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."

Theo wanted to drill a clean window in the ice so they could finally see what was glowing. Priya held the controls. "One careful hole," she agreed. "We look, we don't touch." They lined up the drill over the brightest patch of blue.

The drill opened a small clear window in the ice. Below, the ocean was full of soft blue lights drifting in slow circles, calm and endless. Priya and Theo pressed their helmets to the cold glass and just stared, watching a whole living world neither of them had ever imagined.