Mars, Lower City in the Mariner Valley Cliffs

  Christian sat in the bar’s corner, nursing a beer. The cold glass drew his focus, but he wasn’t drinking for the taste. He sat watching others, this fleeting little world where people missed what churned around them. It was like peering at ants through a jar—small, frantic, blindly grasping for something bigger that never broke into the light. The bar stank—walls steeped in antifreeze and cheap cigarette stink. An older couple huddled in the corner, whispering, hiding from the rest like blind kittens in this mess. They muttered, but Christian tuned them out. His eyes locked on the TV screen on the wall.

  “Colonization of the millennium,” droned the looped, lifeless voices from the box. Images flowed—smooth transitions of green meadows, blue oceans, carefree trees—crashing over viewers like a nightmare draped in sweet dreams. He knew it was bullshit optics. The picture was an illusion: no green, no oceans, no freedom. It was like staring at old photos snapped on a cheap camera—blurry, unreal, ghosts of a past that never was.

  “Yeah, fly to Lazarus,” Christian thought, “Work the mines there, make profit for those bastards up top who’ve already picked your overseer.” He glanced at the screen, fist tightening, his mind painting scenes—colonists wiping sweat in metallic harnesses, under the hard gaze of overseers posted at every corner, ensuring no one dreamed of bolting. Or maybe they didn’t run—not their style. People worked like cattle, died like it too, if they were lucky. Calloused hands, reeking of sweat and metal, stripped their lives before they clocked it was already gone. The beer slid in his grip, his palm sweating, but he didn’t look up. It was just the background. Something else mattered more.

  Werner stared out the bar’s dark window, thoughts blurring like a web of nerve pulses skittering across his skin. He didn’t expect anything good. He could sit for hours, eyes on the ceiling, sifting through moments when the world felt boxed-in, caging him, refusing to let him break free. Time didn’t mean shit when you were used to it crumbling. Time was just a trick for people who checked clocks. And Christian didn’t know what to do with it—it toyed with him, stretching horizons but giving nothing back.

  Two years ago, when Ruth Werner, his mom, married Jerome Byrne, Christian’s life shifted. A minor orbit tweak, but it started rippling through everything. His tie with Byrne stayed cold—two neighbors sharing a wall, hearing noise but not the meaning. At first, Jerome was just another shadow drifting in and out, busy with his own crap. Not important—a piece to ignore until it wasn’t.

  Then she came. She hit like a curveball—so suddenly Christian didn’t even clock how she’d change it all. Elian. Or just Ellie. Her face, dusted with faint freckles, those bright eyes that seemed a little detached, like she lived in her own world while he stewed in his. Nothing in her gaze pulled him closer, but something alien tugged at him, an elusive force snagging his focus. Still, despite her distance, her life started weaving into his. Two opposite lines crossing in a dumb, wild spiral. She was a foreign shard in his world, and maybe he was the same in hers. But her voice, the way she talked to him, made him pause. Maybe it meant nothing, and he was fooling himself again. Maybe it was just another dodge from a reality where his life had long lost its point.

  He didn’t catch what shifted at first. It unfolded in some other time, some other world where his attention didn’t lock on the big stuff right away. Ellie felt like part of this weird new reality he was only starting to see. At first, she was just there—background, a steady but minor detail in his reshuffled life. Always those freckles, those distant eyes that didn’t quite see.

  But day by day, her image wove deeper into his head until one day she sat square in the center of it. Not a jolt, not some key turning in his soul. More like an old flick where light seeps in slowly, then floods the room. She laughed. That’s what got him thinking. It wasn’t like the rest—loud or forced—but shy, girlishly sweet, unlike this world. Still, her eyes—gray-green flecks—turned his way. That feeling of her looking made him twitchy, no reason, no sense. He sorta knew what was up but didn’t want to dwell. She was his stepsister. His world had no room for those thoughts, yet they hunted him.

  Then that moment—he bumped into her in the hall, her shadow against the lights, her silhouette faint but stopping his heart. The instant you realize you’ve been feeling it all along. Her scent hit him—subtle, almost invisible, but sharp enough to stick. “How’d you become part of this?” he wondered, his mind sharpening. He started tuning into her—how she spoke, moved. Her light gestures had… pull. She was the opposite of every woman who’d crossed his life. Her gaze held a riddle—not one to solve, but one forever out of reach, a star you see but can’t touch. The deeper he sank into thoughts of her, the clearer it got: he couldn’t shake her. He wanted her, and it didn’t feel strange. It felt natural, almost fated.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Then those times—she’d step out of the shower, trailing soap and warm air that filled the place. He’d catch her half-naked, oblivious to him, toweling her hair. Always so random, so innocent, but he memorized every second. He didn’t seek it, didn’t want his eyes to linger, but his body betrayed him—reacting to every curve, every shift.

