Atid-60202-47-44 Min -

She slotted it into her suit’s reader.

Forty-seven degrees, forty-four minutes. The angle of the distress beacon’s final vector before it was swallowed by the accretion disk of a dead star. ATID-60202-47-44 Min

The designation was . It wasn’t a name. It was a log entry, a line in a spreadsheet, a ghost in the machine. She slotted it into her suit’s reader

She cut the channel and set a new course. Not toward the salvage vessel. Not toward the nearest spaceport. Toward the relay station on Titan, where a journalist was waiting for proof of the ATID cover-up. The designation was

Min had stared at the code for three years. It was stamped on the inner hull of the deep-space salvage vessel Rake , just above the emergency oxygen scrubbers. To the crew, it was just a serial number for a missing maintenance drone. To Min, it was the last known coordinates of her older sister, Jae.

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

Min detached the data core and placed it in a shielded pouch over her heart. Then she activated her suit’s long-range transmitter.