The green planet was back.

  Catharine pressed her bare toes against the cold marble and stared through the tall windows. Behind Pavonis Mons, something huge and glowing rose into the Martian sky—green and white swirls like a storm trapped in glass.

  It made her stomach feel the same way Daddy's big guns made her feel. The ones he called peacekeepers.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten.

  When she opened them, the planet was still there. Bigger now.

  La Chambre Rouge stretched around her—Mommy's favourite room. The windows were taller than the palace gates, their tops curved like arches. Red velvet curtains hung on either side, so long they pooled on the floor. Above, the ceiling was painted blue with faces staring down. Catharine didn't like those faces. They watched too much.

  Behind her, across the shiny marble floor, Mommy sat in her red velvet chair reading palace reports. The ones that made her face scrunch up. Her crown sat tilted on her head, and her emerald necklace caught the light—green like her eyes, fanning out like fingers.

  In front of Catharine, near the windows, Rafael lay on his stomach drawing spaceships with crayons. The colours were everywhere on the shiny floor. Worker children didn't have crayons where they lived, but Mommy let him use hers.

  His suspender pants were frayed at the cuffs. His boots were too big. Red dust was packed under his fingernails.

  But his eyes sparkled like the night sky, and when he smiled, Catharine's cheeks got warm.

  Rafael looked up. His nose wrinkled. "What're you staring at?"

  Catharine pointed at the window.

  Rafael scrambled to his feet and pressed his hands against the glass beside hers. His handprints were dirty. Hers left clean fog marks.

  "Whoa."

  The green planet shouldered above the red horizon. Ten times bigger than the blue planet Daddy hated. Its shadow turned the ground black. The canals looked like lines of fire.

  "I feel dizzy," Catharine whispered.

  The floor felt like it was tipping sideways. She grabbed Rafael's hand.

  "I feel like scrap ore," Rafael said. He squeezed her hand. "But nothin'll hurt you. I promise."

  His hand was rough and warm.

  Catharine held tight.

  ∞

  Huffing air onto the glass, Catharine traced the outline of her handprint. The fog faded fast.

  "Wanna draw it?" Rafael asked. "The green one?"

  "Yes."

  They slid back down to the floor. Rafael grabbed a green crayon and started drawing a big circle on the white palace paper.

  Catharine picked up Lilac, her princess doll, and set her beside the paper. Then she picked up a blue crayon and drew stars around Rafael's planet.

  She drew one star extra big and bright. Like he always did.

  "That's the Dog Star," Rafael said, pointing. "It's the brightest one."

  "How do you know that?" Catharine frowned. She was supposed to know things, not him.

  Rafael shrugged. "My dad told me. Before."

  Before they made him work in the mines. Catharine knew she wasn't supposed to talk about that.

  She drew another star instead.

  "Rafael, there are palace rules," she said, trying to sound like Mommy. "You can't leave crayons everywhere, or you'll get punished."

  Rafael's crayon snapped. A blue line shot across his drawing, right over the bright star.

  He looked up. His nose twisted like a raisin. He always made that face when she talked about palace rules.

  "The queen has troubles to look at." Catharine gathered the loose crayons and papers and moved them closer to the windows, away from Mommy's chair. "We have to be neat."

  Rafael didn't answer. He just kept drawing.

  Catharine didn't mind that he didn't understand all the palace rules. Daddy minded, though.

  Daddy didn't like it when they were messy. Mommy would smile, but if Daddy came in, he'd chase Rafael away and yell at Catharine. "Lizzy, clean this up!"

  He only called her Lizzy when he was cross.

  One time he'd made her cry.

  ∞

  "Are you reading about tractors, Mommy?" Catharine called over her shoulder.

  The queen looked up. Her lips twitched. "Do you mean traitors?"

  "Yes."

  "No, sweetheart. Go and play."

  Catharine knew this was a secret. Daddy stamped his feet when Xylia said words like that.

  The red curtains on the far side of the room rustled.

  Catharine turned.

  Behind the velvet, a shadow moved. Small. Watching.

