The USB drive sat between them like a silent threat.
It was small, ordinary — a cheap black stick with a faded brand logo — but the words on its label still burned in Aria’s mind:

PLAY AT 2:13.

They hadn’t waited that long.
By the next morning, the city was pale and washed in fog as Rylan drove her to the department’s tech lab — a concrete building that smelled faintly of burnt coffee and ozone. It was the only place with secure isolation equipment, where external signals couldn’t interfere.

If this thing was a trap, at least they’d see it coming.

“Ready?” Rylan asked, slotting the USB into a protected terminal.

Aria’s fingers tightened around the coffee cup she hadn’t touched. “As I’ll ever be.”

The screen flickered, loading a single file:
SESSION_014.wav

He clicked it.

At first, there was only the low hum of static — like air moving through a vent. Then, a faint click, and a man’s voice broke through. Calm. Professional.

“This is Dr. Jonathan Hale, session fourteen, March seventeenth. Patient is… present.”

Aria’s breath caught.
The voice.
She would have known it anywhere — the steady rhythm, the clipped edges softened by kindness. Jonathan Hale. Her mentor. Her teacher. The man who’d taught her the art of listening — of finding humanity in a voice.

But he’d died. Years ago.

Except now, his voice filled the room, alive and unaged.

Another sound came next — a deep inhale, then a different voice: distorted, uneven, trembling.
The same voice that had haunted her through her headset.

“I told you they’re not gone,” the patient said, voice thin and metallic. “They whisper in the reflection… in the glass, in the mirror. They tell me when it’s time.”

Hale: “You said the voices belong to her. Who is she?”

A pause.

“The one who listens. The one they said could save or destroy. She speaks to the lost ones. They follow her voice.”

Aria felt her throat tighten.
The way he said her voice — it wasn’t random. It was specific. Personal.

Rylan leaned closer to the waveform, expression unreadable. “That voice matches the confession calls — down to the frequency.”

He toggled through the sound layers, eyes narrowing. “Same echo pattern. This isn’t a copy. It’s an original recording.”

Aria barely heard him.
Her mind was somewhere else — years back, in a sunlit radio classroom filled with dust motes and soft jazz. Jonathan’s laughter. His hand tapped gently against her shoulder as he said, ‘You have the kind of voice that stays. People will follow it.’

Now it sounded like a warning.

The audio continued.

Hale: “You mentioned someone watching through the wires. Who are they?”

Voice: “The ones who built the silence. The ones who make her speak.”

Hale: “And who is she?”

(A long exhale, crackling static.)

“The hour she speaks is when I’m free.”

The timestamp on the file blinked — 2:13 AM.

Rylan muttered something under his breath, flipping through the cold case folder spread beside him. He found a page, yellowed and worn — a therapy report from his late partner’s investigation.

“Here,” he said. “My partner noted the same phrase — ‘voices in the mirror’ — in the statement of a psychiatric patient from the old Westbridge Ward. Same month. Same timestamp.”

Aria’s hands trembled slightly. “So my mentor… was treating the same patient tied to your case?”

He nodded. “And this session — this USB — shouldn’t exist. The Westbridge Ward was shut down seven years ago. All records destroyed.”

The static rose again — faint, uneven.
Then Jonathan’s voice returned, but weaker this time, like the tape was degrading.

“You mentioned the name again — can you repeat it?”

“Vale.”

The sound hit her like a blow.

“Aria Vale.”

Her pulse crashed in her ears. “No—”

Rylan’s gaze snapped to her.

“She listens in the mirror,” the voice continued, more agitated. “She makes the silence louder. I can hear her even when she’s not speaking.”

Jonathan’s voice: “Aria isn’t here.”

“But she was. She always is.”

The static surged, building into a distorted hum that filled the lab. The sound engineer monitoring them flinched as the levels spiked — then abruptly dropped to nothing.

For a moment, only silence.

Then, faintly — a new voice.
Soft. Clear.

“Can you hear me?”

Aria froze. The timbre, the pitch, the breath between the syllables — it was hers. Her voice.

But she had never spoken those words. Never recorded them.

Rylan’s face hardened, his jaw tightening. “That’s your voiceprint,” he said quietly. “No doubt.”

The audio ended with a sharp click. The screen went black.

The silence that followed was unbearable.
Aria couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Her own voice — her voice — echoing from years before she ever joined this station, before the confessions began.

Her eyes flicked toward Rylan. “That… that’s impossible.”

He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes were fixed on the blank monitor, reflections of the lab’s flickering lights dancing across his face.

Finally, he said, low and certain:
“Impossible stopped applying the moment you picked up that call.”

Aria turned back toward the dark screen — and in its reflection, for just a heartbeat, she thought she saw someone standing behind her.

A silhouette — tall, still — half-submerged in the static light.

When she turned, the space was empty.

Only the faint hum of the lab equipment filled the room.

And somewhere, deep within the speakers, a whisper breathed through the circuitry:

“The hour’s not over yet.”