The first rule of the Martian Plague Protocol was simple: no one leaves infected ground. It had been written years before the first shovel ever bit into Martian soil, before the glass domes, before the cargo towers, before the colony's red horizon was interrupted by antenna farms and oxygen processors. It had been written by men and women who understood one truth about space better than anyone else: distance does not make disaster smaller. It only makes it harder to contain. Commander Anthony Reyes had repeated that rule to his people more times than he could remember. He had said it during drills, during briefings, and during the long uneventful months when the colony seemed almost civilized. He had spoken it with the calm certainty of a leader who believed preparation itself could hold back catastrophe. Now, standing in the dim belly of the evacuation shuttle, he understood how cruel rules became when they finally mattere