The morning was too still.
No traffic. No noise. Just the soft hum of Aria’s radio clock, frozen at 2:13.

She woke with the faint smell of rain still hanging in her room — and a dry taste in her mouth, like static.
Her lamp was still on. The mic from her home setup was half-unplugged, red light blinking softly, waiting.

Aria blinked, disoriented. She hadn’t been broadcasting last night. She remembered crying, falling asleep. That was it.
But the monitor on her desk told a different story — a full one-hour segment logged between 2:13 and 3:13 a.m.

File name: The Silent Hour — Recorded Live.

Her throat constricted.
She hit play.

The recording began like any other show — her familiar intro, her soft tone.

“You’re not alone in the dark tonight. This is The Silent Hour... and I’m listening.”

Then — at the 10-minute mark — something shifted.

Her cadence changed. Her breathing slowed. The warmth drained from her voice.
By minute 25, the tone wasn’t hers anymore. It was The Voice — using her inflexion, her rhythm, but hollow.

“Do you see now, Aria?
You speak, and I breathe.
We are the same frequency.”

A chill ran down her spine. She pressed pause, trembling. Her own voice had been overwritten — warped.
Static filled the rest of the hour — whispers, fragments of words layered under her laughter, her sighs, her silence.

She didn’t remember saying any of it.

When Rylan arrived at her apartment later that morning, he found her still sitting there, pale, with the headphones clutched like a lifeline.

“What happened?” he asked, stepping carefully into the dim room.

Aria turned toward him, her eyes wide and unfocused. “I… I didn’t do it, Rylan. The log says I went live at 2:13, but I was asleep.”

He took the headset from her and hit play.

As the recording unfolded, Rylan’s expression darkened — disbelief, then something colder.

“You sound just like him,” he whispered.

“Because it’s my voice,” she said, trembling. “He’s using it.”

Rylan scrubbed backwards, replaying a few seconds. There — hidden under the distortion — was something else.
A faint, rhythmic pulse.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The same sound from the first confession.

“The clock,” Rylan muttered. “It’s the same as the one from the ward.”

He played another section — this time, the Voice spoke through her:

“Do you believe in echoes, detective?
Every sound you bury comes back to you.”

Rylan froze. That line — he’d read it once before, in the notes from his late partner’s cold case.
The killer had said the same thing before the murder.

Aria covered her ears. “He’s inside my signal, Rylan. Every time I speak, he follows. Every time I stop, he waits. I can hear him sometimes — in the silence, in between breaths.”

Rylan kneeled beside her. “Hey. Look at me.”
She did — reluctantly.

“We’ll stop him,” he said, voice low but steady. “Whatever he is, whatever this is — we’ll find him.”

Her eyes filled. “What if he’s not out there?”

“What do you mean?”

Her voice cracked. “What if he’s in me?”

For a moment, neither of them moved. The air thickened — a fragile tension between fear and something deeper, unspoken.

He reached for her trembling hand. “Then we pull him out. Together.”

By nightfall, they were back in the station. The studio was dark, save for the blue glow of the monitor.
Cables snaked across the floor like veins. Every screen showed lines of unreadable code — frequency patterns shifting and repeating.

Rylan had called in a tech from the department, who set up signal trace equipment, rerouting all transmissions through a closed loop.
“No external source should be able to hijack her voice now,” the man said. “If it happens again, it’s coming from inside.”

When he left, silence filled the booth once more.
Aria sat behind the mic, staring at the console, her reflection fractured by the glass.

Rylan watched from behind the soundboard. “You don’t have to do this tonight.”

She gave a shaky smile. “If I don’t, he wins.”

At exactly 2:13 a.m., the studio lights flickered.

The monitors blinked.
The old ON AIR sign buzzed, then flared red — though no one had touched the switch.

Rylan’s hand moved to his gun instinctively.
“Stay calm,” he whispered.

Aria leaned forward toward the mic, her breath fogging the glass.
“Hello?”

For a moment, nothing. Just faint static. Then—

“You’re late tonight.”

Her voice dropped. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognize me?”

A low hum began vibrating through the speakers. Her earpiece hissed — soft at first, then louder.
Rylan leaned over, adjusting the frequency dials — all readings normal. No interference logged.

And then he heard it — faint, almost imperceptible — a tick.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Aria’s eyes widened.
The old analogue clock on the studio wall — the one that hadn’t worked in years — began to move.

The hands twitched once. Then again.

Rylan turned toward it slowly, his pulse hammering.
“No…” he whispered.

The clock struck 2:13.

The radio feed surged alive, filled with overlapping voices — fragments of Aria’s laughter, Rylan’s name, and The Voice whispering through layers of sound:

“You’ve both been talking in circles.
The mirror hour isn’t coming…”

The lights flickered wildly, throwing their reflections across the glass — her face and his, merging for a split second in the dark.

“…it’s already begun.”

The clock’s second hand stopped.
The ON AIR light dimmed.

And then — complete silence.

Aria’s voice broke it first. “Rylan… did you hear—”

But when she turned, he was staring at the monitor.
Across the audio feed, new text appeared on the screen — in the same glitched, static-ridden font that had appeared once before.

USER LOGGED IN: MIRROR_47B

Then the screen blinked once, and the words vanished.