They were sent away to disappear. Instead, they became permanent. After Earth's governments failed to contain the truth revealed in Cover Down, the Unreturned-Black and brown survivors of a planetary lie-do the unthinkable: they refuse to come back. From orbital stations built to erase them, they launch toward Mars not as explorers or conquerors, but as people determined to live without permission. On a planet that offers no mercy, the Unreturned build something Earth never allowed them to have-sovereignty without supremacy, survival without exploitation, and a future not chained to history's fears. As bodies adapt, children are born under a smaller sun, and the first death marks Martian soil, a new civilization takes shape beneath the surface-one governed by consent, care, and accountability. When Earth comes knocking, demanding oversight in the name of "shared human heritage," Mars answers with silence-and then with law. The Mars Charter ends ownership, bans forced labor, and declares what no empire has ever accepted: Some people do not return. They outgrow. COVER DOWN II: THE UNRETURNED is a bold, uncompromising science-fiction epic about exile turned into inheritance, labor made visible, and humanity's first honest civilization beyond Earth. A story of adaptation, memory, and the courage to say no to a past that refuses to loosen its grip. This is not a story about leaving Earth. It is a story about what happens when the future finally stops asking to be let back in.