She thought she was remembering. But Echo was broadcasting. And what answered isn't from Earth, isn't human—and isn't far.
The scan shouldn't have picked anything up.
Aya had checked Echo's genome dozens of times—during diagnostics, during upgrades, during memory crises. Every line was mapped, filtered, labeled.
But this time, after the spiral, after the phrase Echo muttered like a prayer, something lit up.
A buried frequency.
Not audio. Not chemical.
Carrier-wave coded—a subtle pulsing resonance riding on the edge of Echo's neural patterns.
Like a song folded into silence.
Aya locked the lab down.
Triple-shielded the room.
Then ran the scan again.
It repeated.
Same pattern. Same phrase:
Transmission signal encoded into neural lattice. Active.
Aya whispered, "It's not a memory loop."
"It's a beacon."
She called the others.
Rook, Ava, Fall, and Echo gathered in the lower analysis bay.
No lights on but the monitors.
Aya pulled up the scan on the holoscreen.