  Xylia.

  Her little sister was hiding again, spying on them. When the curtain shifted, Catharine saw a flash of long dark hair covered in sparkles. Xylia's hair was almost as long as she was tall. The Ladies of the Household said it looked like sunlight.

  Catharine didn't think so. She thought it had too many sparkles.

  When Xylia saw Rafael, she grinned and flicked her hair over her shoulder.

  Rafael stopped drawing. He smiled back.

  His smile looked stupid.

  Catharine crossed her arms and glared, but Xylia wasn't paying attention to her. She was looking at Rafael.

  "Mommy says you can't be up here when we have workers!" Catharine stamped her bare foot twice on the floor.

  Xylia stuck her tongue out.

  "Go back to your room, or I'll tell Mommy about your telescope!"

  Her sister's grin vanished. She frowned, swished her dress, and disappeared behind the curtain. The velvet swayed for a moment, then went still.

  Catharine lifted her chin. Good.

  But when she looked at Rafael, he was still staring at where Xylia had been.

  He's supposed to look at me, not her.

  "Catharine?" Rafael said quietly. "Can your sister play with us next time?"

  Catharine's cheeks burned. "No."

  She grabbed the plush blanket from Mommy's chair and spread it on the floor in front of the biggest window.

  "Come over here, Rafael."

  Rafael giggled. "Yes, big sister."

  He flopped onto his back on the blanket.

  Catharine fussed with her lace dress, making sure the pleats were straight, then lay down beside him.

  Above them, through the tall window, the green planet climbed higher. It wasn't hiding behind Pavonis anymore. It was right there, huge and glowing, filling half the sky.

  Green and white clouds swirled across its surface like a storm in a jar.

  "I feel dizzy," Catharine said. She bit her pinky nail.

  "Me too." Rafael leaned closer. "Hold my hand again. Nothin'll hurt you."

  "All right."

  Catharine squeezed his hand. It was rough from the mines, but warm. Safe.

  The planet grew larger.

  Its shadow stretched across the plains of Tharsis, turning the red ground black. The canals glowed like lines of fire. The whole world looked wrong.

  Catharine's stomach flipped.

  The floor wasn't tipping anymore. But the planet was so big now it felt like it might fall on them.

  "What is it?" she whispered.

  "I dunno," Rafael whispered back. "But it's real pretty."

  It was. Pretty and scary at the same time.

  They lay there, hands clasped, watching the green planet fill the sky.

  ∞

  A sound broke the silence.

  Footsteps. Fast. Clicking across the marble.

  Catharine sat up.

  The queen was standing now, staring out the window. Her face had gone white. The palace reports lay scattered on the floor by her chair.

  "Catharine," the queen said. Her voice was tight. "Step away from the window."

  Catharine didn't move. "But Mommy—"

  "Now."

  The queen crossed the room in three long strides. She grabbed Catharine's hand and pulled her to her feet, away from the glass. Then she grabbed Rafael's collar and hauled him up too.

  "Your Majesty, I—" Rafael started.

  "Shh." The queen knelt between them, one hand on each of their shoulders. Her grip was hard enough to hurt.

  She looked into Catharine's eyes. "What did you see?"

  "The green planet," Catharine said. "It's right there. Look."

  She pointed at the window.

  The queen didn't look. She kept staring at Catharine.

  "No," the queen said quietly. "There was nothing there."

  "But—"

  "Nothing, Catharine. Do you understand?"

  Catharine's throat felt tight. "But we both saw it. Me and Rafael."

  The queen's fingers dug into her shoulder. "Listen to me very carefully. There. Was. Nothing. There."

  Tears prickled behind Catharine's eyes. "You're hurting me."

  The queen's face softened. She pulled Catharine into a hug, but it didn't feel like a normal hug. It felt like she was trying to hold Catharine together.

  "I'm sorry, sweetheart," the queen whispered into her hair. "But you have to forget what you think you saw. Both of you." She pulled back and looked at Rafael. "Do you understand? This is very important."

