Ayla's body was taken to the medbay, though there wasn't much for Leena to do but confirm what we all already knew. No pulse. No respiration. Skin pale as frost under her freckles. Commander Kade's voice on the comms was calm, professional—so calm it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Official cause: accidental decompression.
Unofficially? No one said anything, but the bruise marks on her neck told a different story. I saw them when Leena bent to close Ayla's eyes. Her hands hesitated for a fraction of a second, and when she looked up, her gaze flicked to me—sharp, warning. Don't speak.
There wasn't time for grief. The station didn't stop breathing because one of us did. Systems had to be checked. Schedules kept. Meals eaten, even if the food tasted like dust.
The tour Kade had promised me when I arrived became a necessity, not a welcome. He walked me through the major wings—hydroponics, comms, storage—pointing out emergency hatches, tool lockers, air quality monitors. Always with that same clipped efficiency, as though the station were a living thing we were trapped inside, and one wrong move might wake it up in the wrong mood.
I noticed the whispers more after Ayla's death. Not just between the crew, but in the way people avoided standing too close, the way eyes slid away when you looked directly at them.
The only place where the tension seemed muted was the greenhouse, where low mist clung to the rows of plants and the filtered sunlight turned everything the color of faded gold. I went there when I could, not because I cared about the plants, but because it was the only place that didn't smell like recycled air and suspicion.
Elric didn't join us for the systems briefing that followed. Kade explained his absence with a flat, "Research priorities," but Jin's eyebrow twitched just slightly, like a man making a note in his head. Later, when I asked Jin if Elric had been part of the excavation team, he only said, "He's been farther out than most."
That night, the storm came.
Mars storms aren't like Earth's. There's no rain, no thunder—just a wall of red swallowing the horizon, fine dust scouring every surface. When it hit, the station shutters sealed with a hiss, cutting us off from the view. The vibrations through the hull sounded like breathing—slow, steady, inhuman.
We were on lockdown for three days. I learned more about the crew in that time than in the month before. Arun retreated to the comms room, scanning frequencies he pretended not to care about. Leena buried herself in medical logs. Jin moved like a shadow, checking pressure seals twice over. And Elric? No one saw him at all.
On the second day, I passed his quarters. The door was closed, but I heard something—faint, rhythmic, almost like speech, except the syllables had a wet, clicking undertone that made my stomach tighten.
When I knocked, the sound stopped.
I told myself it was nothing. Just a man working alone during a storm. But that night, I wrote in my notebook: Elric absent. Unaccounted for during lockdown.
It wouldn't be the last time I'd write that.