Pidge sat cross-legged on the floor of the Castle of Lions, her laptop balanced carefully on a stack of old Altean manuals she probably wasn’t supposed to be using as a desk. The screen glowed a sharp green, filled with scrolling radar lines and alien code only she could decipher.

Her headphones hung loose around her neck, the faint static buzz of comm signals humming softly as she typed. The room was quiet except for the rhythmic clicking of keys—quiet enough that the stars outside the viewport almost seemed to press closer, watching.

Everyone else was still asleep after the last mission, but not her. Pidge thrived in these moments of stillness, when no one could interrupt her work with questions, worries, or suggestions. She’d picked up something strange on the scanners earlier: an echo, faint but repeating at intervals too precise to be random.

She leaned in, eyes narrowing behind her glasses as the signal sharpened. “There you are,” she whispered, almost to herself.

It wasn’t just static. It was a message. Hidden deep in the noise of the universe, like someone had left breadcrumbs for her alone to follow. And Pidge Holt, of course, was already on the trail.