  Rafael nodded slowly. His eyes were wide.

  "If anyone asks," the queen said, "you were playing with crayons. You drew spaceships. You looked at the stars. That's all. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Your Majesty," Rafael whispered.

  The queen looked at Catharine. "Catharine?"

  Catharine nodded. Her throat was too tight to speak.

  "Good." The queen stood and smoothed her skirts. Her hands were shaking.

  She walked to the windows and pulled the red curtains shut. The room went dim.

  "It's time for Rafael to go home now," she said without turning around.

  Rafael gathered his drawings. His hands shook as he rolled up the paper with the green planet on it.

  Catharine wanted to say something, but she didn't know what.

  Rafael looked at her. His eyes were sad.

  "Bye, Catharine."

  "Bye."

  He walked to the door. Before he left, he looked back one more time.

  Then he was gone.

  ∞

  Catharine stood alone in the dim room. The curtains were still closed. Mommy was still at the window, her back turned, shoulders tight.

  On the floor, scattered crayons glinted in the dim light. Green. Blue. White.

  Catharine knelt and picked up the green one.

  She looked at the curtains. Mommy wasn't watching.

  Slowly, carefully, Catharine picked up the princess tiara. The one with the small rubies. She wasn’t supposed to wear it until next year but she put it on anyway and turned to the curtains.

  Queens needed to know the palace rules and others needed to understand them.

  Catharine would marry a Stratocracy boy that her father chose. She’d choose first, then Xylia.

  Not a miner boy.

  Behind the velvet curtains on the far side of the room, something moved. A whisper of fabric. A shadow shifting.

  Xylia was still there. Still watching.

  Catharine picked up Rafael’s green planet drawing and tore it in half.

  ∞∞∞

  Catharine had sent her away again.

  Weaving a strand of sparkles into her dark hair and putting her hands on her hips, she imagined Rafael holding her hand as she squinted into the mirror at the starlight swirling in strands of her hair. Her sister would hate how pretty her hair looked.

  Xylia didn't mind. Catharine always sent her away, and the telescope was better company anyway.

  Maybe Rafael would come to her room one day, and she could show him how smart she was.

  She climbed onto the observation stool—the one she'd stolen from the palace map room three months ago—and pressed her eye to the brass eyepiece. The solarium window was open a crack, the way she liked it. Cold air breathed against her ankles. It smelled of iron and dust and the long dark nothing of the plains.

  She found it in four seconds. She always found it in four seconds now.

  The green planet hung low above Pavonis, just clearing the volcano's edge. Most nights it was easy to miss. Small, faint, its light the wrong colour for anything that belonged in the sky over Mars. The observatory man said never to tell. That it made the ghosts of Mars angry. But she knew there was no such thing as ghosts.

  The ghosts he was talking about were the shadowy shapes that her mommy whispered to. The shapes she saw one night when she couldn’t sleep. When she snuck into her mommy’s room at night. They talked about the planet and made things float.

  Maybe they were the green planet men.

  Xylia made another drawing. Now there were thirty drawings. But she couldn’t show anyone.

  When the observatory man saw it he tore it up without a word. Without looking at her. Then he covered up the telescope.

  She saw him frowning. He mumbled two words. People vanish.

  Xylia copied the spherical clock time—09:36—then tucked the next drawing under her mattress. One day she’d show Rafeal. Not Catharine. Not anymore.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  This time, the drawing had a little red heart on the bottom corner. Just in case.

  Then she pushed it harder under the mattress where the Lady of the Household wouldn’t find it when she changed the sheets.

  Tonight when she connected the dot’s it made a curved line.

  Grabbing the marker with her left hand she made a mark. Maybe if she started writing with her other hand it would be a better secret. No one would know it was her, not even mommy.

  She drew back from the eyepiece and rubbed her eye. Outside, the shadow of Pavonis had swallowed the canal basin whole. Green light hovered above the mountain like a glowing crown.

  It was bigger tonight. Xylia wondered if the shadow men were there doing something to Mars. Or sending whispers to mommy.

