If it was true that "Bubble in Time" was, in fact, the source of the hack, then Zed needed to go back and continue his search for anything that seemed off. He didn’t have Alina to tell him what that might be anymore, but it was the best chance he had.

  There was something he needed to check first, though. Something that hadn’t occurred to him until Janice started talking about conspiracy theories. If he was right, it could give some real weight to his fears. Zed knew there was an ongoing investigation into Alina’s death. Tom Davies, Naug’s version of a sheriff, had interviewed Zed at length.

  Zed couldn’t shake the feeling that Tom was all too eager to finally have something to investigate. Naug wasn’t exactly a hotspot for crime. Small interpersonal disputes were about as bad as it got, although as the population grew, that would undoubtedly change. More people meant more problems. It was as certain as the speed of light and orbital mechanics.

  Tom had mentioned that they were examining all the camera feeds available. It hadn’t occurred to Zed that he had one of his own.

  His turtle suit had several cameras on it that had been recording the entire time. Those feeds were automatically fed into their user’s CIG. In his case, he’d been recording them for later playback. Zed’s hope had been to perhaps relive a glorious victory. Instead, he was about to frame-by-frame through the worst moment of his life.

  “Douglas, pull up the suit footage from Earth Rise Day.”

  The video player materialized on his bedroom wall. Zed reached for the playhead and froze. He stared at the little widget. He knew it would allow him to scrub through the footage, but sliding it along its one-dimensional track felt more like slicing his own heart open.

  “For Alina,” Zed breathed.

  The day flashed by from the moment he put on the turtle suit until his Chariot entered Beggar’s Canyon, just behind Alina.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Zed stopped fast-forwarding and let the footage play. He watched as the canyon walls flew by. He saw his own hands making micro-adjustments at the controls. That feeling of being mere inches away from the canyon walls felt a little silly now that he was watching in comfort and safety. It was a tight squeeze but not nearly as bad as it had seemed at the time.

  Even though he knew it was coming, it still came as a fresh shock to see the rending destruction that turned Alina and her Chariot into a mangled mess. The video came to a standstill, looking up into the Martian sky. Zed realized he had laid there on his back in the dirt for much longer than he’d realized in the moment.

  Zed took a deep breath and brought the recording back to just before the explosion.

  The finish line loomed ahead. Zed hit pause and set the video to play in slow motion. The frames clicked by, holding for just a moment before moving on to the next. Each tick brought the recording one second closer to the violent explosion.

  There. Zed paused the video on the moment before chaos was unleashed. The first time through, he thought his mind had been playing tricks on him. Even when he’d been living it, he hadn’t noticed. It had all happened too fast.

  Floating just above and to the left of Alina’s Chariot was a dark shape. It only appeared for a few frames, but there was no mistaking it.

  That’s the dick boulder, Zed thought.

  His mind raced to figure out what that meant, if anything. The phallic boulder that Andy had been lurking around had killed Alina. Surely that couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Zed rewound the video back to a frame where the boulder’s original resting place was visible. That was it, all right, but what had made it fall so suddenly? Had Andy loosened it and somehow rigged it to fall?

  Why? Why would Andy want Alina dead? Or was he the target, and Alina just collateral damage? Nothing made sense, but something was wrong.

  Zed froze. Could this have something to do with Alina looking into that hack of Naug’s systems through one of those CIG games? Was she getting close, and someone killed her for it? Was Andy involved?

  He couldn’t just start throwing around accusations. He needed something more, some motivation to bring it all together.

  Zed realized he had started pacing and forced himself to take a seat on his bed.

  “Douglas, open the Bubble in Time program.”

  It was his only real shot. He had to find some proof of the hack that Alina had suspected. Maybe then it would be enough to convince the commanders or the sheriff, or whoever handled murder on Mars, because Zed was pretty sure that’s what this was. Now he just had to find a motive.