Farid didn’t start with Alex Mercer. That was the first lesson Director Voss had impressed on him, quietly, over their second meeting: never open with the person you want people to distrust. Open with something true, something small, something that costs you nothing to say honestly, and let the rest arrive later, disguised as an afterthought rather than the actual point.He started, that first week, with his own tiredness.“Rough shift,” he told a woman named Callista, over the shared lunch counter in Sector Four, where he’d eaten most days for the past six years without either of them ever needing a reason to talk. “Everyone’s on edge since the plaza thing. I don’t think people realize how much extra strain it’s put on scheduling. Half my crew’s distracted, checking registries on their breaks instead of working.”“I’ve noticed that too,” Callista said, and meant it, because it was true, she had noticed, the way everyone had noticed something in the ship’s rhythm shift since the censu

“I’ve got something. I think.” Sena slid into the seat across from Kai at breakfast, tray forgotten, a folded scrap of paper already in her hand. “Something like what?” “A name. Farid. Logistics coordinator, apparently well-liked, plays cards most evenings with half of Sector Four.” She unfolded the paper, revealing a few careful lines of handwriting. “Two different people this week used almost identical phrasing about the protest ‘never wanted to reach Mars,’ word for word, days apart, no connection between them except both mentioned hearing it from him.” Kai took the paper, studying her notes, something cold and clarifying settling into his chest the specific feeling of a suspicion finally carrying enough weight to stop being just a suspicion. “That’s a start,” he said. “Let’s see where it leads.” It didn’t lead anywhere. He spent the better part of a week trying to trace the rumor back to its source asking careful, indirect questions of anyone who mentioned Farid’s name, h

“Show me the panel again.”Director Voss crouched beside the maintenance housing, and the technician who’d flagged it, a young man named Osei, transferred temporarily to the Committee’s small technical staff, pointed at the section in question, hand hovering just above the surface as though he still expected to feel the crack under his fingers.“Right here. I put in the repair request myself, three days ago. Cracked casing, exposed wiring, the kind of thing that gets flagged priority two on any inspection.” Osei traced the edge of the panel with his finger. “Nobody’s touched it since. No work order completed, no technician dispatched. And yet.”The casing was whole. Not patched, not welded, not repaired in any visible sense, simply intact, as though the crack had never existed at all.“You’re certain this is the same unit,” Voss said.“Certain. Serial number matches my original report exactly.” Osei pulled up his tablet, displaying the photograph he’d taken three days earlier, a clea

“There has to be a simpler explanation. There has to be.” Elena Voss said it more to herself than to the room, pacing now, the three findings still spread across the table behind her. “Instrument drift. A calibration error that’s propagated across multiple systems without anyone catching it. Something mundane, something we’re simply not seeing yet because we’ve spent too many hours staring at the same three data sets.” “Elena.” Director Voss’s voice was quiet, careful. “You’ve said that four times in the last ten minutes.” “Because it’s still possible.” She turned to face the room, something almost pleading beneath the authority in her voice. “Eleven years, this ship has held steady. Five thousand people, a functioning ecosystem, a mission that has worked exactly as designed every single day. I am not prepared to accept that all of it has been resting on nothing, based on a star reading and a repaired panel and a number drifting by four decimal places.” “I’m not asking you to acce

“Show me Osei’s feed again.” Elena Voss stood in the small, windowless room that had become her private review space these past weeks, a bank of monitors arranged in front of her, each one displaying a different member of her own Committee going about an ordinary day. She had ordered this herself. She still hadn’t grown used to the sight of it. “Same as yesterday, Captain,” the technician beside her said, pulling the feed forward. “Standard shift, no unusual contacts, no deviation from routine.” “Run the audio from his lunch conversation.” The technician complied, and Elena listened to Osei discuss, with a colleague she didn’t recognize, something entirely mundane about a supply requisition, nothing close to the finding that had consumed every waking hour of her own mind since the room went white. She should have felt relieved. She felt, instead, exhausted in a way sleep no longer seemed to touch. “Pull up Park’s feed.” Ensign Park, similarly ordinary, similarly contained. A sh