Episode 11: The Sagittarius Gift

The Cold War Beneath the City

6 April 2301, 01h10 — XE-1 Residential Sector Transit Corridor

The corridor outside the noodle bar is quiet. Recap footage from the Mars Unity Festival still plays across hologram screens. Vera walks beside Seb and Firo, Wanda’s disappearance sitting heavy in her chest. Firo stops walking. “Don’t discuss Wanda publicly for now.” Vera looks at him. “You really think this situation is already that serious?” Firo’s answer is careful: if Wanda was transporting something for someone, more than one group may have been watching her.

Seb asks whether the Big 4 already know they found the camera. Firo does not answer, because he cannot be certain. What he can say is this: the surveillance device is too sophisticated to belong to ordinary corporate or criminal interests. It almost certainly belongs to a covert operation run by one of the four great powers. And if the device has been reporting to that power all along, then whoever placed it already knows Vera found it.

They separate for the night with an agreement to stay quiet and stay careful. Vera returns to her apartment alone. She tries to message Wanda again. No reply. She searches for Wanda in the XE-1 public residential directory. The entry is still there, unchanged — as if nothing happened. She checks their shared message history from the Pioneer-12 journey. Then she stops. Every chat record is gone. Every message, every photograph, every shared playlist they built on the ship — erased. Blank hologram where their conversation used to be.

Vera sits on the sofa and does not move for a long time. She is finally beginning to realize that Wanda may have been far more than the person she met on Pioneer-12. And she herself might already have drawn someone’s attention. The Martian city continues humming quietly in the dark.