Ash had only descended into the hidden chamber under May's house once since his awakening. But something changed last night—he had felt the Vault call to him.
Not in words.
Not even in static.
But in resonance.
Falcon had picked it up too. The pulse was faint, almost like a breath beneath concrete and steel. But it wasn't just machinery stirring—it was memory. Waiting to be unlocked.
Now, standing in the darkened basement, Ash knelt before the old access panel behind the false water heater and whispered, "Override."
A low hum vibrated through the floor.
Falcon's eye glowed in sync.
> "Bio-signature recognized. Secondary seal lifting. Temporal lock disengaging."
Metal scraped. Dust shifted.
And the floor opened.
---
The Vault was nothing like he remembered.
Before, it had been a small chamber—barely enough room for the makeshift drone lab he'd built as a child. But now, with the lock disengaged, the walls themselves began to shift. Metal peeled back. The space deepened.
It was like watching a machine remember its purpose.
"Falcon," he whispered. "What is this?"
> "Original architecture reconciling. Estimate: Pre-Corp design. Possibly Starborn Construct-Grade."
The Vault was bigger than any basement should've allowed. And colder. Not temperature-wise—but sterile. As if time itself didn't breathe here.
At the center of the chamber stood a pedestal.
Upon it, a black sphere.
Ash stepped forward, pulse quickening.
---
He didn't recognize it—not entirely—but something in his newly reawakened memories ached at the sight of it.
Like remembering the sound of a lullaby sung by a long-dead star.
He reached out.
Falcon's warning beep buzzed.
> "Caution: Object holds incomplete knowledge cluster. Possibly unstable."
Ash touched it anyway.
The Vault reacted instantly.
Holographic script blazed to life across the walls—fractured characters that streamed like equations, code, and language all at once. Falcon scanned them rapidly, translating what it could.
> "Fragment Log Detected. Starborn Project: Entry 0192 — 'Auryn-9.'"
Ash froze.
That name again.
His old name.
A voice—his voice—echoed from the sphere. But older. Hollow.
> "Memory log: final deployment. Earth contact unavoidable. Corp remains unaware of true vault depth. If this reaches me, then the seal broke."
Ash staggered back. "That's… me?"
> "Your former self," Falcon confirmed. "These logs are from your consciousness just before transfer."
The log continued.
> "The Vault contains forbidden tech—replication schematics, energy synthesis code, and the incomplete framework for the Eclipse Drive."
> "If SHIELD or Corp accesses it before I recover, the timeline fractures. Humanity dies screaming into a sky they were never meant to touch."
Ash swallowed hard.
"Eclipse Drive… what is that?"
> "Hypothesis: multi-dimensional folding engine. Weaponized time-layer compression. Dangerous."
Falcon hovered near the wall where one schematic rotated mid-air—glowing faintly. A diagram of a ship. Or a weapon. Or both.
Ash whispered, "Did I build this?"
> "You designed it. Then sealed it."
---
But it wasn't just the ship. Around the Vault, other things began to activate—relics from Ash's past life:
A skeletal hand brace, fused with nanofiber and quark-thread processors.
A helmet, cracked down the middle, but still alive with flickers of code.
A map, pulsing with planetary signals—Earth, Mars, and something further. Something blinking red just beyond Saturn's orbit.
> "These are keys," Falcon said. "To memory. To technology. To you."
Ash touched the hand brace and slipped it on.
It tightened immediately, syncing with his neural interface. And in a flash—
He saw stars again.
He felt his ship.
He remembered the first time he fired the Eclipse Drive and watched a black hole freeze in time.
Then the memory faded, leaving him breathless.
---
"This tech…" he said slowly, "…if anyone else finds it—SHIELD, the Corp, even Stark—it'll rip open the sky."
> "Correct."
Falcon hovered closer. "Protocol recommends destroying the Vault."
Ash shook his head. "No. If I built this once, I might need it again."
He walked to the center and placed his palm against the glowing console.
"Lock it again. But give me a backdoor only I can use. Full encryption."
> "Confirmed."
The Vault dimmed.
Tech folded away, returning to stillness.
Only the memory remained.
---
Back upstairs, Ash emerged into the early light of morning. The world felt too loud after the stillness below. Birds chirped. Cars passed. Distant sirens howled.
But inside?
He felt older.
Not just in years—but in weight.
Because beneath May's home now slept technology that could burn through time. And Ash was its only guardian.
---
A voice broke through his thoughts.
"Ash?"
He turned.
May stood in the kitchen doorway, holding a coffee mug, sleep still in her eyes. She looked at him the way only she could—like he was still a kid who snuck in after curfew, not the Starborn pilot of a forgotten galaxy.
"You okay?" she asked gently.
Ash smiled.
"Yeah," he said. "Just… needed some air."