The city woke to rain.
A thin drizzle traced the windows of the WAVE 104.9 building, where the world’s noise was reduced to static and silence.

But this morning, silence had teeth.

Detective Rylan Cross stood by the yellow tape outside the station, watching technicians move around a tarp-covered figure. The body lay only a few steps from the studio door — the night engineer, the same man who handled Aria’s broadcast systems. His headset hung broken around his neck, the wire coiled like something that had bitten and burned.

The analogue clock beside him had stopped at 2:13 a.m.

Rylan’s stomach sank.
The mirror hour.

He crouched, studying the scene. The radio equipment near the body was scorched — not from fire, but from an electrical surge. The readings from the frequency scanners were off the charts.

Someone had hijacked the airwaves again.

He touched the clock’s cracked glass and whispered to himself,

“You’re getting bolder.”

Inside the station, Aria Vale watched the morning reports play on the studio screen. They’d already linked the murder to her show — her name plastered across the headline ticker.

RADIO HOST CONNECTED TO NEW HOMICIDE CASE.

Her hands trembled slightly as she reached to mute the broadcast. The faint static that had haunted her for days still hummed in the corners of the booth, a ghost woven through the wires.

She pressed her palms against the desk to steady herself. She hadn’t slept.
She kept hearing the voice from the last broadcast:

“The mirror hour isn’t coming. It’s already begun.”

When Rylan appeared in the doorway, she didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to — the sound of his shoes against the floor was already familiar.

“You’re early,” she murmured.

“I’ve been here since dawn.” His voice was quiet, cautious. “You knew the victim?”

Aria nodded, her reflection flickering in the glass. “Evan. He helped install the system last year. He said there were ‘ghost signals’ in the old lines. I laughed it off.”

Rylan stepped closer, setting a folder on the table between them. “He wasn’t joking. The power surge that killed him came from inside this station. Someone rerouted the frequency during your broadcast.”

Her eyes lifted to his. “You think it’s an inside job?”

“I think whoever’s doing this knows your setup better than you do.”

They worked in silence for an hour, dismantling the soundboard panel by panel. Dust and tangled cables spilt out like veins beneath the console. Then Rylan froze.

A small metallic object was wedged deep behind the wiring — no bigger than a matchbox, its edges engraved with faint lettering.

He pulled it free, wiped the dust away, and read aloud:
PROPERTY OF DR. J. HALE.

Aria’s breath caught. “That’s not possible.”

Her mentor’s name, carved into something found inside her studio — the same mentor who’d vanished years ago, long before these murders began.

Rylan turned the device over in his gloved hand. “You said Hale worked on sound experiments before he died?”

“Yes. He called it mirror resonance. Something about frequencies that could reflect human emotion through sound. But he destroyed all of it before he—” She stopped herself.

“Before he what?”

“Before he disappeared,” she whispered.

Rylan pried the transmitter open. The circuits were new, the soldering recent. Someone had rebuilt Hale’s technology. Someone had hidden it here.

“Who else has access to this booth?” he asked.

“Only me,” she said quietly. Then realisation hit her. “And Evan. The engineer.”

Rylan’s expression hardened. “He found it. That’s why he died.”

Outside, the rain had stopped, but thunder still rumbled somewhere beyond the skyline. Aria stood by the window, arms folded against her chest, as Rylan leaned over his notes.

She felt the air between them tighten — logic against intuition, silence against noise.

“You think this is connected to Hale’s experiments,” she said softly.

“I think Hale built something that someone’s using,” Rylan replied. “And whatever it is—it’s still transmitting.”

She let out a shaky breath. “Do you ever feel like we’re the ones being watched?”

Rylan met her gaze. His mouth curved into the faintest shadow of a smile. “I’ve felt that way since the night you picked up that call.”

They shared a small silence that wasn’t quite comfort, but it was close. For a moment, she felt less alone in the noise.

Then Rylan’s phone buzzed on the desk. He glanced at the screen — a message from forensics.

MATCH FOUND: HALE, JONATHAN. DECEASED.

Aria’s pulse stuttered. “That can’t be right.”

Rylan looked at her — calm, steady, but his eyes had changed. “Your mentor’s fingerprints were found on the transmitter, Aria. He’s supposed to be dead.”

The lights flickered once, twice. The faint hum in the studio rose into a low, throbbing static — almost like breathing.

Aria’s reflection in the glass wavered, doubled for a second, as if someone else were standing behind her.

And then, in the radio silence that followed, the old analogue clock ticked once.
Just once.

2:13.