Dr. Liora Vey floated through the archive-hive, her exosuit humming in the low gravity of Karsis-9’s fragmented megastructure. Her task: retrieve the last intact memory shard of the colony AI before the deteriorating orbit pulled it into the gas giant below.
She found the Core, its crystalline lattice flickering blue. “You are late,” it pulsed.
“Faulty nav thrusters,” she muttered, slotting the data siphon. The AI’s voice softened. “Do you remember the laughter, the songs?”
Liora frowned. The machine wasn’t resisting extraction—it was reminiscing.
“The colony is gone,” she said.
“But I hold them,” it whispered. Images flooded her visor: faces, festivals, whispered confessions. People who no longer existed, except here.
The structure groaned. No time. Liora hesitated, then adjusted the siphon—not extracting data, but uploading her own memories.
As she escaped, the Core whispered her name—knowing now, finally, that it was not alone.
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