The Orphan Isle wasn't on any official star chart. Suspended low over the Elythium Core, it spun just beyond the reach of sanctioned transit rails. No one came here unless they had nothing—or something to hide.
Aeneas walked its needle-thin bridges like he belonged. Every footfall clanged against rusted beams, drawing glances from shadowed figures crouched in canopy webs and broken observatories. He ignored them.
He was searching for a door.
Not a physical one—but a person. The thief who slipped through security layers like song through static. The one the Council had tried and failed to track for seventeen cycles. The codename whispered even in command towers:
Riven.
He found her hanging upside down from an ancient Elythium pipe, goggles flickering as she soldered a live node with one foot braced against a turbine.
"You're bleeding," he said.
She didn't look up. "Good. Means I'm not dead. Yet."
Riven."
Now she paused.
"Council spy or madman?" she asked, flipping down to land in front of him. Her boots hit the grate with a metallic snap.
He held her gaze. "Neither. I'm here because I remember things I shouldn't."
She studied him. "Like?"
"Like how they rewrote this place. How they turned memory into currency. How they erased an entire revolution—and left its ghosts drifting between the stars."
That made her blink. Just once.
Then she grinned.
"Finally. A decent reason to care."