Chapter 1: Letter from the Frozen Port

The wind in Vladivostok cut against the glass facades of the old port district like a dull knife. Inside the Deep Space Record Restoration Vault at the National Archives, the climate control system kept the air absolutely dry and still. Maxim Romanov wore semi-transparent conductive gloves, his fingertips hovering just above the holographic display of a yellowed dossier.

There was no snow here, only the low, steady hum of the server arrays. It sounded just like the muffled groan of ice crushing against the shoreline of a frozen harbor on a winter night.

“Romanov, your heart rate is a bit elevated.”

The voice of the AI assistant, Odyssey, rang out directly in his neural interface, carrying that gratingly smooth synthetic quality.

“Just static reaction,” Maxim replied, his voice dry. “Dossier D-793 for the *Isella* disaster. Status: Sealed. My mentor’s wrongful conviction hasn’t been overturned yet. I’m in no hurry.”

He was about to disconnect when a string of glitched code suddenly flickered in the corner of the screen. It was a fragment of a quantum communication, unsigned and timestamp-less, like a dirty stone dropped into a precise clock mechanism.

“Warning: illegal signal detected penetrating the isolation layer.” Odyssey sounded the alarm, red lights pulsing along the edge of the ceiling. “Source unknown. Energy level extremely low.”

Maxim ignored the warning. His gaze locked onto the string of chaos. To anyone else, it looked like random numbers and waveforms, but to him, a pattern was slowly emerging. As a restorer, he’d seen too much data corroded by time, but this “noise” held the rhythm of artificial respiration.

He called up the voiceprint comparison module and entered the known samples from Sergei Sokolov, the captain of the *Isella* from ten years ago.

The progress bar filled. Match percentage: zero.

“It’s a masking technique for old recordings,” Maxim muttered, his fingers dancing over the virtual keyboard. “The voiceprint has been stretched, and the signal-to-noise ratio was intentionally lowered to blend into background noise. But there’s a flaw.”

He zoomed in on the waveform, pointing to a tiny frequency jitter. “Sergei’s last medical report from his service days showed fibrosis in his left vocal cord muscle. Any normally compressed recording would show a gap at that frequency range. But in this signal, the gap is filled. This isn’t a recording. It’s real-time decoding.”

Just then, the vault door slid open. Natalya Sukoy walked in, wearing her Border Post uniform with a Quantum Communication expert’s badge clipped to her collar. Her eyes were sharp, scrutinizing him like he was a suspect.

“You almost committed a protocol violation, Maxim,” Natalya said, walking up to the console and crossing her arms. “The Director told me to watch you. That signal triggered the highest-level security protocol. The institution is ordering you to destroy the raw data immediately.”

“Destroy it?” Maxim looked up. “Are you kidding me? That signal contains Sergei’s distress call sign.”

“That’s news from ten years ago,” Natalya sneered. “The *Isella* has been missing for a decade. According to the Orbital Elevator surveillance logs, no fleet passed through those waters at the time. You’re a restorer, not a detective. Stop treating the archives like your playground.”

“You’re looking at this the wrong way.” Maxim pulled up the signal’s generation timestamp. The red digits were glaring. “It was generated three hours ago. The moment you walked into this room.”

Natalya’s fingers crossed over her chest, her knuckles turning white. She said nothing, but the suspicion in her eyes deepened. People on both sides of the system knew Natalya was trying to find a balance; she needed proof of her own innocence but feared being labeled a traitor.

“If it’s a new signal,” Natalya lowered her voice, “that means someone is still in there. But that doesn’t make sense. The *Isella*’s Quantum Transmitter was destroyed in the crash. That’s an open secret.”

“Open secrets are the easiest to tamper with,” Maxim said.

At that moment, hurried footsteps echoed from the corridor. Alexei Sokolov appeared in the doorway, wearing a white lab coat, his hair a mess, clutching several data slates in his hand, his breathing ragged as if he’d been running out of time.

“Move.” Alexei squeezed into the room, shoving past Natalya. He forcibly locked the waveform graph on the screen. “I cracked it. This isn’t just a signal. It’s coordinates. A set of coordinates encrypted with quantum encryption.”

“Alexei, you’re overstepping,” Natalya snapped. “That’s a direct order from the Director.”

“The Director doesn’t want anyone to know where the coordinates point because they’re afraid that place will be ‘found,’” Alexei panted, his eyes red-rimmed. “I spent three hours breaking the outer encryption. This is Sergei’s habit. He always liked to hide critical information in the lowest layer of the background noise.”

Maxim stared at Alexei, a siren wailing in his head. Alexei was a colleague and a genius, but this man had once tampered with a set of meteorite spectral data to secure priority publication. Why was he here now? Coincidence, or self-interest?

“How do you know Sergei’s habits?” Maxim asked.

“Because I worked with him for four years,” Alexei answered quickly. “And, those coordinates point to an unmanned space station at the bottom of Lake Baikal. That place was declared abandoned twenty years ago.”

“Abandoned?” Natalya frowned. “A space station at the bottom of Lake Baikal? That’s not in a military control zone.”

“But it is in the gene restoration experimental zone.” Alexei tapped his eye. “Before he disappeared, Sergei was involved in a top-secret gene restoration project. He might have left something there. Or, he might still be alive.”

