The sirens stopped before they reached the block.
That was how I knew I was already surrounded.
Through the cracked blinds of the safehouse, I could see the reflection of red-blue lights bleeding into the rain-slick alley. No footsteps. No voices. Just that oppressive silence Bureau agents always carried with them — the kind that made the air hold its breath.
They didn't need to knock. They were just waiting for me to panic.
The stabilizer on the table was fried, still smoking. The smell of burnt circuits and ozone filled the room. My head was pounding, a steady ache that made the walls pulse.
Inside the hum, I could still hear her voice.
"Ren… stay awake."
I pressed my fingers to my temples. "I'm trying."
The knock finally came. Three soft taps.
"Detective Ishikawa," a calm voice said from the other side. Male, bureaucratic, detached. "You are under investigation for violation of Bureau code 8-17A: unauthorized neural breach and contact with an unclassified entity. Open the door."
I smiled despite myself. "You forgot murder, treason, and probable insanity."
No answer.
Just the hiss of static — not from outside, but from inside my head.
The walls rippled like heat. The voice repeated, but this time it came from behind me.
"Detective Ishikawa, open the door."
I turned. The same Bureau agent stood in the middle of my apartment, half-transparent, eyes glowing faintly.
A projection.
Or maybe a hallucination.
It was getting harder to tell the difference.
I backed toward the corner, gun raised. "You're not real."
The projection smiled faintly. "Neither are you, anymore."
Then it vanished.
The sound came back — a thousand whispers like a radio caught between stations. My knees hit the floor. Images flashed: the lily field, Aria's reflection, the moment her hand left mine.
"Remember me…"
I did. Too well.
Every thought now came in pairs — one mine, one hers. Every time I blinked, I saw through her eyes. A sterile room. Cold lights. A Bureau insignia spinning above her bed.
She was alive. Connected.
Still trapped.
I grabbed my coat and holstered my gun.
If the Bureau wanted me, they'd have to earn it.
I slipped through the back exit, down the old service stairwell that led into the drainage tunnels. The air was thick with mildew and chemical runoff. My boots splashed through black water as I moved deeper underground, following muscle memory more than thought.
Down here, the city was dead. Only the hum of the resonance grid above.
That's when I saw him.
A man waiting at the end of the tunnel — tall, wearing a Bureau coat, face half-hidden beneath his hat.
"Ren Ishikawa," he said, voice echoing. "You never were good at hiding."
I froze. "Takeshi?"
He stepped into the dim light. My old partner. The only human I ever trusted in Depsy.
"I read your report," he said. "Or what was left of it. You really did it — a mind-dive without authorization."
"She's alive in there, Takeshi. The Bureau lied."
He studied me for a long moment, then sighed. "You know what they'll do if they catch you. You're already listed as unstable. They'll wipe you clean and file you under 'containment failure.'"
"Then help me."
He shook his head. "You're not hearing me. You're not Ren Ishikawa anymore."
The way he said it — calm, almost pitying — made my stomach twist.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
He stepped closer, unbuttoning his coat. Inside, instead of a badge, there was a strange metallic sigil — a spiral engraved with red veins pulsing like a heartbeat.
"The dive fractured your neural pattern. Half of you didn't come back. The part that did… isn't entirely human."
"That's Bureau propaganda," I snapped.
"Is it?"
He reached out and grabbed my wrist.
For a moment, everything stopped.
His touch sent a surge through me — resonance waves colliding, overlapping frequencies. I saw flashes: a lab filled with pods, Aria strapped to one of them, her body twitching as light tore through her. And next to her… another pod.
Mine.
My body, motionless, eyes open.
Takeshi's voice echoed inside my skull:
"You're the echo that came back, Ren."
I tore my hand away and stumbled backward.
"No. That's not possible."
But the tunnel had changed. The walls were gone. The air hummed with static. We weren't in the city anymore — we were inside the memory.
Takeshi stood perfectly still, like a mannequin caught between frames.
This isn't happening.
But it was.
I looked down at my hands — flickering, glitching, transparent. Every edge of my body blurred like unfinished code.
Aria's voice cut through the noise.
"Ren, listen. You're not the echo. You're what survived it. You're real because I remember you."
"Where are you?" I shouted.
"Follow the sound."
The memory shattered. I was back in the tunnel, gasping, Takeshi gone. Only the red sigil remained, burned into the wall like a brand.
I pressed my palm to it. It was warm.
And beneath it, faintly, I heard the sound of her heartbeat.
The Bureau wasn't just tracking me — they were using me. Every step I took, every thought, was feeding back into the resonance grid. They were trying to locate her through me.
I pulled my hand away. "Not this time."
If they wanted a ghost, I'd give them one.
By dawn, I'd made it to the outskirts — the industrial ruins where the city's old psychotech labs used to be before the Bureau cleaned house. The sky was gray, ash still falling from some distant fire.
Inside one of the abandoned buildings, I found what I was looking for: a broken neural cradle. Outdated, unstable — but still functional enough for one more dive.
I started rewiring it, hands shaking. Every spark felt like déjà vu.
Aria's hum grew louder in my head, almost like she was standing behind me.
"You shouldn't come back here."
"I told you," I muttered, "I'm not leaving you."
"You can't save both of us."
"Then I'll save what's left."
I strapped in. The machine roared to life, lights flickering, metal vibrating under my hands. My reflection in the shattered glass above the cradle was smiling — but not in sync with me.
The Echo.
"Round two?" it asked.
I met its gaze. "No. Endgame."
The world began to unravel again.
Static.
Light.
Sound.
And then — silence.
For the first time since the Dive, my mind felt clear. The fear, the noise, the confusion — gone. Only one thought remained, cold and sharp as a blade:
The Bureau wanted control.
I wanted truth.
And Aria… Aria wanted freedom.
We couldn't all win.
The machine pulsed one final time.
The hum turned into a steady rhythm — two heartbeats merging into one.
Then, in the distance, her voice again, calm, steady, real:
"Welcome back, Detective."