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Home / Sci-Fi / The Red Rock / Chapter 132: The Martian Vision
Chapter 132: The Martian Vision
Author: Neo Moroeng
last update2025-09-22 16:52:47
The dome was quiet in a way that felt unnatural for Mars. Normally the pumps muttered, the vents sighed, the Red Rock itself seemed to hum through basalt veins beneath us. But tonight—or was it morning?—the dome was a hollow, a pause cut into the world. We sat in its silence like men who had seen something vast pass overhead and had no language left to name it.

No alarms. No orders. Only breath, shallow and uneven. Hayes’s boots scraped the floor once, sharp in the stillness, and the sound made Nancy flinch.

Through the observation glass, Mars lay in its nightdress: the dunes in shadow, the sky thin as paper. From here we could see the faint curl of Phobos like a stone dragged across velvet. The Rim glowed in the distance, fractured light spilling from towers and burning alleys alike. Somewhere beneath that glow the infection ran loose, Velirius’s promise fulfilled. But here, in this dome, we were not fighting. We were waiting.

It was the first time since the lab, since the Council,
Neo Moroeng

The purpose of this chapter is not action, but atmosphere. The silence after catastrophe becomes its own battlefield, one where philosophy, despair, and faith clash as bitterly as weapons. The “vision” is both memory and prophecy, blurring time, suggesting the infection is not only biological but temporal. It is a pause before the storm, and a reminder that war is fought in the spirit before it reaches the flesh. -N.M

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