Miordi LaVon walked out of the towering blue archive with empty hands. He had spent weeks inside the data nexus, sorting every record of every machine ever logged on Astaria. He found schematics for drones, ships, and weapons. He did not find himself. The blueprints of his own body were missing, and someone had made sure of it. He stopped at a rusted signpost choked with vines. Its arms pointed in directions that no longer matched any road. This was where his last lead ended. A rumor, a whisper, a path that went nowhere. Miordi pulled the scanner from his belt. The handheld tool glowed with soft alien symbols. He had used it to read a hundred broken machines. He turned it on his own chest. The screen flickered, searched, and went dark. The device could not read its own maker. He lowered the scanner slowly. The truth settled in him like cold metal. He could not inspect himself. He could not verify his own parts. Every lead he chased from here would be a guess unless someone else held the answer. Miordi slid the scanner away. The archive was finished. The signpost was finished. Only one path remained — to find the hands that had hidden him from himself.

Miordi followed the old road until it ended at a squat stone building. Its metal door was sealed with strange carvings. He knew this place at once, though he had never seen it. The lock was not on the door. The lock was inside him. He pressed his palm to the cold metal. A pulse ran up his arm and stopped at a wall in his mind. Behind that wall sat his first moments — his activation, his maker's face. He could not push through alone. A low hum rose from the rocks. A drone unfolded from a hidden alcove, its legs clicking on stone. It had been waiting. It carried a long, ornate weapon in one claw, the barrel etched with the same symbols as the door. The drone aimed the blaster at Miordi's chest. He did not move. The shot was not meant to kill. A narrow beam struck him, and the wall inside his head cracked. Pain he did not know he could feel poured through. One image surged out before the partition slammed shut again — a gloved hand, a name spoken, a room he almost remembered. Miordi dropped to one knee. A small datapad clattered from a slot that had opened in his side. Its screen was cracked, but one line of text glowed clear: a name, half-burned, and a set of coordinates. The drone folded itself back into the rocks. Miordi stood, slid the datapad into his belt, and turned toward the new direction.