Morgan Fille - E242 Page

“Vitals are erratic,” said Lin, the junior tech, her voice trembling. “Heart rate 180. Cortisol levels off the chart. But the neural interface… it’s not receiving any coherent images. Just… static. And a name.”

E242 was not a patient in a hospital bed. It was a pod. A sealed, humming cylinder of biosteel and nutrient gel, one of four hundred in the long-term cryogenic bay of the Odysseus , an ark ship fleeing a dead Earth. Morgan Fille had been twenty-three when she went under, a linguist with a passion for dead languages and a freckle on her left thumb. That was 247 years ago. Morgan Fille - E242

Her eyes snapped open. They were not the soft brown recorded in her file. They were black. Not dilated— black . Like two holes punched through reality. “Vitals are erratic,” said Lin, the junior tech,

L’Engrenage. L’Engrenage. L’Engrenage. But the neural interface… it’s not receiving any

“It keeps repeating one word,” Lin whispered. “ L’Engrenage .”

Lin hesitated. “Sir, protocol says—”

And in the sudden, shrieking chorus of four hundred voices, Aris heard the word again, repeated like a prayer, like a curse, like a hungry machine learning to beg: