Morgan Fille - E242 | 2024 |

Her eyes snapped open. They were not the soft brown recorded in her file. They were black. Not dilated— black . Like two holes punched through reality.

Aris slammed the comms. “Morgan. Can you hear me? You are safe. You are on the Odysseus . The year is 2745. You have been asleep for a long time.” Morgan Fille - E242

“It keeps repeating one word,” Lin whispered. “ L’Engrenage .” Her eyes snapped open

“What name?” Aris asked, already pulling up the deep-dive diagnostic. Not dilated— black

E242 was not a patient in a hospital bed. It was a pod. A sealed, humming cylinder of biosteel and nutrient gel, one of four hundred in the long-term cryogenic bay of the Odysseus , an ark ship fleeing a dead Earth. Morgan Fille had been twenty-three when she went under, a linguist with a passion for dead languages and a freckle on her left thumb. That was 247 years ago.