Her screams were the first thing he got to know about her. Jace heard them echoing through the metal wall between them, screams of pure terror, and wondered what that kind of first impression said.

He was also screaming, but for a very different reason. The girl sounded like she hated this. He loved it. All of this─ it was a dream come true, and that was why he'd almost refused to sign up. You had to have a few dreams that weren't possible, something to hope for.

After all, hope was all that had gotten him through everything that happened in the past few months.

But he didn't want to think of all of that now, not when his heart was pumping this fast, when his and the girl's screams intertwined, not when they were plummeting to the surface of an unexplored planet. Not when, for the first time in months, Jace felt alive.

The surface pod gave a lurch as the automatic controls started to slow them down. It was less fun falling now, less of the full-on pulse-pounding, adrenaline-pumping, life-in-danger excitement. They got even slower now, so it felt like they were floating, drifting. Jace wondered where they would land.

He realized that the girl had stopped screaming. She seemed to be laughing now, or gasping for air─ he couldn't tell which. It didn't really matter, though. He hadn't signed up for this to meet girls. It was the exploration he'd dreamt of, the chance to escape Earth and see the stars. Their planet was beautiful, but so human, and everywhere he went someone had been before. The history of so many lives was stifling, knowing that they all ended the same way, and he just wanted to get away from it and everything that had happened.

What seemed like a few minutes later, they stopped altogether, touching the planet lightly. He inhaled sharply, his heart suddenly rushing as his seat restraints released and the door slid open. Jace stood slowly, wobbling a bit. The gravity here seemed just barely stronger than the artificial gravity on the ship had been, making it a little bit harder to walk out the door and onto the surface of a new planet.

The first thing Jace noticed was the sky. It was a strange combination of purple and pink, streaked through with orange, so it looked like a sunrise even though he knew it was midday here. The air felt crisp and cool and fresh, and smelled like nothing on Earth. It was somewhat like the scent of coffee, intertwined with the smell of rain and leafy vegetation and something else entirely unknown.

"We have two suns," another voice said. If he had to describe it, he would have said that she sounded like the smell of this place─ voice warm and somewhat soothing, but cold at the same time, full of mystery and wonder.

He looked around and found that she was right. "Yeah," he said, "Two suns."

Jace could feel her stare on the back of his neck, and his skin prickled. He found himself looking anywhere but at her. They were on some sort of coast, but the sand was rougher and darker than most on Earth, and the water was the same color as the sky, or maybe it was just reflecting it. A few feet away, there was some kind of strange plant, like a transparent blue flower bud, but taller and wider than him. There wasn't any sort of grass underfoot, just the sand, and off in the distance he saw mountains and what looked like forests. There was so much to take in that Jace almost forgot about the girl completely until she cleared her throat.

"Are you done staring at the clouds, or should I go inside and wait?" She sounded somewhat annoyed, and he turned to see if her expression matched her tone.

The podcams swooped in closer as he saw her for the first time─ curly blue hair, light brown skin, squinted eyes that could have been the result of genetics or just the bright light of the double suns. A small, pinched mouth, but smiling slightly, a short, athletic body. He realized that the Colonized people had given the two of them the same outfit of jeans, hiking boots, and an American flag t-shirt.

Jace noticed that he was staring, but at least she was doing the same with him. As though they could have done anything different─ they'd just met, but with the knowledge that they'd spend the rest of their lives together.

The thought was so strange that Jace couldn't process it right now.

"Um," he said instead, "Hi."

"Hi," she said back, with a slight smile that morphed into a frown as she eyed the podcams. "Well. This is awkward."

He found himself nodding. "Just a bit," he said. "What's your name?"

"Twix," she said, holding out her hand for what was probably supposed to be a handshake. Jace high-fived it instead. She laughed, a sound like dolphins chirping, reminding him of summers on the beach. "And you?"

"Jace."

"Nice to meet you, Jace."

"You too."

There was a pause where neither of them knew what to say. Jace looked around again. There was a mountain range in the distance he hadn't noticed before, and just a little ways off, there was some sort of forest.

"So what now?" Twix asked, and he turned back to her. "What are we supposed to do here?"

"Explore, I guess," he replied, trying to sound much less thrilled than he was. Which was ridiculous─ what right did he have to be excited for this, to get this chance?

"Where?"

"Do you prefer the forest or the mountains?"

Twix shrugged her shoulders, which made the blue curls resting on them bounce. "Forest," she said. "I'm not climbing a mountain in this gravity."

Jace nodded. "Sounds smart. Let's go."

"Okay, but let me grab some stuff from the ship first." Twix darted back into the surface pod and he watched, puzzled, as she opened the locker with the boxes and threw things out of her trunk in a general mess until she came out holding a small cube, protein bars, and two water pouches. She handed him some of the food and water but fiddled with the cube for a second. A second later, Jace felt the computer in his head jump onto a new network. "It can only connect to the ship for a certain distance, but it can stay open between us so we can talk, just in case anything happens."