  Tonight the dots looked like a pattern. Three. Six. Six. Nine.

  Three times nine was twenty seven. Plus three equaled thirty.

  She thought she saw a green flash.

  Then another.

  Nine flashes.

  She scratched it on the paper with her left hand.

  She pressed her eye back to the glass.

  The green light moved.

  Something in the light itself shifted, the way the big snakes of Mars blinked when they smelled a mouse. The ones that were at the worker houses.

  Xylia went very still. Three. A cold shiver started in her chest and spread outward to her fingers.

  It sees me.

  She knew that was ridiculous. A planet could not see. Planets were rock and gas and gravity. She knew the names of every planet in the correct system and most of the ones in the incorrect ones and none of them had ever seen anything.

  Next time I think it will be six. She scratched some marks on the paper with her left hand.

  But her fingers were still cold.

  The bedroom door opened.

  Bunching up the paper, Xylia yanked the telescope cloth over the eyepiece and spun around on the stool.

  Catharine stood in the doorway in her good lace dress, her arms crossed, her chin up the way she held it when she was pretending not to be frightened of something.

  They looked at each other.

  "Mommy's upset," Catharine said.

  "I know."

  "She's going to come and talk to you."

  "I know."

  Catharine's eyes moved to the covered telescope. Then back to Xylia. "You're still looking at it."

  It wasn't a question. Xylia didn't answer.

  "You have to stop." Catharine crossed the room and put her hand on the telescope cloth, flat, like a lid. "You have to stop telling people about it."

  "Rafael saw it too."

  "Rafael is a miner." Catharine's voice came out sharper than she probably meant it to. "He doesn't count."

  "He counts."

  "Xylia—"

  "I saw numbers," Xylia said. "It's like it talks. Like the shadow men that come to mommy’s room. I don’t like the shadow people talking to mommy. Do you think they are from the green planet Catharine? Keeper Ostav told me that it was a secret and nobody is supposed to see, but—"

  "Stop."

  "—I saw numbers. Nines, sixes and threes and—"

  "Stop." Catharine's hand pressed down on the telescope. "I don't want to hear it."

  Xylia fell quiet.

  The green light from outside moved slowly across the floor between them.

  "Don't you want to know what it is?" Xylia asked. Her voice came out smaller than she intended.

  Catharine was looking at the window now, not at her. Something had moved behind her eyes — the same thing that moved there when Daddy raised his voice in the salon, when the palace guards changed their posts without warning.

  Xylia ran her fingers through her hair. Rafael would listen.

  "It doesn't matter what it is," Catharine frowned.

  "It does. It—"

  "It doesn't matter what it is." Her voice was steady now. Arranged. Careful, the way the queen's voice got careful. "What matters is what Mommy says about it. What Daddy says. What the Stratocracy says." She turned from the window. "And they say it isn't there."

  Xylia stared at her sister. "But it is there."

  Catharine looked at her for a long moment. Then she lifted the telescope cloth, folded it neatly once, twice, and set it back down.

  "Go to sleep, Xylia."

  She left without closing the door.

  Xylia sat on the stool in the green-tinted dark, her notes still hidden inside the mattress, her thirty drawings still connecting their wrong-curving line. Outside, the planet pulsed again. Slow, deliberate, then its light moved across the floor, reaching the far wall before it faded.

  She pulled her knees to her chest.

  She wasn't afraid of the planet.

  Xylia shivered and wondered who else talked to the shadow people.

  ∞∞∞

  Three stratas had built Mars between them and three stratas were tearing it apart. Strata Angustus—her father's house—had the palace guard and the king's ear. Strata Freya had Pericles and the armies. And Strata Cydonia had the queen.

  Had.

  The marriage had been the lock that held them in uneasy alignment. Now the lock was gone, and Catharine was what remained of it—not yet the key, but something the other two would keep fighting over until she decided she was neither.

  She would need Krrel's favour to survive what came next. Not only Krrel's.

  Catharine pressed her palms against the glass of La Chambre Rouge.

