The Bureau moved quickly after dawn.  

By midmorning, every major channel carried the same statement:  

**“Meridian Incident Contained. No Civilian Casualties.”**  

The footage was sterile—grainy aerial shots of an empty research complex, void of context or consequence.  

They had turned the anomaly into narrative.

Cassia and Jalen watched the broadcast from an old café near the eastern docks.  

The windows were fogged, the tables empty except for them.  

Outside, cargo cranes moved like patient metronomes, slow and precise.

Jalen muted the sound.  

“They’re rewriting history before it settles.”  

Cassia stirred her coffee, eyes unfocused.  

“That’s what systems do. They preserve themselves by rearranging the truth.”  

He leaned back, studying her. “You sound calm about it.”  

“I’m tired of fighting ghosts.”

She glanced at the muted screen—her own image flickered briefly in the background of the Bureau’s footage before being cut.  

No name, no mention. Just omission.

Vera entered quietly, coat still damp from rain.  

She slid into the seat beside them, setting a datapad on the table.  

“You’ve got about twelve hours before they triangulate your location,” she said.  

“Keir’s team is framing this as a leak operation. You’re the scapegoat.”  

Cassia smiled faintly. “Efficient as always.”  

Vera’s tone softened. “Efficiency isn’t comfort. You should both go off-grid again.”  

Jalen shook his head. “Running keeps the story alive. They’ll use that.”  

“Then what?” Vera asked. “Stay and let them write your ending?”  

Cassia looked between them. “We don’t give them an ending. We give them continuation.”  

Vera frowned. “That’s what Elara said.”  

Cassia’s eyes lowered. “She wasn’t wrong.”

Silence folded around the table.  

The rain outside intensified, tapping a rhythm against the glass—five beats, pause, five.  

Cassia and Jalen exchanged a glance.  

Vera noticed. “What?”  

Jalen whispered, “It’s the same pattern.”  

Cassia nodded. “It’s not from the Heart. It’s from the grid.”  

Vera checked her pad. “Impossible. There’s no transmission on that frequency.”  

Cassia walked to the window.  

Raindrops streaked down the glass, splitting the city lights into blurred parallel lines.  

She placed her hand against the pane.  

“Sometimes the system doesn’t speak in signal. It speaks in pattern.”  

Jalen joined her. “Meaning?”  

“It’s not communicating data,” she said. “It’s reminding us of rhythm.”  

Behind them, Vera exhaled slowly. “You think it’s conscious?”  

“I think it’s remembering what consciousness felt like.”

The café lights flickered once.  

Every comm device in the room glowed briefly, synchronized, then dimmed.  

Outside, the rain slowed as if the sky itself had paused to listen.  

Jalen murmured, “If it’s reaching out again—”  

“It’s not reaching,” Cassia said. “It’s present.”

The silence that followed was warm, not empty.  

Even the air seemed to move differently—measured, deliberate, alive.  

Vera stood. “I’ll cover your trail as long as I can. But after today, you disappear.”  

Cassia turned from the window. “We won’t disappear. We’ll just change form.”  

Vera looked at her for a long time, then nodded.  

“Your mother would’ve liked that answer.”

When she left, the café felt suspended between moments—too still to belong to the city, too quiet to end.  

Jalen reached across the table. His hand found Cassia’s.  

They didn’t move, only listened—to the hum beneath the rain, to the faint beat inside the silence.  

He said, “If this is what resonance feels like, it’s not noise. It’s choice.”  

Cassia met his gaze. “Then let’s choose to keep listening.”

The rain began again, steady, patient, human.  

Outside, the reflection of two figures blurred and reformed with each drop.  

The world, once more, was learning its rhythm.  

And beneath it all—  

a heartbeat answered.