He nodded again, impressed that she thought to bring her own Wi-Fi. Then again, she seemed like the constantly-connected type, so maybe he shouldn't have been so surprised.

"We should probably move the ship before we go," he said. "I'm not really sure if there are tides."

"I forgot it moved. We could just take that to the forest."

Oh yeah, he thought, but instead of correcting himself, Jace shook his head. "Let's move it over a bit, but we should conserve fuel."

She nodded. "Do you, um, want to fly it?"
"What, never flown a ship?"

"Have you?" She sounded so genuinely curious that he laughed.

"I thought everyone knew how to fly," he teased.

"It's not that I don't know how," Twix said.

"Why not, then? Scared?"

She pressed her lips together in a tight line. "Uh, no. I just didn't want to accidentally hit you. And I just realized I don't care." She strutted back into the ship, and Jace tried to suppress his laughter.

"Don't crash it!" He yelled over the sound of the starting engines, but she either didn't hear him or pretended not to. The ship rose a few feet above the ground, hovering, and inched forwards.

"Come on, Twix, I can walk faster than you're flying!"

The ship shot forward, stopped, and continued inching. She eventually landed it just over the ridge and got out, running to meet him halfway.

"See, I told you I could do it."

"I don't know if that even counts as flying," Jace said. He was having to make a real effort not to laugh.

Twix glared at him. "It moved, didn't it?"

"I think the world turned underneath the ship."

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. It's not by the waves anymore at least."
"True."

"So are we going to go?"

Jace nodded and they set off towards the forest, walking leisurely, not having anywhere in particular to be. It was quiet, and he almost preferred it that way. It felt more natural, somehow, seeing without really observing or commenting, the way aquariums always felt hushed as people admired the world.

And there was a lot to see here, an entire world that had barely been touched. They weren't the first humans here─ there had been scientists before them─ but they were going to be the first to live there, and there was something amazing in that, something wonderful in knowing that the ground they were walking on was theirs and also somehow not.

But Twix broke the silence. "I wonder if this planet has any moons?" She asked.

He shook his head. "No clue."

"This planet is so different than Earth," she said.

That's kind of the point.

"I mean, even the colors are different!"

"Yeah."

"This planet is so strange."

"Can we stop calling it 'this planet'?" He finally asked, irritated by the repetition. "Doesn't it have a name?"
Twix looked at him. "Good question." She paused, looking somewhere off into the distance, searching online. "It does, but it's just an annoying bunch of numbers. So we'll just have to name it."

"Um," Jace said. Naming wasn't really his specialty. He'd named his first dog Fido, and later he and Jack had named two new ones Buddy and Spot.

"What should we call it?" Twix asked. "Rosa?"

"Why?"

"I don't know, someone told me that was the word for pink in Spanish, and the sky's pink."

"Uh, no. We aren't naming our planet after the color pink." That, and his first girlfriend had been named Rosa. They'd been one of those middle school couples that never actually went on dates, but they'd kissed once and her chap stick had tasted terrible.

"Or we could call it Crescendo?"

"Isn't that a music thing?" Not that he knew much about music, but it sounded familiar.

"It's a cool word," Twix said defensively.

"Yeah, but I don't think either of us know what it means."

She opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it. "I think you're probably right."

"Of course I am," he said, flashing her a half-smile that made her roll her eyes.

"Well, if you can come up with a better name, go for it."

He thought for a second.

"The Place," he said. "It would confuse people. That way we could say, 'we live at The Place,' and no one would get it."

Unexpectedly, Twix laughed. "That's really bad."

"What, you don't like my logic?"

"No, I don't. It's really dumb."

"That's the point," Jace said.

"True. We'll go with it, then. Planet name: The Place." Twix shook her head. "I can't believe that we're really doing that."

He couldn't believe she was going along with it.

They neared the forest. The plants loomed ominously overhead, darkening the ground below. They were strange: there were some of the odd transparent blue plants that he'd seen on the beach, although he could see from where they stood a few feet away that they were glowing. The trees, if they could be called that, seemed almost braided together, and the parts at the top, which could only be described as leaves, all interconnected. It reminded Jace of childhood treehouse floors.

"Ready to go in?" Jace asked Twix, who was eyeing the tops of the trees nervously. Her eyes flicked to the forest, then back to him. She took a breath and then nodded.

"Let's go," she said, and together they stepped into the forest.

And found themselves in a new world.

Hi again! Hope you liked Chapter Two! Here's the Amazon link again: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078PZG2ZW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1514686693&sr=8-1&keywords=colonized+kimberly+tate. What do you think of Jace? Tell me in the comments!

(Also, the image at the top was my previous cover, made by Snippy7. Thanks!)