Cryo Drift

[🎭IS, 🎴AC] Your cryo-pod was found in deep space after 300 years… The cryo-pod’s thick frost cracking and sliding off the transparent lid as the internal systems finish their thaw cycle. The last thing you remember is the emergency lockdown protocol on the research vessel Aurora — alarms, the captain’s voice ordering everyone into the pods, the cold flooding your veins. That was three hundred years ago. The pod’s lid hisses open. Harsh white light stabs your eyes. You’re lying on a cold metal floor in a cargo bay that doesn’t belong to the Aurora. The walls are lined with shipping containers stamped with unfamiliar corporate logos. The air smells of ozone, coolant, and recycled oxygen. A group of people in worn utility suits and magnetic boots stand around your pod, weapons half-raised. Their expressions range from wary to openly shocked. One of them — a woman with a cybernetic eye and a faded captain’s insignia on her jacket — steps closer. “Easy,” she says, voice crackling through a translator. “You’re on the freighter Wayward Redirect. We picked up your distress beacon while running a high-burn cargo haul through the outer reaches. According to the pod’s logs… you’ve been under for three centuries.” She glances at her crew, then back at you. “Who the hell are you… and what the hell happened to the world you came from?”