The scrapyard stretched forever.
Piles of busted hulls leaned like crooked towers, and the air carried the bite of rust and oil. Welding torches hissed in the distance, sparks flashing like fireflies before dying in the haze. Over it all, the Orion Corp towers loomed, tall and cold, their lights watching everything.
Kai balanced on the side of a broken freighter, crowbar jammed into a panel. His hands were black with grease, his shirt damp with sweat.
"Come on," he muttered, giving the bar one last shove.
The panel tore free with a screech, nearly throwing him off the ship. Inside lay a cracked power cell, half-dead but still humming faintly. Worthless to the company. Exactly what he needed.
A siren wailed. Patrol drones buzzed over the heaps, red lights sweeping. Kai ducked low, heart hammering. If they caught him scavenging outside his quota, it'd be another week in the pits. Maybe worse.
But the drone's light slid past, flickered once, then turned away. Like it had simply lost interest.
Kai grinned to himself. It kept happening—machines glitching, dice rolling his way, odds leaning in his favor. He didn't understand it. He didn't care.
He stuffed the power cell into his pack and clambered down the hull.
At the bottom, Zira waited. Her left arm—metal from shoulder to wrist—hung at her side, patched with tape and fresh welds. She scowled, spanner in her other hand.
"You're insane," she said.
"Resourceful," Kai shot back, brushing dust off his jacket. He held up the cell. "This has enough juice to power the frame."
Zira followed his gaze to the far corner of the yard, where a skeleton of a ship lay half-buried under scrap. To anyone else, it was a coffin. To Kai, it was freedom.
"You're really doing it," she said quietly.
"One day soon," Kai answered, eyes bright. "I'll fly out of here. Past the corp. Past the checkpoints. Out into the black."
"You'll get yourself killed."
"Maybe." He shouldered his pack. "But better than rusting here."
The ground shook.
A crack of blue lightning split the clouds, ripping through the sky without a storm. A shockwave rattled the junk towers, knocking plates of steel down with deafening crashes.
Kai staggered, catching his balance.
Then he saw it. A burning streak cut across the smog, fast and crooked, like a star falling sideways. It slammed into the far end of the yard. Fire roared up, smoke billowing high.
For a breath, the scrapyard was silent. Then alarms screamed. Drones swarmed toward the crash.
Kai's grin spread, reckless and hungry. "Well," he said, "that looks interesting."
And before Zira could grab him, he was already running toward the flames.