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 didn't stop. She was ahead, and ahead meant the bonus. She pushed her drill harder toward the glow. The turquoise light pulsed brighter and faster, almost like a heartbeat, and a low hum started rattling the shack walls.

The hum grew so loud that frost shook off the ceiling. On her screen, the glow split into hundreds of smaller lights, all moving at once, all rising toward the surface. "Okay," Priya breathed. "That's a lot of them."

The lights broke through the ice in a hundred tiny glowing dots and hung in the thin air, gentle as fireflies. They weren't a swarm of monsters. They were a school of small, curious creatures, blinking hello. Priya laughed out loud and waved at them through the window.