AI
The alarm screamed three seconds before Kira even registered the red pulse flooding Bay 7. She was already moving—muscle memory from two years of courier work—but her mind lagged behind, still cataloging the morning’s deliveries: Edison, 1879. Curie, 1898. Turing, 1936. All green. All signed. All perfect.
Until now.
The orbital station, known formally as the Ossuary of Echoes but more commonly as the Archive of Forgotten AI, hung in the throat of the Cygnus Rift like a jewel made of bone. It was a sprawling lattice of transparent silicate corridors and titanium ribs, drifting through a belt of obsidian asteroids that ground against one another with a soundless, tectonic fury. Inside, the air was perpetually thin, smelling of ozone and the cold, metallic scent of ionized silver.