Kaelen stood. The bay doors were locked. He didn't need to break them. He remembered—somewhere deep, in that forbidden memory partition—an override code. His fingers moved before his mind caught up. The doors hissed open.

Kaelen looked at his scarred arm again. Then at the drop pods.

He looked down at his left forearm. The armor panel was scorched open. Beneath it, not circuitry—but scar tissue. Human scar tissue.