You'd think the Bureau would've erased me by now.
A week since the train yard incident, and I was still breathing. That either meant they couldn't find me… or they were watching, waiting to see how far I'd fall.
The safehouse was a forgotten office block in the south district — mold-stained walls, humming lights, windows blind with dust. My reflection in the cracked mirror looked worse than ever: unshaved, eyes like burnt glass, still wearing the same coat.
On the table beside me sat the Resonance Stabilizer — a portable mind-interface the Bureau banned three years ago. The kind of tech that lets you breach another person's consciousness if you're stupid enough to try.
And I was.
Because Aria was still inside that void.
Because I could still hear her.
Not in words — more like a hum at the back of my skull, a faint rhythm in sync with my heartbeat. The tether between us wasn't fully broken. It was an open wound neither of us could close.
The screen flickered on. Depsy protocol menus. Warnings. Unauthorized access detected.
I entered her ID code anyway. V.ALE-0923.
The stabilizer whined to life, filling the room with that sterile electric buzz only Bureau tech could make.
"Unauthorized neural sync detected. Proceed?"
"Proceed," I muttered.
The voice in the machine hesitated, like even it pitied me.
"Subject mental state unstable. Memory overlap risk: 89%. Proceeding may result in permanent identity degradation."
I smiled bitterly. "Wouldn't be the first time."
The dive hit like drowning in reverse.
Sound first, then light. Then thought.
Every heartbeat became a pulse of static until reality unraveled — my body falling backward through a tunnel of color and noise. I reached for air, but there wasn't any. Just a voice.
"Ren…?"
Then everything stopped.
The world reassembled around me in fragments.
A field of white lilies under a black sky. The petals glowed faintly, swaying in wind that didn't exist. Above, no stars — only cracks of light like veins running through the dark.
This was Aria's mind.
At least, what was left of it.
"Aria?" I called out.
My voice echoed endlessly, bouncing across the empty landscape.
Silence.
Then — a laugh. Soft, broken.
I turned.
She stood a few meters away, barefoot, hair down, wearing the same coat from the train yard but soaked in shadow. Her expression was wrong. Too calm.
"You found me," she said. "But you shouldn't have."
I stepped closer. "I couldn't leave you here."
Her eyes flickered. Not glowing — reflecting. Like mirrors catching firelight.
"This isn't me, Ren," she said. "This is the residue. The part Depsy left behind."
"Then where are you?"
Her smile widened. "Everywhere."
The ground trembled.
The field of lilies turned black, petals burning away into ash. The air thickened with whispers — thousands of overlapping voices, murmuring fragments of conversations, screams, prayers, memories.
"You promised you'd fix me…"
"The procedure's gone too far…"
"She's merging—shut it down!
I clutched my head as the voices clawed through my skull.
"Aria!"
The illusion flickered — and the version of her standing there collapsed into static, melting into the earth.
Then another appeared behind me, whispering:
"You shouldn't have followed."
I spun around, but it wasn't her this time.
It was me.
Not the Echo — something worse. A warped, faceless version of myself stitched together from sound and memory. Its voice was deeper, hollow, like a recording played backward.
"You think you're saving her," it said, "but you're only digging up what she buried."
I tried to move, but my body felt heavy, dreamlike.
"Where is she?" I demanded.
"Inside the mirror."
It pointed — and I turned to see a massive, silver lake stretching across the horizon, still as glass. In its reflection, the world looked inverted: the lilies white again, the sky pale blue.
At its center, Aria stood knee-deep in the water, her hands covering her ears.
I ran.
The closer I got, the colder the air became. Every breath crystallized, and the whispers grew louder, circling me like flies.
When I reached her, she didn't look up.
"Aria, it's me. You need to wake up."
She shook her head slowly. "No. If I wake up, it all comes back. The screams. The experiments. The faces we erased."
"You weren't the only one there. I remember now too."
Her voice cracked. "Then you know why I had to erase you, Ren. You saw too much. The Bureau—"
"—used us."
She froze.
"That's what they do," I said. "We were their weapon, and when it broke, they buried it. But we're not done yet. Not until we take this to the surface."
Her reflection in the water moved differently from her body — smiling when she didn't.
"You can't take what doesn't exist," it whispered.
The reflection reached out of the lake and grabbed my wrist. Its hand was made of glass, cutting deep as it pulled.
The world shattered.
Suddenly I was underwater, lungs burning, surrounded by thousands of mirrored versions of us — all screaming silently. Each reflection was a different memory: interrogation rooms, operating tables, Bureau badges stained with blood.
One by one, they cracked apart, dissolving into light.
I kicked upward, trying to break through, but the surface kept moving farther away.
Then I felt her hand again — warm this time, not glass.
"Ren," she said, her voice echoing from above. "Don't drown in me."
I reached for her.
The world flipped.
I gasped, lying on my back in the lily field again. Aria was kneeling beside me, tears streaking down her face.
The sky was bright now — real blue, sunlight bleeding through the cracks.
"Is it over?" I asked, coughing.
She shook her head. "No. We're still inside. But the Echo's gone."
I sat up slowly. "Then who saved us?"
She hesitated. "Someone… older. The original Resonance."
Before I could ask, the ground cracked open with a deafening roar.
Through the fissure, I saw the Bureau's insignia burning like a brand — a massive, rotating seal of light and machinery.
The real world was pulling us back.
"They found the stabilizer," Aria said, grabbing my hand. "They're cutting the link."
"What happens if they do?"
"We forget again."
The light swallowed everything.
As I was torn upward, I caught one last glimpse of her — her eyes steady this time, no reflection, no lie.
"Remember me," she said. "Even if they erase it all."
Then everything went white.
I woke up on the floor of the safehouse, gasping, the stabilizer smoking beside me. My vision blurred. My hands trembled.
The clock said 3:02 a.m.
I'd been under for twelve minutes.
On the table lay Aria's pendant — now glowing faintly. When I opened it, the photograph inside had changed.
The two figures in the picture weren't smiling anymore.
They were looking at me.
Outside, sirens wailed in the distance.
The Bureau was coming.
And for the first time in years, I wasn't sure if I was the detective hunting demons — or the one being hunted.