The moon was dead, but it whispered.
Cadence felt it the moment they breached orbit. Not sound. Not words. Just a pressure like memory pressing against her skin. She sat in the cockpit of the Sparrowhawk, eyes fixed on the gray horizon unfolding beneath them. Craters pocked the landscape like scars, silent reminders of past wars, some human, most not.
Beside her, Echo crouched, folded into itself like a coiled spring. Its eyes slivers of violet crystal blinked in slow sync with the pulses emanating from the Queen's last resting place.
The Hive Ship.
It was impossible to miss.
Half-buried in the Sea of Tranquility, the Queen's ship stretched like a collapsed cathedral, spires twisted, ribs shattered, dark alloy glinting under starlight. It hummed even now, long after her death. Not with life. But with something else.
Cadence checked her sync band. "Echo, we good?"
The Lythron responded with a low-frequency warble. Agreement. Readiness. Beneath that, an edge of unease.
Athan's voice crackled over the comm. "Cadence, telemetry confirms the signal's still active. Stronger now. You're headed toward the breach at the dorsal core. Stay sharp."
"Copy that," she replied, voice steady.
She wasn't afraid.
But she was listening.
They touched down on a ridge above the wreck. Dust swirled in slow spirals, disturbed by the Sparrowhawk's thrusters. Echo leapt down first, landing with a quiet thud that made the ground ripple. Cadence followed, rifle slung but idle. She didn't expect a fight.
She expected something worse: a memory that could fight back.
As they neared the breach, the air, thin and recycling through her suit felt heavier. Echo slowed. Its claws scraped against blackened metal as they passed through the ragged hole where the hull had burst outward.
Inside was darker than night.
They activated their lights.
The Hive Ship was alive in death. Its walls pulsed faintly, like cooling embers. Neural cables floated like vines, twitching as if remembering their purpose. Cadence tapped her wrist console and sent a scan pulse down the corridor.
"No heat. No movement. But that signals coming from deeper in."
Echo chittered. Agitated.
Cadence paused, resting a gloved hand on its shoulder. "You okay?"
Lythron hesitated, then projected an image into her neural —flickers of a corridor bathed in red light and a scream that wasn't sound, but thought.
A memory fragment.
Cadence swallowed. "Got it. Let's move slowly."
They descended into the ship's spine. The structure wasn't linear, it curved in impossible angles, space folding inward like a Mobius strip. Cadence blinked against vertigo. Echo's steps steadied her.
Then, they reached the chamber.
It was spherical, as wide as a stadium. The core chamber, where the Queen had anchored her consciousness. And in its center hovered a shard, jagged, crystalline, humming with the pulse Athan had warned about.
It wasn't dead.
It wasn't alive.
It was… waiting.
Cadence stepped closer. Echo growled, low and warning, but didn't stop her.
The shard pulsed.
And suddenly, she was somewhere else.
Her feet weren't on the metal floor anymore. She stood in a field of white grass under a green sun. The air smelled of copper and thunder. Across from her stood a figure—tall, feminine, cloaked in shadow and starlight.
The Queen.
Or what was left of her.
"You are not Athan," the figure said.
Cadence reached for her sidearm, but it wasn't there. She wasn't really here, not physically. This was a psychic space, shared thought, shaped by fear and memory.
"No," Cadence said. "I'm one of his Tamers."
The Queen tilted her head. "You are young, heart burning."
"I'm not here to fight," Cadence said. "We came to understand what's left of you. Why does your ship still call us."
"It does not call," the Queen said. "It remembers. I fractured, yes. I was rewritten. But not erased. The core of what I am still wants. Still seeking."
Cadence narrowed her eyes. "Seeks what?"
The Queen raised a hand. The field around them shifted, becoming a burning city. Earth. On fire again.
"Order," she said simply. "I was born to destroy, yes but it was never chaos. It was for a purpose. You replaced that with emotion. With choice. And now, even in death, my code aches to understand it."
Cadence stepped forward. "So what are you now? A ghost? A remnant?"
The Queen's eyes glowed brighter. "A seed. You rewrote me. But did you think I would not adapt, child? I watched Solis choose. I felt him choose. You planted something in the code. It grows."
A flicker passed through the vision—Solis, standing beside Cadence, then vanishing like dust.
Cadence's breath caught. "He changed you."
The Queen nodded. "And now I dream."
The vision shattered.
Cadence collapsed to her knees in the chamber. Echo rushed to her side, eyes bright with worry. She gasped, clutching her head. Pain bloomed behind her eyes, but it wasn't damaged.
It was understanding.
The shard wasn't a threat. It was the seed of something new. A psychic embryo forming from the rewritten Queen.
A second chance.
She opened a channel. "Athan. You're gonna want to hear this."
His voice returned, clipped. "Report."
"The shard, it's alive. Not in the old way. The Queen's remnant, it's learning. Growing. She's dreaming now. Solis left a trace. It's changing her from the inside."
Silence.
Then: "Extraction team route. Secure the shard. And Cadence?"
"Yeah?"
"Good work."
She smiled faintly and turned back to Echo.
Together, they watched the shard pulse again.
Not in warning.
But in hope.