  Colder now. Fifteen years later—colder.

  No breath fogged the thermal glass. She imagined instead the thrum of Mars industry below her feet. Still out of reach, but not for long.

  Her mother's voice echoed in memory: Protect the Stratocracy. Protect your status. Mars demands it.

  The queen had spoken about corruption too. The rot that led to her murder, but those words eluded Catharine. She couldn't recall them clearly. Not yet.

  Behind her, the spherical clock ticked in its corner. Unrelenting. Metallic. The same clock that had chimed while she and Rafael drew pictures of the green planet on this very floor.

  When she looked toward the red horizon, she imagined armies marching at the steps of Pavonis Mons. Her armies. Soon.

  She measured the volcano with her eyes, then turned and surveyed the crimson curtains from ceiling to floor. Someone could hide behind those drapes. Someone had, once.

  The embroidered crest on the velvet caught the light. Her mother's strata. Strata Cydonia: a coiled snake gripping crossed pikes before the Face of Mars.

  Catharine closed the curtains with a sharp pull. The crest expanded across the fabric, the snake's scales glittering.

  Under the chandeliers, her own eyelashes glittered too. Pavé ruby chips, red as blood, red as Mars.

  Clumps of red dust trailed behind her as she crossed the polished marble. This had been the queen's salon. Now she would make it hers.

  In the far corner, beside the spherical clock, a Martian globe sat mounted on a brass stand. Catharine spun it slowly, assessing the military outposts that surrounded the palace. Noctis. Pavonis. Hellas. Each one a piece on the board.

  The clock ticked louder.

  Is this the sound the queen heard before she died?

  Catharine's hand dropped to the dagger at her hip. Cydonia. Named for her mother's strata, for the Face of Mars, for the knife the queen had once carried strapped to her thigh.

  A shadow moved at the edge of her vision.

  There—near the queen's credenza, to her right.

  Not a shadow. A figure.

  Cloaked in noir and blood-red camouflage that shifted and refused to settle. The pattern crawled across the fabric like living smoke.

  Catharine's fingers closed around Cydonia's hilt.

  One thrust to the voicebox. One. Or she was already dead.

  She pivoted to face the intruder.

  "Why does The Face enter the dead queen's salon?"

  The figure didn't move. Its voice came low, spoken in the old dialect. The forbidden dialect her mother had taught her in secret.

  "The future of Mars changes."

  "You execute its future rulers now?" Catharine's eyes searched for a face behind the hood. Only blackness.

  "To guide a Mars that respects the past."

  From within a sleeve. No hand visible, a small metal cube floated into the space between them.

  "What is it?"

  Even before she finished asking, the object pressed a silent thought against her mind. Not words. A certainty. A recognition.

  She released the dagger. Her palm opened instinctively.

  The cube didn't float. It slid through the air toward her as if drawn by invisible threads. When it touched her skin, vibration hummed through the bones of her hand.

  "You do not fear it," the figure said.

  "No." Catharine studied the living light within the tiny cube. Patterns shifted, alive, purposeful.

  "For those who respect Mars." The figure's voice softened fractionally. "Your mother, the queen, respected Mars."

  "What do I do with it?" Catharine's voice strained.

  When she looked up, the figure had vanished.

  No sound. No movement. Simply gone.

  Catharine stood alone in the salon, the cube warm in her palm.

  She crossed to the credenza and placed the cube beside her mother's old comm bracelet. Two relics of Mars's past. One she understood. One she didn't.

  Not yet.

  She walked to the archway and closed her eyes, trying to summon the echoes. Herself and Rafael as children, drawing with crayons while the queen watched. The green planet filling the window. Rafael's hand in hers.

  Nothin'll hurt you.

  She touched the crimson portière that hung in the archway. The fabric felt like her mother's velvet chair.

  Beyond the curtain, the Stratocracy waited. The king would have to deal with the traitors.

  For now.

  Behind her, on the credenza, lights flickered within the cube. Then a sound. Faint, wet, like electricity short-circuiting through living tissue. A glassy snap.

