Ash had never paid much attention to the hallway closet.
It was just there—next to the laundry nook, stuffed with dusty coats, old shoes, and boxes May hadn't touched in years. Sometimes Peter stored spare science fair boards in there. It smelled faintly of cedar and mothballs.
But tonight… something was different.
The light from the closet was on.
And Ash hadn't turned it on.
He stood in the hallway, blinking at the faint orange glow that leaked from under the door like a heartbeat.
Falcon hovered silently behind his shoulder, scanning.
> "Energy signature: residual. Not electric."
Ash knelt and placed his hand against the door.
It was warm.
> "Localized chronal flux detected."
He didn't need more of a sign.
Ash slowly turned the handle and pulled the door open.
---
Inside, the usual clutter remained—winter jackets, a broken umbrella, cardboard boxes labeled Ben's Books in May's neat handwriting.
But on the closet floor… was a trapdoor.
Ash stared at it.
He'd lived in this house for nearly a decade.
He'd never seen a trapdoor.
Falcon chirped once and flashed red.
> "Non-Earth design."
> "Corp seal detected. Obscured by temporal camouflage."
Ash knelt beside the hatch. It wasn't wood or metal—at least not in the traditional sense. The panel shimmered under the hallway light, phasing between matter and something else entirely.
Time-stabilized alloy.
Ash placed his hand on the center, and instantly—
> "ACCESS GRANTED. NODE: ASH."
The hatch clicked and lifted open with a mechanical hiss.
A soft, cold breeze rose from below.
Falcon hovered lower, scanning the descent.
Ash whispered, "Either May's got the weirdest attic setup in Queens… or someone left this for me."
---
The space beneath the house wasn't large—barely a crawlspace—but it was packed with alien-looking tech. Coils. Capsules. A suspended orb in the ceiling emitted faint pulses of light, illuminating strange inscriptions on the walls.
Ash ducked inside.
His HUD lit up like a Christmas tree.
> "Corp Archive Fragment Detected."
> "This chamber predates your rebirth."
He approached the central pedestal—a six-sided console embedded with lines of silver and a familiar blue glow.
The second he touched it, a hologram flickered to life.
A man appeared—tall, armored in sleek black with a pulsing blue chestplate. His voice echoed with age.
> "If you're seeing this… the Corp failed."
> "That means you're it now."
Ash froze.
The hologram continued:
> "Your body was reconstructed using Corp nano-thread protocols. But your mind—your identity—was always the wildcard."
> "They wanted to erase you. Make you clean. I… disagreed."
The man removed his helmet.
Ash gasped.
It was him.
Older. Hardened. Worn by war and time.
> "I left this vault in the timeline they couldn't trace. In the body of a boy who wouldn't know he was a weapon until it was too late."
> "Well, kid… it's time."
> "Unlock Protocol: Starborn."
The orb above flared white-hot, and suddenly Ash felt a surge run through him—not pain, but pressure. A deep, ancient thrum that moved through his bones like music.
His HUD went wild.
> "Starborn Protocol active."
> "Mitochondrial fusion increased."
> "Corpus Upgrade Path: EVOLUTIONARY GRADE 1 — ACCEPTED."
---
Ash dropped to one knee, gasping. Falcon hovered low, wings spread like a shield.
"What—what just happened?" he breathed.
> "Genetic lock disengaged. Full Corp memory bank downloading."
Images began to flash in his mind—schematics, alien languages, memories of battles across planets and timelines. He saw himself—older—standing at the edge of a crumbling black hole, holding a weapon made of stardust and grief.
Ash gripped his head.
It was too much.
But something within him held.
Not broke.
Not burned.
Held.
---
The hologram spoke one last time:
> "You're not just a second chance, Ash. You're the first of a new class. The last to remember… and the first to choose."
> "Make the right enemies. And the right friends."
> "And trust Falcon."
Then the room dimmed.
The pedestal powered down.
---
Ash crawled back up into the closet, heart still pounding. His vision flickered with embedded star maps and tactical readouts he hadn't asked for.
He closed the hatch behind him.
And stood in the hallway like nothing had changed.
But everything had.
---
Later, May called out from the kitchen.
"Sweetheart, did you move something in the closet? A light keeps flickering."
Ash glanced over his shoulder, eyes faintly glowing again.
"No, May," he said. "Just grabbed an old jacket."
---
That night, he added a new label to the Falcon drone's main feed:
> STARBORN PROTOCOL: ACTIVE
And across the city, in a high-rise of darkened glass, a man watched Ash's blinking heat signature fade from a monitor.
He turned to a woman with silver tattoos on her temple.
"The Vault woke up."
She nodded.
"So the Boy with Stars in His Eyes is beginning to remember."