Mars, Lower City in the Mariner Valley Cliffs

  The guy stood in the alley like a random passerby, but something in his stance gave him away. A long brown jacket of thick synthetic fabric and loose, practical pants made him look like a worker fresh off a grueling shift. He didn’t hide, but he didn’t stand out either. His figure blended into the grim backdrop of street walls, streaked with rust from Martian sand that seemed to swallow every ray of light. The alley—cramped, filthy—could’ve been just another forgotten corner, but no spot escaped the grimy stains of rare rain or the marks of time. The air reeked of rotting pipes and a chemical decay that didn’t just linger—it seeped into your soul, gnawing at it slowly. He held a comlog, a small, boxy communicator with a dark touchscreen flickering faintly in the dim glow, as if it too belonged to the street, part of its hidden reality. His long, lean fingers moved across it smoothly, but with a tension you couldn’t see—like every gesture was a move in a complex, dangerous game. Seconds dragged longer than they should. His eyes flicked from the screen, casually catching the gap in the coffee shop’s storefront window.

  She stood behind the counter, a small miracle amid the dirty, muted orange light spilling through grimy panes laced with the stench of old pipes and vents. A cute, freckled girl with messy red pigtails. Thin, almost childlike, but with a nervous energy sparking in her eyes when she smiled at customers. Her movements were quick, clumsy, like she couldn’t believe she was still alive in this place where hope had burned out long ago. Too vibrant for the bleak void wrapping around everyone like thick webbing. People shuffled in, one after another—rough, worn-out—and she smiled at each, as if she weren’t part of the chain reaction dragging them into another day of grit and letdown. She served them with an ease, a cheer, like she didn’t notice how her eyes didn’t just skim over them—they devoured something hidden, something she seemed to grasp and wield with instinctive precision. Her voice carried a note that cut through the quiet from the open door. A slight accent—maybe not local, maybe born somewhere else on Mars’ surface, where you could still breathe instead of choking in this underground hell. But it was too vague to pin down, rootless, like a shadow sliding across the street. She was bright, a flare in the back alleys of perdition, flickering on the edge of snuffing out before it could ignite anything alive. Every glance too genuine, every smile tailored to each soul. This city squeezed life from people, and she acted like it didn’t touch her. These underground streets weren’t just a place—they were alive, a relentless beast crushing anyone who dared exist here. Every step, every look, every act—a test, an inevitable cog in a vast, filthy machine where a person was just a gear.

  The TV in the café droned news, its screen stuttering with a faint lag, as if even the power here breathed in fits. A muffled anchor’s voice crackled through static:

  “Today at 06:45 standard time, the old ice hauler ‘Orca-7’ lost control and rammed the docking port on Pallas. Multiple casualties reported. Leading theory—vessel overload. Commander, Captain Graham Crowley, and fifteen crew perished. One hundred twenty-four people were hospitalized in critical or severe condition. Officials from Asterium Logistics have yet to comment…”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Eyes darted around the café. A man with a weathered face and lips pressed thin exhaled:

  “Captain was a greedy bastard. Screwed his crew.”

  A grunt, a head shake—no one blinked. It was routine—ice haulers always overloaded, crews always teetering, captains either desperate or dumb. Another guy, hefty with flushed cheeks, shifted on a creaky plastic chair:

  “Not just the crew. Dock workers too. My brother-in-law’s at a port, over on Vesta…”

  A woman’s voice snapped like breaking glass:

  “They’re all overloaded! How else do you survive? Mining corps sent everyone to Erebus—asters got nothing but junk left.”

  She didn’t look up, fingers twitching around a cup of cheap coffee-sub. Her face was tired, skin grayish—too many hours in subsurface mines.

  The first guy waved it off:

  “Less competition now. Everyone’s off to Lagrange—cleared the field here. They’re scraping up all the ice before the others get back…”

  He trailed off as the café fell too quiet—not the natural lull between words, but a thick, sticky unease. Only the screen kept flickering, bathing the room in pale blue.

  Talk picked up, but the tone shifted—not anger, not outrage, just exhaustion. The kind from knowing nothing changes. Tomorrow, another overloaded hauler. Another dead crew. More widows and orphans. And no one, damn it, would say, “This shouldn’t happen.”

  “Bet it’s good for someone!” A raspy, smoke-worn voice coughed out, choking on its own words. “Watch—water prices spike in a couple months, corps count their cash. That money could buy a thousand of those wrecks…”

  His words hung like cigarette smoke, tainting everything with the sticky weight of inevitability. In a couple months, no one remembers what he said. Didn’t matter—they all knew it was true. Just another rot bubbling up, left to fester into the background. A quiet curse, a scoff, someone pretending it didn’t faze them. They’d lived with it so long, the familiar unfairness was like weather—shitty, but fixed.

  The redhead behind the counter didn’t chime in. She froze for a split second, barely noticeable. Her face flickered with something odd—not pain, not anger, but a childlike, almost cartoonish regret, like she’d seen a puppy about to get hit on the street and knew she couldn’t save it. Then it passed. Chatter resumed, cups clinked, someone chuckled lazily. But in her eyes—if anyone bothered to look deep—something lingered, bigger than just another ice hauler flop.

  The man shot her one last glance. She was smiling at a worker in a grease-stained jacket, but it wobbled, a mask over exhaustion. The neon café sign blinked, reflecting in her eyes, and for a flash, she seemed ready to dissolve into that glow, vanishing with the artificial light, leaving only void. He dropped his gaze to the comlog, typed fast. The screen’s bluish sheen lit his fingers—thin, wiry, nails clipped short. “Transmission complete.” He nodded to himself, flipped up his collar as if dodging eyes, and stepped into the street. The underground city’s air stank of wet concrete, sweat, and rust. A metallic screech echoed—maybe a busted cargo drone limping on. Weak fog from life-support vents snaked along the pavement, trembling with the shadows of slow-moving passersby, like they were wading through water.

  He walked steady, not rushed.