Chapter 18: The Truth Behind the Static
Ash stood in a forgotten corner of the old Brooklyn rail yard, the ruins of rusted trains stretching around him like metal grave markers. He wasn't alone.
The Inheritors had returned.
Not just the man from the alley, but all three. They stood in a rough triangle, their features half-obscured by flickering cloaks that seemed to phase in and out of sight like broken holograms.
Ash didn't speak first.
He let the static in the air speak for him. It buzzed faintly, crawling along his spine, whispering pieces of code and symbols that didn't belong in this world.
> "It's louder now," he muttered. "The closer I get to you three… the louder the noise."
The woman with the scar across her neck stepped forward. "Because your mind is waking. And it remembers what you were before."
Ash's eyes narrowed. "Before what? Before the drone? Before the Vault? Before the Corp?"
The hooded man answered, his voice like silk wrapped around wire. "Before Earth. Before your body. Before the fall of the Starborn Initiative."
---
Falcon hovered just behind Ash, its wing emitters subtly glowing.
Ash didn't flinch. "Talk."
The third figure, a pale man with cybernetic eyes, activated a sphere from his coat and threw it to the ground.
It hummed once—and suddenly, the world around them stopped.
The wind halted.
The birds disappeared.
The sound dropped out like a severed audio track.
> "Temporal pocket stabilized," Falcon reported. "They're blocking SHIELD and satellite input."
Ash crossed his arms. "Nice trick."
"Not a trick," said the scarred woman. "A shield. You're not ready for everyone to hear this."
She stepped closer and placed something into Ash's hand. It was a small shard of metal, dark and smooth, humming with energy. It didn't look like a circuit, but it didn't feel natural either.
> "It's called a Core Shard," she said. "What's left of your original self."
Ash blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You weren't born like other kids, Ash," she said. "You were found. Your body was built on top of something far older. Buried by the Corp to restart the Project… and you are the only one they got close to perfect."
He looked at the shard, then back at her.
"I'm not human?"
"You're more than human. Corp designed bodies. They needed hosts strong enough to hold broken Starborn cores—fragments of ancient explorers who traveled the void between galaxies long before Earth lit its first fire."
Ash let the shard glow in his palm. It responded to his touch like an extension of his nervous system.
"So this… this static in my head…?"
"It's memory," the masked man replied. "Your real memories. The parts the Corp tried to suppress when they sealed your core."
Ash took a step back. "I was five. I remember being five. I remember being scared, in the rain. I remember May taking me in. You're saying all of that was fake?"
"No," said the woman. "That part was real. It always was. That's why you're still you. You bonded with the world. With her. That's why the Project failed with everyone else—they weren't strong enough to hold both halves."
She gestured at Falcon.
"You're the first to sync with a drone and maintain human empathy. The first to bridge both. That makes you dangerous… to everyone."
Ash looked down, breathing heavier.
"Then what now?" he asked. "Why are you showing me this? Why now?"
The cybernetic-eyed Inheritor stepped forward. "Because SHIELD isn't your biggest threat. The Corp's surviving inner cell—the architects—have seen your sync rate. They'll come soon. Not to capture."
He paused.
"To harvest."
Ash's hands curled into fists. "Then we fight."
"No," said the woman. "Not yet. First, we unlock the rest."
She extended her hand to the Core Shard in Ash's palm.
"Let us help you remember. You need to know who you were before you can choose who you'll become."
Ash hesitated.
Falcon hummed low. Almost warningly.
Then he let her touch the shard.
And the moment she did—
His mind cracked open.
---
Static roared.
But it wasn't noise anymore.
It was language.
It was vision.
He saw starships ripping through nebulae, a galaxy burning at the edge of collapse, and a name—his name—spoken across dozens of worlds in reverence and fear.
Not Ash.
Not Falcon.
But Auryn-9.
The last of the Starborn pilots.
---
Ash fell to one knee, breath ragged, pulse spiking.
His vision flickered between now and then. Between rooftops and starfields. Between May's quiet smile and planets crumbling under war.
He looked up, eyes now glowing with the same deep cobalt as Falcon's optics.
"I remember," he whispered.
The woman nodded.
"And now the game truly begins."