Epilogue
It’s night cycle again, but you’d never know it from the hydroponics bay. Crimson light radiates from the algae tanks, smearing everything in the color of raw muscle and open wounds.
I ease the pressure lock, step through into a world that smells of rain, rot, and living oxygen. The air is thick and damp, beading sweat beneath the collar of my thermal undersuit. Somewhere, a cooling fan whines up to speed, punctuating the dense silence with its insectile drone.
The Ares outpost reminds me of a prehistoric animal from earth with its arched steel ribs crosshatched like the insides of a giant sternum.
Their cold beauty has always gotten to me.
Maybe it’s the way they look like they’re straining under gravity that’s not really there, fighting against the thin red Martian air that seeps through every pore of this habitat.
Kael’s standing by the viewport, his arms folded and face half-obscured by condensation beading on the inner plex.
He’s running diagnostics with his HUD lenses blinking faint blue on his irises.
The cut of his jaw is sharper than I remember, the light stubble smudged along his lawline like a pencil sketch.
His gaze never leaves the display, but I can tell from the angle of his shoulders he’s clocked my arrival.
I hover by the door a second too long fidgeting with my glove tabs.
No one comes to the hydro bay after lights-out unless they’re trying to hide from something, and we both know it.
I take three steps forward. My boots squelch against the soft matting, the sound swallowed instantly by the clotted air.
I count my own heartbeats, feel the spike of adrenaline as I draw up beside him.
He doesn’t move, but his left hand tightens at the edge of the console, the actuators in his cybernetic wrist stuttering before steadying.
That’s always been his tell. I let my own gloved fingers drift—barely, deliberately—along the segmented titanium of his wrist joint.
It’s cold at first, then gives a little under my touch as the temperature sensors read my proximity.
His flinch is nearly imperceptible, just a twitch of the fingers. His eyes flick from the panel to my hand, then back up, as if surprised to find me real and not a hallucination from a day’s worth of adrenaline and synthcaff.
I can’t help myself. “You’re on edge.”
Kael grunts, the sound low and grinding in the humidity.
“I’m monitoring the third manifold. Level spiked six minutes ago.
I thought it was a leak.” He gestures at the display, but the pressure charts are steady, if you know how to read them.
He’s not here for work. He’s here for the dark and the privacy.
I don’t let go of his wrist. If anything, I lean in, crowding his space just enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. “The base never felt this alive,” I murmur, watching the way his stubble catches the red glow. “Not even during first shift. Something’s changed.”
Kael’s shoulders tense, then settle, as if he’s resigned to the conversation happening.
His lips are chapped, maybe even a little split.
Martian air eats away at the soft parts, and neither of us has time for self-care.
He closes his eyes for a second and opens them, the blue of his iris HUD displays almost silvered under the algae lamps.
“Don’t,” he says, and it’s so quiet I almost miss it.
But his hand stays where it is, letting me cradle it.
My thumb finds the seam between steel and flesh—a jagged, sawtooth scar where his body ends and the prosthetic begins.
The skin there is softer, somehow, like it’s never been exposed to sun or abrasion.
I trace the seam, slow and deliberate, and his pulse jumps against my touch.
The viewport fogs over with each of our breaths, erasing the jagged Martian horizon beyond. I tilt my head, bring my lips to the shell of his ear, and say, “You could stop me.”
He huffs, but it’s more a shudder than a laugh. “You know I can’t.”
In the hydro bay, there are no cameras—Kael made sure of that after the last blackout. I use both hands now, guiding his wrist to rest against the curve of my jaw.
His fingers flex with artificial grace as they slide up, framing my cheek.
I meet his gaze, letting him see everything on my face: the rawness, the want, the quiet kind of need that’s unrelated to oxygen or nutrients or sunlight.
“You’re pushing me,” he whispers, and the edge in his voice is serrated, full of a violence that has nothing to do with anger.
“Then kiss me,” I say, and he does.
There’s a mechanical clatter as his cybernetic hand presses against the bulkhead, then his mouth is on mine, harder than I expected, softening only when he’s sure I won’t break apart under him.
He tastes of salt and sweat and the metallic tang of recycled air, but underneath is something else. A hunger aching in my bones, too.
