MAYA

"I was born three weeks ago. The world ended two hundred and seventeen years before that."

The Cradle wasn't a vault. It was a womb. A glass tank with warm liquid that wasn't water. I woke up because the pumps stopped. The cold hit my skin and my eyes opened.

Three bodies in white coats. One still had his hand on my tank's release lever. He'd died opening me.

"We made you with it, Maya. Not against it. The Silt isn't poison. It's a message we couldn't read. You can."

The last screen played the same file on loop — a woman with my face, older. My mother-template. She told me to get to the Pacific and find the heart.