Read Chapter 9: Echoes of a Father

The corridor smelled of dust and something else—metal worn thin by time, oxidized and bitter. Caleb ran his gloved fingers along the stone walls, rough and uneven, nothing like the smooth glass of the Habitat above. This place was older. Much older. Whoever carved these walls did so with tools that left scars.

The chronometer on his wrist flickered, then steadied. He glanced at it—still pointing forward. That was something, at least.

The corridor bent left, then right, then opened into a chamber that stole his breath.

It was a laboratory, but not like any he'd seen in the Habitat. The room was circular, domed above him, with workbenches lining the curved walls. Instruments lay scattered across the surfaces—spectrometers, gene sequencers, a dozen devices whose functions he could only guess at. Dust coated everything, thick and undisturbed. But the air was warm, and a faint hum vibrated through the floor.

Someone had kept this place alive.

Caleb stepped deeper into the room. At its center stood a pedestal of black stone, and upon it rested a single object: a small, rectangular device with a worn silver casing. A data core, old-model, the kind they'd stopped manufacturing before Earth's first manned mission to Mars.

His father's voice echoed in his memory—*I hid the key in the clock that has no hands.* But that message came later. He hadn't heard it yet. All he had now was the silence of a room that had been waiting for him for decades.

He approached the pedestal, his boots scraping against the stone floor. The device didn't react to his presence, didn't light up or hum. Just sat there, patient and inert.

Caleb reached out and touched it.

The casing was smooth and warm. He traced its edges, searching for a seam, a latch, anything. His thumb found a small indentation on the side. He pressed it, and the device emitted a soft chime.

A holographic projection flickered to life above the pedestal. Aaron Voss—younger, leaner, but unmistakably his father—stared back at him from the light. His hair was shorter, his face unlined, but his eyes held the same weight Caleb remembered from childhood.

"Voice recognition confirmed," the projection said, not to Caleb but to the room. "Identity: Aaron Voss. Access level: creator. Beginning playback."

The image shifted, and Caleb found himself looking at a different version of his father—older, tired, sitting at a desk cluttered with papers and half-empty coffee cups.

"This is entry one, Project Exodus," his father said, his voice rough and weary. "If you're hearing this, the failsafe triggered. That means I'm gone, and the situation didn't resolve the way I hoped."

The projection flickered, and a second entry replaced the first.

"Entry two. Helix Corp is a cancer. They sold us a dream of a new world while they bled the old one dry. The first crews were supposed to be pioneers. Instead, they became test subjects for technology we never should have deployed."

Caleb's chest tightened. He'd known his father was involved in the colony's early years, but this—this was something else entirely. This was a confession.

"Entry three. I discovered the discrepancy in the landing records. The official account says the first wave arrived in 2073. But the telemetry data shows an orbital insertion three years earlier. Someone altered the timeline. Someone wanted the public to believe the colony was younger than it was."

The entries continued, each one shorter than the last, each one more fragmented.

"Entry nine. The crew manifest is wrong. Names that should be there are missing. People who never should have been part of the founding are listed as pioneers. It's a patchwork of lies stitched together to make a believable story."

Caleb thought of the manifest he'd found below, the names of people he knew—his mother among them. The dates had been off by a decade. He'd assumed it was a clerical error. Now he understood it was something far worse.

"Entry fourteen." His father's voice cracked. "Rose confronted the board. She told them she would go public, expose the fabrication, show the world that Mars belonged to everyone, not just the shareholders who bankrolled the project. They promised her a meeting. They gave her a disappearance."

The air in the room grew heavy. Caleb's hand strayed to his chest, where an old ache had settled. His mother's official record said mining accident. A malfunction in a pressurization unit, a breach, no survivors recovered. He'd mourned her for years. He'd never questioned it.

"You're lying," he whispered to the projection, even though he knew better. His father had no reason to lie. Not here, not now, not in a hidden laboratory beneath the northern plains.

"Entry twenty-one." His father's voice was barely a whisper now. "The base is the failsafe. I built it to hold the truth, to preserve the evidence, to make sure that if Helix ever tried to bury the past, there would be a record of what actually happened. The Habitat above is the decoy. This place is the proof."

Caleb's gaze swept the room. This was the failsafe. His father had constructed an entire hidden facility, stocked it with data and equipment, and left it here to be discovered.

"I hid the key in the clock that has no hands."

The words came from the projector, but they weren't part of the entry. They were a fragment, a stray audio file that had somehow been appended to the final recording.

Caleb froze. "What did you say?"

The projector flickered, and his father's face appeared one last time, haggard and desperate.

"She wanted to tell you herself. She said it for years: 'When he's ready, I'll find the way to tell him myself. And I'll need the key.' I don't know if she's alive, Caleb. I want to believe she is. Where the sky never held her, that's where you'll find the truth."

The projector dimmed. The room fell silent.

Caleb stood motionless, his father's words echoing in his skull. A clock that has no hands. The sky that never held her. Riddles upon riddles, each one pointing to something he couldn't yet see.

"She's alive," he murmured. The words felt foreign, dangerous. He'd spent years reconciling himself to his mother's death. Now the possibility of her survival opened a wound he'd thought had sealed.

He looked around the laboratory, searching for anything—a clue, a reference, a map—that might explain the clock. His eyes landed on a console against the far wall, its screen dark. He crossed the room and tapped the surface. It flickered to life, displaying a file tree of data stores he hadn't yet examined.

One folder caught his eye. Labeled simply: *CLOCK*.

Caleb reached for it.

His rover's comm unit crackled, startling him. A voice cut through the static, female, clipped, professional.

"Mr. Voss. This is Operations Control for Helix Corporation. We are aware of your location and your activities. You are trespassing on classified infrastructure. Cease your search immediately, and we will consider this a misunderstanding. Continue, and we will take all necessary measures to protect our assets."

The transmission cut off.

Caleb stared at the comm unit, his jaw tight. They'd found him. Of course they'd found him. They'd probably tracked his rover the moment he left Meridian Point.

He turned back to the console. The file was still there, waiting.

He opened it.

A single image appeared: a clock face, rendered in black and white, its hands missing. Below it, a caption: *Chronometer calibration unit, Level 3, Storage Bay 7.*

Caleb's gaze dropped to his wrist. The chronometer pulsed, once, as if responding to his attention.

His father's voice whispered in his memory, distant and warm: *I hid the key in the clock that has no hands.*

He had to find that clock.

But first, he had to deal with Helix.