  Catharine didn't hear it.

  She was already gone.

  ∞∞∞

  Deep in the Pavonis mines, Raf carved the last spike of Algol into the tunnel ceiling. The demon star. Bad luck.

  Red Martian grit crusted his stubble and matted his short dark hair. A second skin. He descended the shaft, pickaxe over his shoulder, thinking about the old gods.

  Today Pavonis shook harder than usual.

  At the bottom, Branik waited. His face weathered like dried leather, back hunched from decades underground. His eyes were still sharp and blue, though. His smile hadn't died yet.

  "What's that?" The old miner pointed up at the fresh carving.

  "Algol. The demon star."

  Branik wrinkled his forehead.

  "Perseus. Bad luck." Raf started down the steep incline toward the crosscut where the ore body waited.

  The rest of the crew followed. Methane air stung their lungs.

  Men coughed and lined up along the vein. Pickaxes rang out. Miners cursed.

  "The Stratocracy could give us machines for this." Raf smashed a rock fragment.

  "Lad, they're afraid we'd turn 'em into guns." Branik spat into the dusty cloud. "Drill right under their palace and boom."

  "Shut up." Raf smacked him on the back.

  Down the tunnel, the trolleyman pushed ore-carts toward the vein. Wheels screeching. Getting closer.

  When the sound paused, Raf grabbed Branik's arm. "Did you bring it?"

  "Told ya I would." Branik pulled a book from under his arm. It was more leather than paper, strange and flexible. "Some pages are missing."

  Raf turned it over. The cover felt like malleable alloy but looked like parchment. Symbols were etched into the back.

  "Is this cuneiform?" He traced them with a grimy thumb.

  "Heard it was found on Luna," Branik said. "But she's older than that. Way older."

  "Who found it?"

  "Dunno. But look inside… all kinds of metal alloys. Based on that ore I was tellin' ya about."

  The ore carts clattered closer. Every miner swung harder, trying to meet quota before the trolleyman reached them.

  Raf scanned the tunnel for trouble, then swung his pick. The rusted rock sheared away.

  Beneath it, the vein wasn't ore.

  It was a nest of filaments. Glowing cold, phosphorescent silver.

  "Saints."

  The book's description flashed in his mind. That shouldn't be here. Not here.

  "Lad..." Branik's voice dropped. "These mountains remember." He slapped Raf's shoulder hard enough to make him taste blood.

  Raf pushed rock dust over the alien ore. The glow persisted. Static lifted the hair on his neck.

  The axes around them stilled. Heated air pressed close.

  The overman's voice crackled through the tunnel speakers: "Make your quota, or I'll bury ya."

  Steel wheels screeched. The trolleyman shoved the carts forward and glared at Raf and Branik. "Fill it."

  Raf lifted his hammer toward the silver glow.

  The blow shivered through his bones, splintering the handle. The sound rang like a distant church bell. The wall cracked. A shard of pale silver light bled through.

  "Load it," the trolleyman barked.

  Branik shook his head.

  Raf hesitated. He brushed the shimmering metal with his fingertips. Warm. Electric. Beneath the surface, a lattice emerged. Structure, not nature.

  Reacting? Or watching?

  "We need an ore-tech."

  "Do what I tell you." The trolleyman snapped chains in his fist.

  The mine answered with a subsonic rumble. It squeezed their spines. Rock shifted overhead.

  "The plains of Tharsis move!" someone shouted.

  Raf heard it first. A metallic ticking. Distant, then closer. Louder.

  The mountain was bearing down on them.

  "Blast it—support columns are taking weight!"

  He turned to the trolleyman. "Dump the ore. We have to get out."

  "Your shift's not over." The trolleyman drove a fist into his gut. "You leave when the carts are filled."

  "You all stay!" he barked at the crew. "Swing those axes!"

  The mountain answered.

  Thunder shook every man's teeth. Dust erupted from the rescue shaft.

  The rescue elevator hadn't been used in years.

  Raf had to reach the man-cage. Now.

