Two drone pods sat on the ice like fat beetles, one orange, one green, both drilling toward the same lucky vein. Inside the orange shack, Priya watched her bore-counter tick eleven meters ahead of Theo's. Then both screens flickered turquoise. Far below the crust, something deep in the ocean was glowing back at the drills.

Priya grabbed her radio and called the green shack. "Theo. Are you seeing the blue light too?" A pause, then his voice came back, shaky. "Yeah. My whole screen's lit up. Stop drilling, Priya. I think we hit something alive."

They both shut their drills down and met outside on the ice. Through the clear crust, the glow spread wide beneath their boots, soft and blue. "We can't tell the company," Theo said. "They'll send a mining fleet and crush whatever this is."

They agreed to keep the secret and study it quietly, just the two of them. But back inside, Priya's company tablet pinged. A message from headquarters: "Odd readings detected at your site. Survey ship arriving in six hours." Their secret already had a clock on it.