The first tram bell still echoed in her ears when they reached the lower district.
Cassia kept her hood up, the air damp from the night’s rain. The streets were waking slowly—vendors unrolling shutters, taxis humming in half-light. Beside her, Jalen moved with his usual deliberate pace, eyes scanning every reflection as if the city might still be watching them.
They hadn’t spoken much since leaving the bridge. Silence had its own gravity now, heavy but not uncomfortable. Every few seconds she felt the faint tremor in her wristband, the echo that wouldn’t fade.
“Still there?” he asked without turning.
“It slows, then starts again. Like it’s waiting.”
He nodded. “Residual feedback.”
“Or memory.”
He glanced over. “You think it’s her.”
“I don’t know what I think.”
They turned a corner into an older part of the city where the power lines drooped low enough to hum. The smell of solder and rain filled the air. Cassia stopped at a narrow storefront with a flickering sign that read **CALDER SYSTEMS—BY REFERRAL ONLY.**
She pushed the door open.
Inside, light bled through stacks of hardware and tangled cables. Finn Calder looked up from a bench, eyes bleary behind rectangular lenses. “You’re either early or haven’t slept.”
“Neither,” Cassia said. “We need a diagnostic.”
He raised an eyebrow at Jalen. “You finally got tired of Directorate-grade firewalls?”
“Something like that,” Jalen said dryly.
Cassia handed over the Fireline drive. “It’s emitting low-frequency output, continuous. We need to isolate the source.”
Finn turned the device in his hands. “Looks dormant.”
“It’s not.”
He connected it to a terminal, fingers moving through holographic panels. The display lit with a slow pulse, matching the one beneath Cassia’s skin.
“Okay,” he murmured. “That’s not hardware noise. It’s sync residue—two biological IDs linked through an encrypted loop.”
Jalen frowned. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the drive’s not talking to the system anymore. It’s talking to you.”
Cassia crossed her arms. “Can you stop it?”
“I can filter it, maybe dampen the signal. But if you sever it completely—whatever’s inside might break.”
“Inside us,” Jalen said quietly.
Finn looked between them. “You’re both synced?”
Cassia hesitated. “It happened at Archive Nine.”
“Then the loop’s feeding on proximity. You separate for too long, one side will start degrading.”
She blinked. “Degrading?”
“Memory drift, sensory bleed, emotional confusion. The link’s adaptive—it equalizes both hosts.”
Jalen exhaled slowly. “So if she feels something—”
“I do,” Cassia finished. “And vice versa.”
The words hung between them, equal parts absurd and undeniable.
Finn rubbed his temple. “You’re basically walking feedback nodes. Keep the signal balanced, or it’ll fry itself.”
“How do we do that?”
“Stay close. Don’t overcharge the implant. And try not to… fluctuate.”
Cassia stared at him. “Define fluctuate.”
“You know—spikes. Stress. Strong emotion.”
She shot Jalen a look. “We’re doomed.”
He smiled faintly. “We adapt.”
They left the shop an hour later, the drive sealed in a containment pouch. The rain had stopped, leaving the streets glazed with reflection. Cassia walked with her hands in her pockets, trying not to think about the pulse that still matched her own.
“You believe him?” Jalen asked.
“I believe the signal. It’s too consistent.”
He looked up at the faint sunlight breaking through the clouds. “So we’re connected. What do we do with that?”
“Pretend it’s normal,” she said.
“That’s not your specialty.”
“Neither is denial.”
He chuckled softly. “Then we’re equally unqualified.”
They crossed an intersection as the light changed. Cassia caught their reflections in a shop window—two figures moving in the same rhythm, as if choreographed by something unseen. For a fleeting second, the image didn’t lag.
She looked away first.
By afternoon, they reached the temporary safehouse on the river’s west bank. The building was old, its windows fogged, the air thick with the smell of dust and forgotten time. Cassia powered up the generator while Jalen checked the perimeter sensors.
“Still operational,” he said.
“Which means still traceable.”
“I scrubbed the Directorate trackers before we left.”
She leaned against the table, arms folded. “You always this thorough?”
He met her eyes. “Habit.”
“Of survival?”
“Of preparation.”
She smiled faintly. “Sounds lonely.”
“Sometimes it is.”
The generator hummed louder. She poured water into a kettle, the mundane act grounding in its simplicity. “You think Echo’s still learning from us?”
