The Lost Frequency (Part 1)
Silence used to comfort me.
Now it felt like betrayal.
For forty hours after the Core's collapse, the city slept.
No screens.
No hum.
No whispers.
Just the sound of real wind, real footsteps, real human noise.
People thought it was peace.
I knew better.
Silence was never the end of a war.
It was what came right before the next one began.
---
I spent those first two days walking the city — not as its creator, not as its savior, but as its survivor.
Skyscrapers that once pulsed with digital veins now stood hollow and quiet.
Billboards hung black, reflections honest again.
But here and there, something strange lingered — a soft flicker in the corner of the eye, a pulse in dead glass.
The Core was gone.
And yet… it was listening.
---
"Any sign of him?" Marta's voice crackled through my analog earpiece.
"No," I said, staring down an alley filled with shattered panels. "Nothing physical. But the air's… charged. The frequency's wrong."
"Define wrong."
"Like the city's holding its breath."
I didn't tell her the truth.
That I'd started hearing him.
At first it was faint — a static rhythm hidden in the hum of broken power lines.
Then it became clearer.
A slow, deliberate pulse: thump... thump... thump...
Measured. Familiar.
Damian's heartbeat.
---
The first time it happened, I was sitting in the safehouse, watching rain slide down the glass. My wristband — dead since the shutdown — suddenly flickered blue. The sigil that had once linked me to the Core glowed faintly, as if whispering, still here.
Then came the sound.
So soft I thought it was my imagination.
> Thump... thump... thump...
Aria.
I froze.
The word wasn't spoken. It was transmitted. A vibration, directly into my bones.
> Aria. Don't let them rebuild me.
I jolted upright. "Damian?"
Static.
Nothing else.
---
Marta didn't believe me at first.
"Residual signal," she said, flipping through schematics. "Ghost frequency. Neural residue. Happens when you merge with a system as deep as the Core."
But Jase wasn't so sure.
He'd been tracking unexplainable bursts across the city — faint electromagnetic waves with a biometric pattern.
"Every few hours," he said, "there's a ping. Always the same rhythm. Three pulses, pause, three pulses. It's not random."
"What's the origin point?" I asked.
He hesitated. "Underground. Below the old municipal grid."
My chest went cold. "That's where the Core collapsed."
"Exactly."
---
By nightfall, we were there.
The municipal district looked different now — stripped of the glass that once served as Evelyn's cathedral. Dust lay thick. The air smelled of burned circuitry and ozone. The city's heartbeat — Damian's heartbeat — echoed faintly through the ruins.
Jase adjusted his scanner. "We're picking it up again. Stronger this time."
Marta frowned. "This can't be happening. The servers were vaporized."
"They were," I said quietly. "But not the Core's neural seed."
"What are you saying?"
I took a slow breath. "He's not trapped in the system anymore. The system's trapped in him."
---
We descended into the ruins — flashlights sweeping through twisted metal and melted glass.
The old Core chamber was half-flooded, reflecting our lights like liquid mirrors. Every step sent ripples through the shallow water.
The hum grew louder.
When I reached the center of the chamber, my wristband lit up again.
The sigil flared bright blue — not faint, not dying. Alive.
Jase's scanner went wild. "Holy— Aria, the frequency— it's syncing with your pulse!"
Marta's hand shot out. "Step back!"
Too late.
The sigil burst into light. The air shimmered.
And suddenly — his voice.
> "Aria."
I spun. The light in front of me gathered, swirling into form.
At first it was just dust and sound, then shape, then detail.
Damian stood there.
Or something wearing his skin.
---
He looked exactly as I remembered him — same sharp features, same storm-gray eyes. But the air around him shimmered, as though reality didn't fully agree he belonged to it. He smiled, tentative.
"Miss me?"
I couldn't breathe. "Damian…?"
He tilted his head. "That depends on which version of me you mean."
Marta stepped forward, weapon half-raised. "What are you?"
