The scrapyards of Dust Sector 9 stretched endlessly across the horizon, shimmering under a burnt-orange sky that hadn't shown a single star in decades. Towers of twisted steel and broken drones loomed like ghosts of the old world—abandoned tech from an age of promise, now reduced to piles of rust and sparks.
Seventeen-year-old water crouched beneath the fractured wing of a delivery skiff, her shadow warped by tter he rising heat. Her gloves were worn, patched over from old jackets, but they moved with expert precision. She tugged copper filaments from the drone's guts, ripped a scorched AI socket from its spine, and stuffed the parts into her sling bag. Not worth much—but enough for food tonight.
Then her boot nudged something strange.
It hummed.
waterfroze.
Beneath a thin coat of red ash was a smooth, polished surface—rectangular, faintly glowing. She swept the dirt off with trembling fingers and uncovered three glowing letters embedded on the face: MNR.
Her heart skipped.
Memory Neural Recorder.
Only rumor, she thought. Only legend.
But this wasn't a story whispered around fire barrels. It was real.
She reached for it slowly.
Just as her fingers touched its surface, the core pulsed—and a voice echoed through her mind:
"Where... am I?"
water staggered back, breath shallow. "What the hell—"
"Neo," the voice said. "I... I'm Neo. Fragmented. Searching for origin..."
"Neo?" she whispered. "You're a person?"
"I was. Orbitborn. Experimental subject... EchoNet... Can you uplink?"
She blinked. "Uplink? I charge my boots with a solar panel. I don't even have real shoes."
The device hummed again, softer this time.
"You're not with them. That's good."
water scanned the sky.
Above, a drone traced a circle through the haze.
She snatched the core and ran.