His stomach emptied in the lavatory, and his leg wrapped in a proper roll of gauze, Wyatt braced himself on a crutch (one of many emergency provisions provided with the rover), and hobbled over to the suitport. Suit mended or not, he could no longer trust opening that seal. He grabbed a role of caution tape from his workbench, and marked off the suitport exit with a giant X.

Won't be making that mistake, he thought. Then for good measure he scribbled the word NO in big bold letters with a black marker by the unlock panel.

That done, he eased into the chair by his workbench. Outside that stupid dust swirled, visibility had dropped considerably, and a body waited in Inflow Two for his decision.

A body. A damn Hoover drifter. The clothes had been ragged, and though that easily could have been from the elements to which they had been exposed, drifters falling into the cisterns or even the occasional waterline were not uncommon. When you had no means, you took water wherever you could find it. Hoover had begun overcrowding decades back, and one of the Kembhavi-Cooper Inflow pipes could have been a lifesaver for one of the city's homeless.

"Idiot," he shouted. Wyatt dropped his head against the workbench, relishing for a moment in the fresh wave of pain.

He had risked his job, risked Kelly, risked everything over a damn drifter. If his over-inflated ego hadn't run amok, if his hatred of Ellison Cooper hadn't got the better of him, he wouldn't be in this situation at all. And even then, had he found himself at this pipe with that body clogging the adapter joint, he probably would have followed the company line.

Official procedure demanded bodies be reported (again they weren't unheard of), and an investigation to be initiated by official representatives from the source colony. This, of course, meant the body would have to remain unmoved until proper authorities could arrive on scene to document the incident. Pipes remained closed for days during such procedures and water rationing, the same rationing he had sought to prevent, was always a sure-fire consequence of these incidents. People would suffer. The least among them would die.

The company didn't care so much about the impact of the rationing. They did, however, care about profits. Rationing meant upset colonists, and they always blamed the water service for their troubles. Rationing meant bad PR and that threatened profits. So, unofficially, the company encouraged any bodies discovered in the pipes to be removed, incinerated, and left unreported, even to the company itself.

   All things considered, Wyatt reluctantly agreed that it was the right call. For the company it preserved profit and prevented any fallout from the associated press. Wyatt didn't give a damn about that. For the colonies, however, the discreet disposal of bodies kept the water flowing and prevented the hardship that rationing always brought upon the colonists, especially the most disadvantaged of them.

Yes, there had been a day when Wyatt would have disposed of that body, repaired the line, and let the water flow once more. He still could. If he did, perhaps he might even have a job waiting for him back at the crater. The Coopers' secret, if it was more than just the body, would remain hidden, the colonies would thrive unhindered, and Wyatt could return to his isolation.

Or he could call Ellison back, accept his offer, and disappear to the People's Republic of Northern Aeolis. Maybe Ell would follow through and wire him the money, maybe he wouldn't, but Wyatt could live with either scenario. The longer he stayed at kilometer 37, the more the Coopers' cleanup crew gained on him. Once they arrived, he would be left with no choice to make. He would disappear as easily as the body in that pipe. It wasn't worth the risk.

"Shit," he muttered, banging his head once more against the workbench. He couldn't do it. He couldn't leave it alone.

Even the most desperate of drifters typically avoided a pipe with the type of current that was rushing through Inflow Two. It was possible a drifter could have fallen in, but not likely. No, it was far more probable this death was intentional, and if the Coopers wanted it concealed, the safe bet was they ordered the hit. The man's clothes had been in tatters and covered in grime, but no matter who you were, days in an untreated return flow was a great equalizer. The more Wyatt thought about it, the more he realized he needed to know who was in that pipe.

   Still what was one more cover-up, one more dead as the colonial elite played their games?

To hell with the dead man. Wyatt couldn't care less why the man had found himself afloat in the pipes, jammed into the infamous Red Horizon's stretch. He didn't care one bit, but...

... but Kelly would have cared.

What do you know, he thought. After fifteen years in isolation, I finally care about humanity again. And it feels like complete crap.

Sure, his concern hinged around one single person, and a shift manager of all people, but life progressed in constant baby steps. This one was his. Somehow, just in the past day, he had let Kells in, and now the fact that this mattered to her, even if it hadn't until he made it matter, made it impossible for him to turn back.

First though, he had to know for certain where he stood. He had to know what had happened to Kelly.

Wyatt rose and hobbled through the adapter airlock into the rover proper, then turned off the block on his comms. He didn't bother listening to the messages – didn't see the point. He dialed in to Ellison's private frequency.

