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On the 11th of October, 2080, six crew members assigned to Fort Solis were found dead with the leading perpetrator, Mr. Wyatt Taylor, shot on sight.
Several bodies were maimed—stabbed repeatedly in the chest and abdomen—whilst others suffered strangulation and contusion.
Fort Minor engineer Jessica Appleton was also announced dead on site, the cause of death being a forced incision to the skull by an axe.
The only survivor was Jack Leary, co-worker of Appleton, and too traumatized to make an official statement.
Terra Mining Industries had nothing to say about this matter.
But Jack knew better. And no matter how tightly he screwed his eyes shut, he has never been able to erase the memories of that night.
His already submitted leave was extended after Central saved him, but he never really felt saved from that place. He would hear alarms in his sleep, watch rooms taint themselves red when he downed one too many bottles of beer, and every time his hand reached for a door, he saw her dying.
Jessica, who would roll her eyes at his jokes and draw frogs on her helmet, was who really saved him. And no one but him would ever know that truth. No one saw her bloodied stomach when they couldn't sleep. No one remembered her tear-stained cheeks.
Central already advised it, and Terra had uncharacteristically suggested mental health deployment was the safest option, so Jack never went back to Mars. He stayed on Earth, at home, hoping that he could go through one day where he didn't have to see Wyatt swing the axe down, but it was all he ever thought about.
When the report was released to the public, there was a lot of scrutiny and speculation, but no one got any answers. The only formal response Terra made was sending basket condolences to the families of the victims, and in return they got an uprisal from the Taylor family who claimed that Wyatt was not a killer.
Maybe he wasn't before that night, but Jack saw all the evidence he needed to point the guilty finger at the medical officer. A medical officer—how the hell did he turn so sour? You wouldn't expect your doctor to gut you under his blade, but bloodied instruments and footprints said otherwise, and that all got locked up before anyone could stop and ask for proof.
Six bodies. Each one of them covered in black tarps, shipped for examination, and then never seen again. It birthed more questions, none of which were ever made testimony upon. Then rumors started spreading, speculating theories like radiation poisoning and space hysteria. Was it safe to work on Mars with what happened? Could Fort Solis continue running in such adverse condition? Whatever the statement, Terra never acknowledged them, and not long after the catastrophe the fort was up and running again.
Jack knew he could make a formal complaint. He'd get pretty far with his clearance, but he wouldn't get far enough, and what was really the point if raising a pitchfork wasn't going to bring Jessica back?
So, he drinks. He stays inside his house. He drinks and stays inside his house and throws the Central mail in the trash when the envelopes slide under his door, and he keeps drinking. He rarely ventures outside, and he rarely gets to washing his hair in the shower before he's crying on the tiles again.
The incident is recited on the news for another week, like they couldn't help themselves from peeling the wound wider and sticking their fingers into the mess. The posts keep popping up on Jack's feed when he's looking for something else to ease his mind, and there are pictures of Jessica that he can't look at for too long otherwise he grabs himself another beer bottle from the fridge. And everyone thinks they're more informed than the last person, and Jack wants to throw his phone at the wall.
Eventually, when the rumors get too hefty for even the company to push back, a single statement is released, and it makes everyone shut up. Why? Because it says that prolonged environmental exposure was the cause of the killings, not Wyatt's crazed-driven mind, and not whatever something called Compound 26 is. The tags are soon blacklisted from social media, and before he knows it, Jack sees reports of discounted store prices on the news instead of the names of those who died.
The storms become the enemy, and no one can fight back against something they've never experienced, even though Jack knows that the storms didn't contribute a damn thing.
He was out in those storms repeatedly. He trekked through them, climbed through them, and crawled through them. He got toppled by them and haunted by them. Even when Central sent over officers to test Jack's wellness, taking tongue swabs and blood samples, he knows it's not because of the storms.
He's asked questions like "are you experiencing any dizziness?" and "have you been coughing up blood?" instead of the things that make more sense regarding his wellbeing like "have you been coping at all since your departure?" or "can we do anything to ease the pain like making a bloody formal apology about not getting to Jess in time?"
But he knows it's pointless, and apparently aggression is another symptom they're looking out for, so Jack sends them off without speaking his thoughts aloud. And when they're off his driveway, he takes another beer bottle from the fridge and lays in bed with an ethanol mouth that talks him to sleep.
Things are never going to get any better. He's always going to have nightmares and he'll always wish he was the one under the axe instead, and he'll keep pushing his severance pay into alcoholic therapy, and he'll just let himself wither away. He doesn't feel different or better or changed. He feels dead—like the fire in his lungs is spreading behind his eyes, tinting his worldview bloodshot, and feeling like what he really needs to do is force his fist through the wall in search of a reprieve.
There's no point in searching for the truth, if there even is one. He knows what he knows and that is Wyatt was a deadbeat psychopath and Jessica was the bloody sun on a planet that only ever cast the night.
So, the days continue on.
And Central leaves him alone.
And Jack's hand begins to tremble.