It seemed the climate control in the vault had malfunctioned; a draft of cold air rushed in from the vents, making the holographic projection flicker. Maxim felt a chill crawl down the back of his neck.

“If Sergei is still alive,” Maxim picked up the yellowed dossier, its edges worn smooth, “why is he using such a primitive method to send a distress call? Why is the signal mixed with ten years of old data?”

“Because he needs to hide his identity,” Alexei said. “If the signal was too new, it would be traced back to his location. He deliberately made the signal look like residue from ten years ago. That way, the institution would order it destroyed, not traced. He’s exploiting our bias.”

Natalya looked at Maxim. “You’re his restorer. Do you know his habits?”

Maxim was silent for a moment. He thought of the last dream-talking his mentor had before he died, those broken sentences like a string of corrupted code, still looping in his mind.

“I don’t know,” Maxim said quietly. “I only know that in his voiceprint, there was always a stubbornness.”

Alexei plugged a data slate into the console. “I’ve extracted the coordinates. Now, we decide: report it, or…”

“Report it?” Natalya cut him off. “Reporting it means the institution will completely wipe it. You know who the Director answers to. The moment it’s reported, these coordinates become a state secret. We lose our chance to track it.”

“So what do you want to do?” Alexei stared at her. “Illegally sequestering fragments of quantum communication is a felony. Do you still want that transfer slot to the Border Post?”

Natalya pulled a small metal box from her pocket. It was her communication terminal, and also her biggest liability. “I never wanted any slots. I just want the truth. As for the price…” She pressed the side of the terminal, projecting a beam of blue light into the air. “The price is that I might end up in the Birch Grove quarantine zone. But before that, I’m backing up this signal.”

Maxim looked at the blue light and made up his mind. He couldn’t let Sergei “disappear” again. Ten years ago, his mentor was silenced for insisting on recording the truth, and the dossier was sealed. If history could be rewritten at will, then Sergei’s fate was just another pawn.

“I’ll do the backup.” Maxim reached out and took the metal box. “My fingerprint security level is the highest. I’m the only one who can unlock this layer of encryption.”

Alexei hesitated, then finally nodded. He looked at Maxim. “Are you sure? Once this starts, there’s no turning back. The institution’s surveillance net is dense. Any data flow will be logged.”

“Logging is logging. Destruction is destruction,” Maxim said. “As long as the data is in my neural interface, they can’t completely erase it.”

Natalya watched him warily. “Does your mother know about this? Yelena has been unwell lately. Don’t make her worry.”

Maxim didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and connected the data stream to his neural interface. A sharp pain shot up his spine. He gritted his teeth, forcing his body’s spasms down. Deep in his consciousness, the expanse of Deep Space unfolded, cold starlight piercing the black void, illuminating that forgotten coordinate.

“Transfer complete.” He opened his eyes. His face was pale, beads of sweat on his forehead.

“Thank God,” Natalya exhaled. “Now, destroy the original dossier. Per the Director’s orders.”

Maxim stood still, the cold metal box tight in his hand. The chip inside radiated a faint warmth, the residual heat after the data had flowed through it.

“Why?” Natalya stared at him. “You just said you were doing this for Sergei.”

“Because this is the only original artifact,” Maxim turned toward the door, his back stiff. “Everything else is a copy. Copies get modified. Copies get tampered with. Only the original, even if it’s just a pile of glitches, contains errors that can’t be replicated. And errors are loopholes.”

Alexei followed him, his footsteps erratic. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” Maxim said. “Call my mother. Tell her I’m not coming home for dinner.”

When he stepped out of the National Archives, the night over Vladivostok was thick as ink. In the distance, the Orbital Elevator stood like a silver needle piercing the sky, its tip flashing with warning red lights. The sea wind whipped his coat open, revealing a washed-out white shirt underneath.

He patted his pocket, where an old photo left by his mentor was still tucked away. The edges of the photo were yellowed, and a crooked, broken compass had been drawn on it. It was a gift his mentor had given him before his last voyage ten years ago. Back then, his mentor had said: the compass lies, but the magnet does not.

Maxim pulled out his communication terminal and dialed his mother’s number.

Ring—ring—ring—

The line connected. In the background, he could hear the news broadcast from the television and the bubbling of a pot of soup coming to a boil.

“Mom,” he said.

“Sergei,” his mother Yelena Romanov’s voice was gentle yet firm. “You’re home? Why is it so late?”

Maxim froze. In this era, there were only two men with the last name Romanov. His mother was Yelena; he was Maxim. Why was she calling him by someone else’s name?

“Mom, who are you talking to?” he frowned.

“I’m talking to that ghost,” his mother sighed. “Maxim, you’re always like this, living as someone else’s shadow. Come eat before the soup gets cold.”

He hung up the phone. Maxim stood on the cold street corner, snowflakes landing on his eyelashes and instantly melting into droplets. He clutched the chip in his pocket, feeling a bone-deep chill rise from his feet.

His mother was his emotional anchor, and the only truth. If even her memories had been tampered with, what in this world was actually real?

He looked up at the red light atop the Orbital Elevator. In the wind, it flickered like the eye of a giant, bloodthirsty predator, silently gazing down at the frozen port.