"Ell, pick up."

Nothing. Just silence, interrupted only by the white noise of the life support systems.

"Ell. Last chance."

A burst of static followed and Ellison's voice warbled back at him, distorted through the interference of the encroaching storm.

"... yatt... fuc... of a ... urn back."

This wouldn't work at all. Wyatt clicked a switch, boosting the signal. It ate up valuable battery power, but he didn't need long.

"Say again."

"I said turn back you–"

Wyatt interrupted.

"– sure. I'll turn back."

Static rolled over the line as Ellison stopped mid-sentence. Wyatt gave him a moment to let his words sink in, then plowed on.

"I'll turn back after I speak to SM Kelly."

"I can't..." Ellison's voice broke as his newly gained authority wavered. "You can't speak with her."

Wyatt felt his fears confirmed, but he had to extinguish all doubt.

"I'll disappear, Ell. I'll disappear and you can cover up whatever the hell it is that happened out here. You don't even have to wire me shit. Just put Kelly on the line."

"I'm afraid I can't."

Confirmed.

"I mean, it's procedure, you know. You turn back, I can show her some leniency, perhaps... I can see she's reinstated and given full –"

Wyatt blocked the line and turned off the signal amplifier. Kelly was dead.

   They'd say she had left the company and headed off to the colonies. It's easy for one to disappear in the disparate spread of Martian civilization. If she were alive, however, no matter where she had gone, Ellison would have put her on that line. He would have found her, he would have patched her through, and he would have seized on the opportunity to end Wyatt's meddling and secure his family's secret.

  His family's secret? The board's secret? Which was it?

With the level of personal involvement coming from Ellison and his ascent from asswipe to half-ass authority, Wyatt felt it likely a Cooper specific maneuver. That would explain why the only authorities that he knew were in the loop were all in the family. By now someone else from the Board should have reached out.

  Hell with it. The Coopers or the Board, they'd all pay.

Wyatt rose, pulled an EVA suit from a storage bin behind the driver's seat, then ducked through the hab adapter dock. Once in the hab, he rummaged through a cupboard, grabbed out a small bottle of bourbon he had smuggled for the occasion, and held it up as if toasting.

He tried to think of something proper to say – something with the solemnity that Kelly deserved for her sacrifice. Her stupidity. My stupidity.

He drew a complete blank. He had never been prepared for a situation like this. Words failed him and what justice would they serve anyway? He clinked the bottle forward, completing the toast in silence, then drew a long swig from the bottle.

***

Thirty minutes later, after struggling through the redundancy airlock and hoisting himself back down the pit, Wyatt stood over Inflow Two and the dead drifter, or whomever, that had caused the entire shit spiral of the past seventeen hours. He hated that man. God, he hated him.

"Thanks, asshole." He might have spit on him if he didn't have to wear his EVA suit. Instead, he reached down, screaming with the pain of the movement as the shrapnel continued to dig into his leg, fought for a hold on the dead man's body, then yanked his corpse out from the adapter, and through the opening of the pipe. He and this man had an appointment to keep with Hoover City Security.

He harnessed him onto the winch line and reached to clip himself in when something caught his eye.

No, no more, he thought, but he had come too far.

Pressing down on his belly, he leaned down into the pipe casting his helmet light upstream towards Hoover. His light caught on a boot, then the leg protruding from it – another body.

Cursing into the night, Wyatt reluctantly hauled himself into the open pipe. As a mainline constructed before the purse strings had been closed tight, Inflow Two's primary stretch had two meters of clearance. With plenty of room to stand, Wyatt lowered himself down into the muck, but as he did, he slipped, jolting his injured leg. He hadn't had time yet to remove the shrapnel. The pain flared, overcoming him, his vision blackened, and he collapsed.

When at last he came to, he found himself staring up into nothing, just a whirlwind of darkness. Had his light gone out? He began to panic, then stopped, catching his mistake. He wiped his gloved hand over his visor, swiping away the dust and grime that had settled over him as the storm above increased in intensity.

Light returned to the world, and thankfully only his helmet light. Checking the sensors in his suit, he found that it was 4:50 in the morning. He'd only been out for a little less than an hour. He still had time.

Wyatt lifted his head and glanced back towards Hoover. A second body lay where he had expected to find it. Behind that, however, lay a third, a fourth, a fifth... He stopped counting. There were too many – many more than he could recover.

