The hum hasn't stopped since the void.
It's softer now, buried under breathing, footsteps, and the quiet shuffle of the Renegades moving through the bunker—but it's still there. Constant. A pulse beneath my pulse. Every time I blink, I half expect to open my eyes somewhere else. Somewhere wrong.
Maybe I already have.
When I wake, Chase is leaning over me, tablet in one hand, an expression that looks like he's been holding his breath for hours.
"You good?" he asks.
I nod automatically, but the air feels wrong. Thick. Delayed.
He studies me for a moment before muttering, "You shouldn't be able to sleep with your vitals doing that."
"My vitals?"
He turns the tablet around. My readings spike in waves—rising, dipping, rising again—like my heart can't decide what time it's in.
"You've been flickering," he says. "Not your body—your presence. Cameras catch you lagging half a frame behind. Sometimes ahead."
"I'm just tired," I say.
"Kaleb, you're not tired. You're… desynchronized."
The hum gets louder when he says it.
I look past him—across the bunker, where the others are gathered around Aaliah's containment. They're talking, but their voices reach me late. Not by much. Maybe half a second. But it's there.
Maddie's sentence ends before I hear it start. Booker's laugh plays twice, overlapping itself. Jacob's footsteps echo before he moves.
And then it all lines up again, like nothing happened.
Later, when I pass a reflective panel, I notice something worse. My reflection doesn't blink with me.
It just watches.
The hum spikes.A flicker of light behind my eyes. For a second, the reflection moves first.
And then I'm on the floor.
"Kaleb!" Chase shouts, rushing over. "Talk to me!"
My mouth moves, but I don't recognize the words at first. It's like hearing myself through a radio that isn't tuned right.
"She's calling," I whisper.
He freezes. "Who?"
But I already know.
Aaliah.
Not the Aaliah in the chamber. The one in the void. The hum is her.
They put me on a cot in the observation room, hooked to a neural stabilizer. It hums with me—trying to sync, failing. Rem sits nearby, arms folded, quiet.
"You can feel it, can't you?" I ask.
She nods slowly. "The world stutters around you now. Every time your heart rate spikes, reality hesitates."
"I thought I left that behind," I mutter.
"You didn't leave anything behind, Kaleb," she says softly. "You just changed the coordinates of what's real."
I want to laugh, but I can't. The hum crawls up my spine again, twisting into something close to words.
"Kaleb…"
Her voice.
Not from the chamber. From inside the frequency.
I look up, but the others are frozen—literally frozen mid-breath. Chase's hand is in motion, but it's not moving. Rev's eyes are open, but still. Time has paused around me.
The hum sharpens into a whisper.
"Stop looking backward."
Her voice is broken by static, fading in and out like a dying signal.
I reach for her. "Aaliah, where are you?"
The hum stutters. Then drops to silence.
Time crashes back into motion.
The stabilizer alarms. Chase swears. "You flatlined for four seconds—what happened?"
"I heard her."
He stops. "You what?"
"She said Stop looking backward."
Rem exchanges a glance with Chase. "Could've been an echo," she offers. "Residual imprint. The Nexus can mimic voices."
I shake my head. "No. It was her."
But I'm not sure who I'm trying to convince.
Hours blur together after that. We work, we rest, we pretend the walls aren't whispering. The hum becomes background noise. Like breathing. Like guilt.
Then, one night, I dream of the lake again.
But this time, no orb. No chaos. Just still water. My reflection stares back, mouth moving soundlessly. When I wake, my hand is wet.
Chase checks the sensors and goes pale. "You weren't dreaming. You phased out of the bunker for nine seconds."
"Where did I go?"
He hesitates. "Coordinates say… the lake bed."
The same one from the beginning. The one the Nexus crashed into. The one I swore I'd never see again.
I sit alone by Aaliah's chamber, trying to steady my breath. Her face is calm, suspended, almost peaceful. But the light flickering across her skin isn't steady anymore—it glitches, like a film reel skipping.
"Why there?" I whisper. "Why the lake?"
The hum answers by changing pitch. And then, for a split second, I see another me standing behind the glass—hand pressed against the inside, eyes black as the void.
He whispers something.
The sound tears through my skull like electricity.
"Find the version where she lives."
When I come to, the others are shouting my name. The chamber's lights are flaring, the readings spiking off the charts. Chase pulls me back as the containment wall cracks.
"What did you do!?" he yells.
"I didn't—she—"
The hum rises to a scream.
Aaliah's eyes snap open.
For a moment, just a moment, they meet mine. And everything stops again.
I see flashes—other versions of her. Hundreds. Dying, fading, fighting.Each one mouthing the same words: Don't follow him.
Then the light dies. The hum fades. Her eyes close.
The silence after is absolute.
Rem steadies me before I fall. "What did you see?"
I shake my head. "Not what. When."
The hum doesn't return that night.
But when I finally manage to sleep, I dream of the lake again.
And this time, the water whispers back.
It says, "You already found the version where she lives. You just haven't decided which one it is yet."