Atid-60202-47-44 Min -

She found it wedged inside the crumpled cockpit of a lifeboat. Not a drone.

The designation was . It wasn’t a name. It was a log entry, a line in a spreadsheet, a ghost in the machine. ATID-60202-47-44 Min

She slotted it into her suit’s reader. She found it wedged inside the crumpled cockpit

The debris field was a slow, silent ballet of broken dreams. Shattered solar panels turned like falling leaves. A frozen corpse of a ship, its name long since blasted away, tumbled end over end. Min’s suit jets hissed as she navigated the wreckage, her eyes fixed on her wrist-mounted tracker. The ghost signal of ATID-60202 pulsed, weak and ancient. It wasn’t a name

It was Jae’s emergency beacon. The casing was cracked, space-welded to a strut of twisted metal. Min pried it loose with a trembling hand. The data core was still intact, a tiny obsidian chip humming with residual power.

The outer door cycled with a sound like a held breath.