  Raf held up his shredded pickaxe. “Handle’s broken.”

  “Use your hands.” The trolleyman ’s black teeth flashed. He unclipped his pin gun.

  Branik tossed him a good pickaxe.

  Pebbles dropped from the ceiling. Fear silenced the rest of the miners.

  Raf gripped the shaft and lifted the tool toward the rock above.

  “Someone’s gettin’ buried.” The words were out as the pickaxe descended. The spike punched through boot, foot, and the wooden rail tie beneath with a wet crunch.

  "Raf, buddy.” Branik yelled. Bolts and rivets snapped under strain.

  “She might not hold!”

  Raf kicked his gun to the dust. The trolleyman howled.

  Mars was about to bury them along with its secrets.

  Someone ran out of the black dust. “The mountain’s shifting!”

  ∞∞∞

  Struts snapped. Others cracked under the pressure.

  Not every man would fit inside the cage.

  Sulphur choked off the air.

  Branik heaved on the cage door. “It's not working.”

  “Control’s fried. Need a bypass.” Bulbs swayed above. “I need wire. Hurry.”

  He looked up at the lifeline of lights. "Get it."

  “Saints… the lights’ll go dead.” Branik’s voice cracked.

  “You want to die here?” Raf shook a miner. “Headlamps. Now.”

  Darkness entombed them. The miner's omen.

  “Here!” Branik rasped.

  Raf stripped the wire with his teeth. It tasted like blood and copper. He jammed their bare ends into the rusted terminals. Sparks erupted.

  Lights flashed and the panel activated.

  “Saints of Olympus.” Branik coughed.

  “Everyone. Hurry!” Raf pushed the young ones in.

  Thirty men squeezed into a cage meant for ten. Their sweat reeked of fear. A handful of miners clasped the cage from the outside.

  “Punch the top.” Branik locked them in.

  The mine motors whined but the cage didn’t move.

  “It's not working,” Branik whispered.

  Cable clattered through the old motors. Kilometres of it screaming past. Miners prayed in silence.

  Cables snapped tight and the elevator slammed against the wall. Rock crashed down around them. The cage tipped then lurched again. Two miners fell. No one spoke.

  “She’s going.” Branik's fists leeched blood.

  The cage climbed, battering the shaft walls. Racing the rumble below.

  Gravity doubled. Men vomited. No one looked down.

  Lights winked out, sealing each level in darkness below them.

  “Lad… what’s that?” Branik pointed to the top indicator.

  “Observation deck.” Raf’s gut turned to stone. A death sentence.

  The lift slowed. One of the outside men slipped, screaming into the black.

  “She’s slowing!”

  “It has to!” Raf barked. The alternative was a paste on the ceiling.

  The final lights died. The stink of burnt cable filled the cage.

  A metallic voice echoed: “Shaft hoist at Observation Level. Security required.”

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  They smashed into the light. A sterile, white void. Marble, antiseptic, and powdered cologne choked the air. A tomb scrubbed clean.

  For a heartbeat, no one moved. No one spoke.

  Branik gripped Raf’s shoulder, his fist leaving a bloody print on the grime. “Saints, you did it.”

  Raf shook his head, eyes still on the dark, hungry shaft behind them. “We did it.”

  As the light found their faces, he saw it: the men weren’t looking at the mountain anymore.

  They were looking at him.

  ∞∞∞

  The observation deck led to the canal transit station. A platform jutting from the canyon wall, two hundred metres above the basin floor. The Skybridge stretched from the platform across open air: a glass-and-steel corridor built for Mars's low gravity.

  Not for a shifting mountain.

  Raf led the miners through the vault door into chaos.

  Frantic clapping echoed through the space—sharp, like trapped birds. Heels snapped across polished marble. Shouting. Panic rolling in waves as bulkheads slammed shut throughout the station.

  The mountain had followed them here, and the elitists were breaking.

  Rust-coloured clouds poured through the cracked dome overhead. Below, in the canal itself, machinery screamed. Amber emergency lights strobed.

  "They're running." Branik pointed toward the Skybridge.

