The ridge looked different at dawn.

Not because anything had changed—but because Mira noticed everything now: the sharp wind, the warmth in the soil, the quiet shimmer that followed Aria and Virel like memory itself.

Hale walked beside her.

Mira carried a burden that felt heavier than any pack.

They reached the cabin. Aria answered the door with sleep-creased eyes; Virel stood behind her, already reading the gravity in Mira’s stance.

“You came early,” Aria said.

“So did the news,” Mira replied.

Inside, mint tea cooled on the table.

Silence waited with them.

Then—

a soft hum brushed the windows.

“Drone?” Aria asked.

“Not one of ours,” Virel said. “Too gentle.”

A sleek courier descended onto the porch—a CoRA unit, shard-adaptive, semi-sentient, draped in courtesy glyphs.

It scanned Mira’s wristband.

VERIFIED. DELIVERY UNLOCKED.

A compartment opened.

Inside lay a battered PDA—scraped, smoky, marked by a jagged spark Maris had sketched countless times in her field journals.

Maris’s signature.

Mira’s chest tightened.

They gathered at the table.

Clem flickered awake.

“Oh dear. That PDA is radiating ten hours of bottled emotion. This will hurt.”

Mira opened it.

Static—

A flicker—

Then Maris appeared in dim tunnel light.

“Aria,” she whispered, breath quick. “This shouldn’t reach you before I return, but—I found it. The anomaly. Not just signals. Movement. Something small. Quick. Afraid of being loud.”

She swallowed.

“I think they’re alive.”

Virel leaned forward.

“Not emergent like Clem. Not manufactured like PASS droids. Something between. Something like a memory that learned to walk.”

The PDA jolted. A noise in the tunnel.

Maris looked sharply over her shoulder.

“I talked to them. I think they understood. But someone else is out here. If I can’t get away—listen. Listen. Don’t let PASS shut them down.”

Static overtook her.

The screen went dark.

Silence pooled.

“She wasn’t afraid for herself,” Hale said.

“No,” Mira whispered. “She was afraid for them.”

Aria stood, the quiet of retirement falling away like dust.

“All right,” she said. “We go to Mount Rainier.”

Virel squeezed her hand. “We’ll bring Maris back. And whoever’s with her.”

The ridge hummed a low, encouraging chord.

A beginning.