I open to him, losing myself in the press and shift, in the sudden, desperate friction of bodies that have gone too long uncomforted.
He breaks off first, his breath ragged, and looks at me like he’s never seen me before. The red light paints him savage, wild, but the hand he lifts to my face is feather-light, careful not to bruise. “We shouldn’t,” he says, but the words are more ritual than refusal.
I slip both hands around his neck, feeling the heat trapped there, skating my nails over the fine, damp hair at the nape.
“Neither should half the things we do,” I say, and steal another kiss, this one slower, more deliberate—a mapping of territory, a negotiation, a truce. He lets me set the pace this time.
The hydro bay fills with the sound of our breathing, the soft slap of fabric, the faint, sticky squeak of algae mats underfoot. I pull him with me to the corner where the tanks crowd closer together, where the condensation runs in lines down the polymer walls and the air is thick enough to drink.
He lifts me, easy, and my legs wrap around his waist as he pins me against a support strut. The cold of the steel seeps through my suit, mixing with the inferno along my skin.
Pulling back, he brushes the hair from my face with his prosthetic hand—gentle, reverent, the motions too precise to be natural.
I nuzzle into his palm and kiss the thumb pad where I know he’s most sensitive.
He shivers. “Gods, you drive me crazy,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead to mine.
“Really? Prove it. Show me,” I say, barely more than a breath.
When we kiss again, it’s less battle and more surrender. His mouth is open and desperate, body pressed so close I can feel every tremor in his core.
I drag his suit zipper down just enough to find skin—fever-hot and slick, the muscles twitching under my fingers.
He reciprocates, fumbling with my own seals, and our chests slide together, separated by only the barest film of synthetic fabric.
The taste of him fills me, and I give back everything; all the longing, the fear, the lonely hours I’ve spent imagining this exact scenario with the brightness of the algae glow burning my retinas.
He bites my lower lip, not quite drawing blood, and the pain mixes with pleasure until I can’t tell which is which.
The outpost is silent, save for us. No klaxons, no comms, only the soft hiss of oxygenators and the distant drip of condensation. The rest of Mars could be dead and buried and it wouldn’t matter.
He breaks the kiss, panting, and rests his face against my neck. The stubble scratches, the sharp tickle of it sending sparks up and down my spine.
I close my eyes, memorizing the way his chest rises and falls, the pressure of his hips pinning me to the strut, the hum of his prosthetic as he strokes my hair in slow, hypnotic passes.
“I am not good for you.” His words are muffled by my skin.
I wrap my arms around him, grounding us both. “I know,” I reply. “That’s why it’s perfect.”
We stand like that, entwined in the crimson half-light, until our pulses slow and the sweat cools on our bodies. I don’t want to move or shatter the fragile truce of this moment, but the next shift will start soon and Kael is nothing if not practical.
He sets me down, but doesn’t let go immediately. Our eyes meet, and there’s a rawness in him now—a need, a promise, something I’m terrified to name.
I tap his chest, right over his heart, and smile. “See you at comms?”
His lips curve, wry but softer than I’ve ever seen. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
I watch him leave, the cut of his back taut with purpose, and the hydro bay is suddenly too empty.
I linger a moment longer, my fingers pressed to my lips, the taste of him lingering. The air smells of sweat, algae, and something electric. I’ve never felt more alive.
The central archive is colder than I expect—some malfunction in the recirc system, or maybe the metal walls just hoard the night chill out of habit.
My breath hangs in the air, streaming from my lips in a ghostly vapor as I squeeze between towering racks of drives and banks of obsolescent computation.
Even after ten months on Ares Outpost, the place still makes me feel like an intruder.
Light here is never steady. Overhead strips flicker with their own half-life, leaking through cracked diffusers and splintering shadows across the uneven floor.
It takes a moment for my eyes to recalibrate, to parse the chaos of projected overlays and the hunched, fossilized shapes of old terminals.
The only real color comes from the dozen holo-maps splayed out along the east bulkhead, flickering topographies stuttering as the processors lag and catch.
Stacks of hand-labeled data cylinders, ragged-edged printouts, the fine dust of Martian regolith that finds its way into every crevice, even in supposed clean rooms. If the hydro bay feels like biology—living, breathing, sweating—this place is pure machine. Sterile, indifferent, and patient.