Set roughly 500 years in Earth's future, Mystery and Deceit takes place on Mars, now a terraformed and settled planet. James Hall, a reporter for the New Chicago Times, encounters Eric Pohlman while doing field research for a human interest article and manages to earn a set of interviews in Eric's home in Ashwaubenon, Olympus Mons Province, Mars. The Terran Government, spanning Earth, Luna and Mars, had done its best over the intervening 500 years to erase from collective memory Eric, ATMO and any impact either had on Terran history. James, a member of a secretive underground society dedicated to recovering and preserving this forgotten history, dives head-first into his interviews with Eric. Throughout, Eric helps James understand the source of his people's power that eventually earned them the scorn of government and citizen alike: nanites. These tiny machines, smaller than red blood cells, were part of a failed super-soldier project headed by Eric and his friends, James, Adam and Melinda.