"Sloane," she said, her voice steady for the first time in years. "I’m not coming back to the Rake . I’m taking the long way home."
The recording was only twelve seconds long. Grainy, flickering. But it was her sister. Jae’s face, younger, wild-eyed, her lip split and bleeding.
47 degrees, 44 minutes.
She found it wedged inside the crumpled cockpit of a lifeboat. Not a drone.
She pulled the heavy insulated gloves over her hands, the worn fabric smelling of recycled air and old coffee. The Rake ’s captain, a woman named Sloane with a face like cracked leather, had given the order two hours ago: "Purge the old logs. We need storage for the new navigation maps." ATID-60202-47-44 Min
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.
She slotted it into her suit’s reader. "Sloane," she said, her voice steady for the
It was a name. And her name was Jae.