On Her Daddy-s Bed

On March 11, 2081, Mars stood as a testament to human ingenuity, with Olympus Peak towering like a blazing sword piercing the sky. The Olympus Mountains were the highest on the Red Planet, and atop Olympus Peak, the Mars Immigration Management Committees headquarters, a massive blue elliptical building, stood as a beacon of humanitys Martian presence.

The base, painted blue to remind settlers of Earth, was the sole spaceport linking Earth and Mars, with all national spacecraft transiting through it. Since 2030, when Mars was successfully terraformed to support life with a thin oxygen atmosphere, the United States had begun to send convicts as cheap labor to Mars, a practice that other nations soon emulated. By 2080, an estimated seventy million people had been relocated to Mars, with ninety percent being criminals and the remaining ten percent consisting of managers from the Mars Immigration Management Committee and scientific researchers.

The Committees daily operations were straightforward: to dispatch the minerals mined by convicts on Mars back to Earth. The planet was rich in resources, and the base offered a wage that could at least feed the workers. The Committee was staffed by representatives from the seven superpowers, with Major Nikolai from Russia on duty that day.

After completing his routine tasks, Major Nikolai sat before a vast array of monitors, intending to check the production status of the various mining sites. The screens displayed a multitude of mining points, each with hundreds of miners working diligently under the dim red glow, placing mined ores onto conveyor belts that shimmered with an eerie luster.

Suddenly, Major Nikolai noticed something amiss. According to regulations, each mining site should have a warrior in a small powered suit on duty. With over three thousand mining points scattered across the Martian surface, not a single powered suit was in motion on the screens.

The scene on the main screen before Major Nikolai changed abruptly:

The base at the foot of Olympus Peak, with a diameter of over 500 kilometers, was surrounded by cliffs reaching 6 kilometers high. At that moment, a group of humans were seen climbing the cliffs with their bare hands, a feat impossible for ordinary people without powered suits or hover vehicles.

"Alert! Alert!" The shrill alarm blared throughout the base.

On the screen, more than twenty red-skinned humans were approaching the base at an incredible speed.

"Subject 0244324, Subject 0261037, Subject 5623189..." The AI automatically identified these individuals.

"Damn Americans and Japanese!" Major Nikolai cursed as he recognized these individuals as the convicts who had been conscripted for experiments by the Americans and Japanese months ago.

Several months prior, at a mining site near the North Pole of Mars, an unidentified green ore was discovered. The ore was soft and emitted a peculiar fragrance. A curious Chinese miner who tasted a piece fell into a deep, unresponsive sleep, and no method could awaken him.

Upon examining the sleeper, it was discovered that his body was undergoing an unknown mutation. Was it a virus or some other mysterious force at work?

After reporting the situation, the Committee convened a meeting, with most members suggesting that the mine should be sealed until the cause was identified and appropriate measures could be taken.