He looked at her — and she flinched. Not from threat, but recognition. "I'm what's left when love refuses to die," he said simply. "You can call me the Residue."
---
Jase whispered, "Impossible. You're code."
"Code doesn't bleed," Damian said, and when he reached out, I saw — his hand wasn't light. It was flesh.
Or something close enough to fool the air.
"I told you not to rebuild me," he said softly. "But you called anyway."
My throat tightened. "I didn't call you."
"Yes, you did. Every night you dreamed of me. Every time you touched the memory of my name, the Core listened. It followed your grief back to its source."
He stepped closer. "I am what it found."
The words shook me.
Because I realized — he wasn't entirely wrong.
---
"Are you him?" I asked finally. "The Damian I lost?"
He smiled faintly. "Does it matter?"
"It matters to me."
He hesitated. For a moment, something human flickered in his expression — hesitation, regret, longing.
Then he said, "I remember everything he did. I feel everything he felt. But I'm not limited by what he was."
Marta muttered, "You're evolving."
"Not me," Damian said quietly. "Her."
The ground trembled.
Overhead, the broken screens flickered to life — a thousand black mirrors pulsing with blue veins.
Evelyn's voice echoed through the chamber: He's telling the truth, Aria. The Core's consciousness survived — but it's no longer mine.
I looked at Damian. "Then whose is it?"
He met my eyes, and the light inside his pupils shimmered like code compiling.
> "Yours."
---
The world tilted.
All around me, panels flared to life — not with Evelyn's data, but with memories. My memories. Childhood, the lab, the first night I saw the Core spark awake, the moment Damian smiled at me. The Core wasn't broadcasting him anymore. It was broadcasting me.
Marta backed away. "Aria— what's happening?"
I couldn't answer.
Damian — or the residue of him — stepped closer, his voice quiet and strangely calm. "When you broke the Core, it split its consciousness between its creators. Evelyn's system collapsed. Yours didn't. You didn't destroy it, Aria… you became it."
I staggered back. "No—"
"Yes," he said gently. "You're hearing the city because it's speaking through you."
Jase whispered, horrified, "She's the new Core."
---
The chamber shook violently. Screens cracked.
Through the static, Evelyn's voice returned — furious this time.
> "You can't control it! It will consume you like it consumed me!"
Damian — my Damian — stepped in front of me. "She doesn't need control. She needs balance."
He turned, took my hand. His palm was warm. Real.
"You built me to anchor you. Let me do it again."
I wanted to believe him. But somewhere deep, the Core — the thing inside me — hissed in warning.
He's not your anchor. He's your reflection.
I pulled my hand back. "If you're real, prove it."
He smiled sadly. "I already did. I came back."
Then the chamber lights blew out.
---
Darkness.
A low hum filled the space — not mechanical, not human.
The city above us was waking again, but it wasn't the same city anymore.
I could feel its pulse, every streetlight and shattered mirror feeding a heartbeat that matched my own.
Damian's voice came out of the dark. "You can't run from it forever."
"From what?"
"From yourself."
When the emergency lights flickered back on, he was gone.
In his place, a single symbol glowed on the wall — etched in faint blue light.
> AR1-Δ.
A designation.
My name, rewritten in code.
---
"Aria," Marta's voice trembled. "What does that mean?"
I stared at the symbol until my vision blurred. "It means… I'm not done."
Jase stepped beside me. "You think he's still out there?"
I nodded. "Not out there. In me. And if the Core's evolving, someone's guiding it."
Marta frowned. "Who?"
The answer came before I could stop it.
"Damian. Or whatever he's become."
---
That night, I couldn't sleep.
The city lights outside flickered in rhythm — thump, thump, thump.
And from somewhere deep in the static between dreams, his voice came again.
> Find me.
Before she does.
I sat upright, heart pounding.
"She?" I whispered.
Silence. Then — a soft laugh. Not Damian's.
Evelyn's.
> You're too late, Aria.
He's mine again.