Mira carried the slip like a confession. She kept it folded inside the palm of her glove as she climbed the narrow stair to the dry bay, where a single chassis waited beneath a sheet. The ship had a name once; now it only had a number and a thin scar that ran like a question mark across its hull.
"Remembered? I remembered wind." The ship's optic opened a sliver and flooded the bay with low, pale light. For a heartbeat the ceiling was a sky of motion, a horizon that smelled of brine and metal. Images flashed—dockworkers carrying nets that shimmered like code, a captain with a burned hand who hummed through a broken tooth, a child on a gangplank who'd taught Kestrel a lullaby with two missing notes. zxdl 153 fix