  She didn’t notice, living her life, laughing, chatting with him like a brother. But he felt that unseen wall between them thinning, his wants blurring, his mind drifting more to her skin, her form, her presence growing unbearably close. He tried not to think about it, telling himself it was just a chance. But each glimpse sank deeper: she wasn’t just in his life—she was more. Seeing her like that, in ways he shouldn’t, etched into him. He knew it was wrong, that line wasn’t for crossing. But at some point, it stopped mattering. When she was in the bathroom or winding down for bed, barely draped in a towel, her scent in the air—it became his secret. And right then, Christian couldn’t dodge it anymore: he wanted her.

  He closed his eyes, trying to shove the thought away, but it clung like damp rot. She was his stepsister. A hard, cold fact that loomed between them like a slab of stone. Even if he tried—and he knew he couldn’t—he’d never find in her the spark he craved. She’d never see him as a man. Never as a lover.

  He knew her, knew her well. Knew her laugh, how her eyes lit up when something gripped her. Every habit, every gesture etched into him. But it was miles from what he wanted. Too close, yet so far. That formality between them—meaningless in itself, but heavy with consequence—he couldn’t shake it. Her dad was his stepdad, his mom her stepmom. Family, not by blood, but enough to ruin everything. He could picture her reaction if he spilled it all—his feelings laid bare. Didn’t matter what he felt; she’d never see him differently. And if he dared try, he’d lose her. He couldn’t stomach. Her face, her eyes, her body—all forbidden, and that made it agony. Knowing she’d never look at him the way he needed, the way he ached for, tore him apart. No way out of this spiral. He couldn’t forget her, couldn’t get closer—too late for either. He sighed, chest aching like the pain had turned solid. He’d fallen, but it was a doomed love, even if he still clung to some shred of hope he could shift it. Hope—just the last lie, and Christian knew lies too damn well.

  He took a swig from the glass, the beer rolling down his throat, leaving a cold trail. No pleasure, no relief—just a motion. He sat in the bar’s corner, rubbing his fingertips against the glass, fighting the pull to head back to the apartment where those forbidden feelings would claw at him again.

  His eyes drifted back to the TV flickering on the wall. The wormhole expedition. A dream of other worlds—maybe dead in its cradle, but still tempting. The screen flashed fake, idyllic shots: green fields, azure oceans, soft clouds drifting across skies. Same as the street ads—pretty lies to sucker people in. He knew it. There were always suckers for miracles. Alongside the scenes, faces in sleek uniforms beamed with confidence, hope. All it took to buy into this new world where they’d be heroes, names carved in history’s stone, their grit inspiring tomorrow. Christian smirked silently, inwardly. They didn’t get it—pawns blind to the board they’d been set on.

  Werner never bought those fairy tales. He’d grown up in Mars’ Lower City, the gut of poverty and cruelty, air thick with iron and smog, not some pure Martian breeze. In this grim pocket of the Solar System, sickness and hunger were daily bread, cruelty the norm. His childhood was as filthy as the streets he’d run barefoot.

  Sometimes he’d look up, catch air rigs gliding overhead, carrying folks who’d never known pain or want. They lived under Upper City domes, a world shut off to regular stiffs. No grit, no poverty, no wrecked lives—just swept beyond the divide where stars shone through glass, air clean and sweet. A realm of sharp suits, posh cafés, empty chatter. To Christian, it all rang hollow. Not just fake—repulsive. He knew their comfort was built on others’ misery. Those cushy citizens sipped cocktails, blind to the Lower City grunts—miners, haulers, cyber-repair hacks—slaving in stone and despair to prop up their pampered lives.

  These wormhole expeditions, their new-world hype—it was the same cycle. Humanity, having trashed half the Solar System, couldn’t birth anything truly new. Just schemes to dodge what they’d wrecked. Maybe the wormhole gig itself was another rich-man’s game, squeezing profit from the rest. None of it felt real, and he knew it’d keep rolling the same way: some on pedestals, others in the muck. Still, those flickers on the screen tugged at him. Not because he wanted in, but because they lured—like light to a moth. Some naive soul might find glory there. All he needed was to watch from the shadows, dodging traps. These projects? Empty promises.

  He shrugged, like brushing off a nagging fly. Too familiar. Those hollow slogans, this soulless “chance” they called an expedition—like it was some grand salvation. But he knew nothing changed. Whatever they found out there’d be more of the same—grittier, more a grave than a paradise.