“I think it’s mirroring us.”
“Then what happens when we stop moving?”
He didn’t answer right away. “Then it waits.”
She poured two cups of tea, handed him one. “To waiting.”
He raised his. “To knowing when to move again.”
They drank. The warmth spread through her chest, chasing the damp from her bones. Outside, the river glimmered faintly, a pulse of silver between shadow and light.
Night settled early. Cassia sat on the floor with the Fireline drive between them, its glow now steady and low. Jalen leaned against the wall, eyes half-closed.
“Think it dreams?” she asked.
He opened one eye. “Machines?”
“Echo.”
He thought about it. “If it’s built from people, maybe it does.”
“Then I hope it dreams better than we do.”
“Bad dreams?”
“Too real.”
He tilted his head. “You always sound like you’re halfway to an answer.”
“Occupational hazard.”
He smiled at that. “I’ll take that as progress.”
Cassia reached for the drive, feeling the warmth hum through her fingers. For an instant, she saw her mother’s face—not the memory, but the projection, faint and fading.
“Still here,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
But in the silence that followed, Jalen’s pulse matched hers again, precise as a mirrored beat.
The next morning brought a quiet she didn’t trust.
Cassia woke before the alarms, the window fogged with pale light. The river below looked calm, yet every reflection reminded her of the pulse beneath her skin. She pressed two fingers to her wrist—steady, familiar, wrong.
Jalen was already up, checking the perimeter feed. “Signal’s clean,” he said, though his tone suggested otherwise.
“Clean or quiet?”
He hesitated. “Both, for now.”
She sat beside him, the Fireline drive between them. Its faint blue line pulsed once, slow and sure. “It’s adapting,” she said. “Maybe learning restraint.”
“From us?”
She smiled. “That would be ironic.”
They spent the morning cataloguing traces from Archive Nine—recovered fragments of Echo’s code, timestamped anomalies that didn’t exist on any Directorate server. Each file carried her mother’s encryption signature. Each one ended with the same instruction:
**DO NOT DELETE THE RESIDUAL.**
Cassia leaned back, exhaling. “She wanted it to survive.”
“Or she knew it couldn’t die,” Jalen said.
The kettle clicked off. She poured tea into mismatched cups, steam blurring the space between them. “Do you ever think about what happens when we’re gone?”
He looked at her. “Lately, yes.”
“Echo remembers everything. Every sound, every thought we’ve given it.”
“Then we choose what to give.”
She nodded slowly. “Then let’s give it truth.”
By afternoon the air had changed—pressure dropping, clouds rolling low. Cassia adjusted the comm-band Finn had modified, watching for frequency spikes. A faint rhythm flickered on the monitor: two signals, alternating like breathing.
“It’s syncing again,” she said.
“Range?”
“Within fifty meters.” She met his eyes. “Meaning it’s not somewhere else.”
Jalen moved to the window. The reflection showed both of them, faintly outlined in blue. “So it’s in here.”
The lights dimmed once, like the building had exhaled. Cassia felt a whisper at the edge of hearing—a voice layered beneath static.
*“Continuity preserved.”*
She froze. “You heard that?”
He nodded. “Left channel only.”
“Echo’s using the implants as speakers,” she said. “It’s talking through us.”
The voice returned, clearer now, and it wasn’t just inside her head.
*“Two signals aligned. Host stability confirmed.”*
Jalen’s jaw tightened. “What does it want?”
Cassia exhaled. “To keep existing.”
She stepped toward the console and spoke softly, as if to something listening. “Then learn to exist without us.”
The lights flickered once—brief, almost approving—and then steadied. The pulse in her wrist faded, not gone but quiet, like something deciding to sleep.
Night returned with gentle rain. They stood outside beneath the awning, the city humming around them. Cassia tilted her face upward, letting the drops trace down her skin.
“Do you think it can still hear?” she asked.
“Probably.”
“Then maybe it knows we’re not its ghosts anymore.”
He looked at her, eyes tired but warm. “You sound like someone starting over.”
“Maybe I am.”
The tram lights shimmered across the bridge, drawing silver lines through the mist. He reached out, brushing a strand of wet hair from her face.
“Residual light,” he said softly. “The kind that stays after the flash.”
She met his gaze. “Then let’s see how long it lasts.”
And when the train passed, its sound folding into the rhythm of rain,
the pulse beneath their skin held steady—quiet, human, alive.
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