  Aristocrats fled across the glass corridor, desperate to reach the far platform before the whole structure collapsed.

  "Weapons." Raf swept his arm.

  The miners grabbed what they could find—metal bars, broken girders, chunks of debris. They pressed forward, blood still on their faces from the mine collapse, fury in their eyes.

  "Dammit!" Raf forced them back.

  The Skybridge groaned. The glass corridor folded in on itself with a sound like gunfire. Steel support cables snapped. Elitists scattered across the platform in confused clusters, some clinging to columns, others frozen in terror.

  A high wail cut through the roar.

  "Raf. Look." Branik wrenched at a fallen girder. "A kid."

  Beneath it, a small hand twitched.

  Raf dropped to his knees. "Lift. Everyone. Now."

  The miners heaved the girder aside. Underneath, a boy lay curled and shaking.

  His uniform was fine cloth trimmed in ornate gold. Raf brushed grit from his face. "Hey, kid... what's your name?"

  "J—Jendrick. Regent Jendrick Pericles."

  Branik went pale. "The general's son."

  Silence rippled outward through the miners. Then came the anger, the resentment. Years of it, simmering to the surface.

  "We're not killing him." Raf hauled the boy upright and stared down the closest miner. "I'll scrap the lot of ya."

  He turned to Jendrick. "You hurt anywhere?"

  The boy shook his head, shivering.

  Above them, the Skybridge towers groaned and bent.

  "Go! Side tunnels!" Raf shoved the miners toward the vault door. "Move!"

  Metal shrieked. Aristocrats clung to columns on the upper platform. Raf led the miners downward, toward the service tunnels and safety.

  "The gods of Olympus show their fury!" Branik bellowed.

  "Mars is a bitch today!" Raf shot back, pushing Jendrick ahead of him.

  Through the choking dust, he glanced back one last time.

  A single figure stood on the upper platform—alone, facing the collapsing Skybridge.

  A strobe flashed. The light caught her face.

  Catharine.

  The dizzying drop in his stomach was the same as when he was five, staring up at the green planet.

  Her lips moved. Even through the distance and the roar, he understood: Save yourselves.

  "Raf buddy… tunnel's clear!" Branik forced the vault door open wider.

  "Don't wait for me." Raf bolted toward the catwalk steps, back toward the platform.

  "You're wasting your time!" Branik warned.

  A support beam fell fifty metres, exploding into rubble and dust.

  Raf kept climbing.

  The brown haze parted for a heartbeat. The strobe flashed again. Not amber like the emergency lights, but a sick, familiar green.

  In that fractured light, he saw her clearly.

  Catharine stood at the edge of the platform. Alone. Aristocrats huddled behind her, clinging to the wreckage of their station.

  Her voice cut through the chaos. Calm, precise, cutting. "It's not safe here."

  Raf reached the platform and shouted, "Follow me! All of you! Before it collapses!"

  "They will burn in this tomb before they follow a miner." Catharine's voice was steady. It was that calm, more than the words, that he remembered. The same tone the queen had used when she made them forget the green planet.

  "Leave now, or you'll all die!" Raf roared at the nobles clinging to the ruins behind her.

  Hatred spat down at him.

  "Serf scum..."

  "Undercaste..."

  "Heathen..."

  Branik had been right. So had Catharine.

  They'd rather die than follow him.

  Raf stared at Catharine through the dust and strobing light. "What about you?"

  For a moment, something flickered in her eyes. The girl who'd held his hand beneath the tall windows of La Chambre Rouge. The girl who'd drawn the green planet with him in crayons.

  "Rafael."

  Her voice softened—just for a breath. The way it did when they were children.

  Then it hardened.

  "You have always known how to serve, haven't you?"

  The words hit like a physical blow.

  Raf turned and descended the catwalk without answering.

  Behind him, the Skybridge collapsed with a sound like the mountain breaking in half.

  He didn't look back, but he heard her steps. Behind. Hollow on the catwalk. One set of footsteps, where there had been many.

  ∞∞∞