Volume One - The Subterranean Era
The Crimson Throne
They tell me Mars was once dead. That is a lie told by those who arrived late. Mars has always been alive, resentful, watchful, slow to forgive. It merely waited...
The Body in the System
Mars does not tolerate melodrama, it tolerates math. On Earth, death arrives with pageantry of sirens, the vision of yellow tape and presence of cameras. The choreography...
The Silent Cities
Mars did not go silent all at once, that would have been merciful. It happened the way systems fail when they are too confident in themselves. They fail very...
The Weight of Dust
Mars does not erase where you came from. It makes you carry it. That was the first thing I learned after six months underground, when the novelty wore off...
The Person Who Wasn't There
On Mars, it’s access permissions and oxygen allocations. Your name is a key. Your body is a credential. That’s why I noticed the duplicate before anyone else did...
The Last Original
By the time The Last Original arrived, the word original had already lost its authority. It still existed in the paperwork, of course. In the regulatory residue...