***

Wyatt struggled to haul body after body back to the rover. Time, however, was against him. The dust ate at his suit, and with each passing minute the risk of getting lost in the rising storm grew. At last, after an hour, and shortly before dawn, he stopped.

He had hauled three bodies back. Only three. It would have to be enough.

    He tucked the first two in the storage bin where he had kept his EVA suit. The third he sat on top of the bin. He could have placed him in passenger, but the thought of that macabre guest pilot didn't settle well with Wyatt.

That done, Wyatt popped a pain reliever for his leg, and for the massive headache that had been hovering on the edge of a migraine for the entire evening. Then, he plugged his nostrils against the awful smell dominating the rover, and powered up the motor. The engine hummed to life and Wyatt settled back into the driver's seat.

Rich, red dust caked the entire windshield, as if he had been buried alive. With the pull of a few levers, the dust blew away and its remnants scattered under the motion of the rover's wipers. Outside, through the now streaked glass, Wyatt spotted lights shining through the storm: the clean-up crew. Each rover would be towing habs. With the work ahead of them that crew would be anticipating a long stay. The water had stopped flowing, and it would be a long time before it flowed again.

Wyatt gave the exit airlock one last check to make sure it had sealed tight, then clicked the disengage on the hitch to the portable hab. A light on his dash blinked, indicating the operation had succeeded and slowly he pulled forward until he had cleared the join. Then, he pulled hard to the right, circled back, and headed east. Without the hab or the tow-dolly, he'd be able to outrun the other rovers, and even if one followed him, he had turned into the storm. Once he was far enough in, he'd head to a little known path to the south, the same path he had taken when he fled to the craters fifteen years prior. He would wind his way back to Hoover or New Charlotte and he'd make sure Curiosity Colony knew what the Coopers had done. He hadn't been able to keep the waters flowing, but at least he could direct the blame and make everyone responsible pay. He had to try.

Wyatt had found a badge on the last body he hauled out: Blue Terra Security. Allegedly Blue Terra guarded the water lines, but Wyatt knew better. Their pay came from Kembhavi-Cooper, not the colonies. They guarded the company - the Board. He knew then whom he had found in Inflow Two. Not a drifter after all. Blue Terra stuck to board members like a tick to a dog's ass. There's wasn't a chance in hell that all of those bodies were security - not even close. The Coopers now held a majority share of seats. They had finally come out on top, even where Sundeep Kembhavi had failed - at least as long as the bodies were never discovered and the Coopers' crimes never brought to light.

    It had been a massacre. More, it had been a coup.

    Wyatt pushed forward until the lights behind him vanished in the windswept haze. Ahead, he spotted the sun, a vague blue patch in the dust-choked sky, rising over the eastern horizon. Day had returned to Mars and Wyatt still breathed, surviving as he always had - just one more day in the life of the colonies.

    Only today, Wyatt began life anew, leaving his isolation and returning to the world he had left behind. He had a purpose now, a stake in the future, and a chance to change the flow of the Martian narrative. Plus, as an added bonus, he'd piss off the establishment, screw over Ellison, and upset the elite that had seized control. 

   Wyatt grinned and glanced back over his shoulder to the morbid passengers riding in and on the storage bin. "Time we get to work, boys." He let out a weak laugh, forced and fading with the memory of what this discovery had cost. He owed SM Kelly some respect. He owed it to her to stay the course.

   "Lots of work..." he finished, trailing off.

   The path ahead vanished in the Martian dust, but Wyatt knew his course. He rode on pushing through the brunt of the storm and ready for the hard days ahead. Change was coming, and Wyatt would be in the thick of it - the lifeblood of Mars; a hero of the people. Who knew?

***

Well, that's it folks. Inflow has come to a close. I originally envisioned this piece as a short character study set on Mars. It grew to be a burgeoning world with its own histories, and a cast of characters of which I didn't want to let go. Yet this, this was always the closure I sought - the story of Wyatt waking and restoring purpose to his life within a larger context of societal upheaval.

That being said, I have fallen in love with this world, and I would love to explore it again. I envision a rich future of mystery and new shitstorms in which Wyatt can become embroiled, along with an ensemble wading into the thick of this political crisis across Mars. While I let that idea simmer, hopefully shaping into the novel I am beginning to envision, I have a few new ideas to explore.

So, if you enjoyed Inflow, please share, vote, and/or comment; and hang in there and I'll see if we can't revisit Mars together. In the meantime, I have a new story beginning next, examining the difficulties posed by interstellar travel to the families of the future. Watch out for Ablation. And thanks for reading!

Happy Writing, All!