No one had used a Citrus-class loader in forty years.

Elara stared. The C3520 wasn’t supposed to have external entanglement. That meant somewhere, somehow, its quantum cores were linked to another device—maybe lost, maybe destroyed, maybe never built. The flare might not have been an accident. Someone might have tried to erase this machine because of what it was connected to.

The tape was labeled in faded marker: C3520 / Citrus 218l / DO NOT USE . She spooled it into a reader and held her breath.