mars looking out onto the dusty plains of Mars. Nothing but sand, hills and endless rockbed. She was scanning the landscape when something eery came into the frame and she was abruptly shut down. He slowed the video and clicked back through the frames, pausing it until he could take a look at just what had interrupted and potentially killed their rover.

His face turned pale. His heart stopped for a couple seconds.


It looked… human. What little he could see of it. But not a typical human, its features were distorted and mutated. The color of it was not any color you’d see on human skin. He screenshotted the frame and uploaded it to his laptop. Then sent the entire folder, including the video file. As he did this, he noticed his hands shaking, sweat beading at the hairline around his forehead. He didn’t have time to question why the hell NASA would hide this from their own team. He knew they didn’t necessarily care about the life of a rover, not in the way Freya did, but to disregard the feelings of a girl who had put her entire heart and soul into that rover was likely the reason they didn’t want her to know what his fate would likely be.


Freya.


He had to get to her and show her this before it was too late. He looked down at his watch, feeling the fate of Rotor’s life in his hands. He had thirty-seven minutes to stop that rocket from launching.