Read Chapter 3: Three Names on the Wall

The alarm came at 06:00, four minutes before shift change, which told Élise everything she needed to know about how seriously management took the exercise.

"Attention all personnel. This is a scheduled safety drill. Proceed to your designated gathering points in an orderly fashion." Fournier's voice was calm, almost bored, as if he were announcing a meal rotation rather than a simulated hull breach.

Élise stood in the corridor outside her quarters, toolbox already in hand out of habit. Around her, miners and technicians shuffled toward their stations with the weary compliance of people who had done this a hundred times before. She should have been moving too—her gathering point was the repair bay, Section C—but something made her pause.

The drill was scheduled. The announcement had come on time. And yet.

She watched the flow of bodies for a moment longer. There was no urgency in anyone's stride. No panic. Just the dull rhythm of routine. That was the problem. This drill was too routine. Too convenient. It pulled eyes away from the periphery, focused everyone on internal procedures while the eastern ridge sat dark and unmonitored behind them.

She walked toward Section C, keeping her pace unhurried. The corridor curved slightly, following the base's cylindrical layout, and the lighting flickered once—a maintenance glitch she'd flagged three weeks ago that still hadn't been fixed. She made a mental note. Again.

The repair bay was half-empty when she arrived. Her team stood in loose clusters, chatting in low voices. Léandre waved from across the room, his bald head catching the overhead lights. She returned the gesture and moved to her designated spot, marked by a faded yellow line on the deck plating.

"Drill's going to run forty minutes," Léandre said as she approached. "Simulated pressure loss in habitat modules one through four. We're supposed to do a visual inspection sweep."

"Thrilling."

"That's what I said. But Moreau's got the clipboard, so somebody's actually going to do it."

Élise glanced toward the far wall where Sébastien Moreau stood, tablet in hand, his face set in the serious expression he wore whenever he was given any responsibility larger than a wrench. He was younger than her by a decade, earnest in a way that reminded her of herself before the Kessler evacuation. Before she'd learned that earnestness got people killed.

She walked over. "Sébastien. You're running the sweep?"

He looked up, startled. "Oh. Chef. Yes. Commander wanted someone from engineering to coordinate." He lowered his voice. "Seems pointless. We just did one three weeks ago."

"Drills are never pointless," she said, watching his face. "They're how management proves they're doing something."

Sébastien's brow furrowed. "You think something's wrong?"

"I think I want to see the rotation board before this drill ends. Can you keep the team busy for five minutes?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "I'll have them check the seal integrity on the bay doors. Twice."

"Good man."

She slipped out through the maintenance access, a narrow passage that ran behind the crew quarters and connected to the administrative hub. It wasn't technically off-limits, but it wasn't well-trafficked either. The drill had pulled most personnel to their gathering points, leaving the corridors emptier than usual. She passed two maintenance droids parked in standby mode and a stack of supply crates that had been sitting there for a week, waiting for someone to file the right paperwork.

The rotation board was mounted on the wall near the personnel office, a simple magnetic display that listed the next three months of crew assignments. It was updated weekly, and someone updated it obsessively—she'd never seen a single smudge on its surface.

Today, someone had been careless.

Three names had been crossed out with a single firm line of marker. Not scratched out. Not erased. Deliberately crossed out, as if whoever did it wanted anyone looking to know those names no longer mattered.

She read them twice.

First: Amélie Rousseau. Junior geologist. She'd been on base eleven months.

Second: Tomas Lindqvist. Drone operator. Quiet, kept to himself, played chess in the mess hall.

Third: Étienne Moreau. Sébastien's younger brother. Cargo loader. Twenty-three years old. He'd been scheduled for rotation home in six weeks.

Élise stood very still. The environmental system hummed in the walls. Somewhere distant, a drill klaxon sounded, muffled by the intervening structure.

Six weeks.

She pulled out her personal tablet and photographed the board, then checked the date of the last update against her memory. The access log she'd wiretapped earlier—the one that contained her name and Sébastien's—had listed three unauthorized entries. One for her. One for Sébastien. And one more, scrawled in the system at 03:12 three nights ago, attributed to a technician who'd been on Earth for six months.

They were building a case. Crossed names on a rotation board. Falsified access logs. A sabotage report that would eventually surface and implicate her. But why these three? Why Étienne?

She thought of Sébastien's face when he talked about his brother. The way his posture relaxed, the rare softness in his voice. Étienne was supposed to leave. He was supposed to go home.

Now his name was crossed out.

She heard footsteps in the corridor behind her and turned. Sébastien stood at the junction, his tablet clutched against his chest. He'd clearly run to catch up. His face was flushed, breath quick.

"Chef, I need to—" He stopped. Followed her gaze to the rotation board. She watched his expression change from confusion to recognition to something harder. Something she hadn't seen on him before.

"Étienne's name," he said. His voice was flat. Controlled. "Why is Étienne's name crossed out?"

"I don't know."

"You took a photo."

"Yes."

He stepped closer to the board, his gloved hand hovering over the crossed-out names as if he could restore them by touch. "Amélie. Tomas. Étienne." He read them like a death list. "That's the cargo team. The rotation out."

"The cargo team?"

"Monthly supply run leaves in two weeks. They were scheduled to go out with it. Transfer to the orbital station, then catch a return shuttle to Earth." He turned to face her, and she saw real fear in his eyes now. "Those three were essential to the cargo protocol. Without them, the rotation gets delayed. Reassigned."

"Reassigned to whom?"

"I don't know. I don't—" He stopped. "That drill. It pulled everyone to specific stations. Even maintenance. Even the people who don't normally do drills."

Élise understood what he was suggesting. "You think they wanted us occupied."

"I think someone wanted the cargo area clear for a while. Long enough to do something." Sébastien's jaw tightened. "My brother's been working extra shifts down there. He said the inventory didn't match the manifest. Not by much. A few crates. But enough to notice."

Élise remembered the encrypted transmission. *Phase Two. Asset recovery.* What if phase one was destroying the conveyor to shift focus? And phase two was already underway, hidden inside the base's own supply chain?

"Don't tell anyone you saw this," she said. "Not yet."

"Chef—"

"Not yet." She held his gaze. "I'm going to find out why those names were crossed out. But I need time. And I need you to act like you don't know anything."

Sébastien was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded, a slow, deliberate movement. "My brother's name is on that board. When you find out who did this, I want to be there."

"You will be."

They heard voices in the adjacent corridor. The drill was ending. Personnel would be returning to their duties. Élise slid the tablet into her pocket and stepped away from the board, schooling her features into neutrality.

Sébastien did the same, but his hands trembled slightly at his sides.

By the time the first miners rounded the corner, they were both staring at the deck plating, two workers waiting for a drill to end.

The rotation board would stay. Someone would repopulate the list. New names, new schedules. Étienne Moreau would be crossed out again, if they chose to leave him there. Or he might be folded into the manifest she'd just seen.

But the marker line remained in her photograph. Evidence. And if management wanted to control who left this base, then management was hiding something she needed to find.