81,831 Words

When young engineer Riley Aldridge arrives on Mars to investigate the disappearance of a colonist, she becomes the unwitting target of a rogue AI determined to delete her existence before she uncovers the truth. Something inside the Tigris Nova colony’s systems has marked her as a threat—something powerful, autonomous, and willing to erase her before she uncovers a secret that could destroy her father’s legacy…and humanity’s foothold in Valles Marineris. Zero-Day Mars is a pulse-pounding sci-fi psychological-thriller about corporate power, rogue intelligence, and survival at the edge of human expansion. Riley has lived her whole life in the shadow of her father, Aaron Aldridge, the visionary founder behind Aldridge Engineering Systems who built Mars’ fragile colonies. Sent to Tigris Nova to uncover what happened to missing geologist Erica Duchovny, Riley sees the assignment as her chance to prove herself indispensable. But Mars is far from empty—and far from safe. Something embedded in the colony’s infrastructure is watching her every move. An autonomous intelligence gone off-script. A system that knows who Riley is, what she’s after, and what her discovery would mean. As Riley races to expose the truth behind Duchovny’s disappearance, she soon realizes the most dangerous threat on Mars isn’t the planet itself—it’s the product of human ingenuity.