Lara Croft found the pod on her eighteenth birthday, buried under the roots of the redwood behind the foster home. She had come out here to be alone with the acceptance letter in her back pocket. The Academy wanted her. Mars wanted her. She was going to be one of the first cadets sent to the red planet, and she had two months to earn her seat. The roots had shifted after the last storm. Something metal caught the light between them. Lara knelt and brushed away the wet needles. The pod was the size of a coffin, black glass, sealed with a symbol she had seen only in her own nightmares. A diamond. An S. She sat back on her heels. Her hands were shaking. She had been told she was found under this tree as an infant, wrapped in a strange silver blanket. No one had ever explained the blanket. She had stopped asking by the time she was ten. "Lara?" Leo Fitzgerald stepped through the ferns in his blue blazer and clean sneakers, holding two cans of soda. Her oldest friend, the boy who had learned to pick locks so she wouldn't have to sneak out alone. He saw the pod and stopped walking. "That wasn't there yesterday," he said. "It was. It's always been here." Behind him, Sienna Blake came down the slope in her green wrap dress, red hair catching the last sun. Sienna was the neighbor girl who had kissed Lara on the mouth at fifteen and never taken it back. She took one look at the symbol and pressed a hand over her lips. "That's Kryptonian," Sienna whispered. "I've seen that in the archive files at the Academy. They marked it classified." Lara stood. "What are you talking about?" "They found three pods last year. They kept it quiet." Sienna's eyes were wet. "Lara. They think whoever came in those pods was sent away from a dying world. Discarded." The word landed hard. Discarded. Not saved. Not chosen. Thrown out. Lara pressed her palm flat against the black glass. It warmed under her hand. A panel lit up and read her. The lid hissed open two inches, and cold air spilled out around her ankles. Inside was a folded silver blanket. The same blanket. And beneath it, a data crystal already blinking, waiting for her. Leo set the sodas down in the dirt. "Lara. If the Academy finds out what you are, they'll ground you. You know they will. No non-human goes to Mars." She pulled the acceptance letter from her pocket. Two months. Mars. The seat she had trained six years for. She looked at the crystal. She looked at her friends. Then she closed the pod, took the crystal, and slid it into her jacket. "Nobody sees this. Nobody knows. I go to Mars first. Then I find out who threw me away."