The first sign she was back came in the form of a murder that didn't make sense.
Victim: male, late twenties. Found in a derelict apartment near the southern gridline. Cause of death: cerebral overload — brain fried from the inside out, no external wounds.
But the strangest part?
He died smiling.
I stood in the dim light of the apartment, the hum of static still lingering in the air like the ghost of a song. The walls were scorched with faint patterns — not burn marks, but resonance traces, glowing faintly under my scanner.
Same frequency range as the pendant.
Same emotional wavelength as her.
Takeshi's words from weeks ago echoed in my head: "They'll come for her data next."
What if they already had?
The Bureau had gone silent since the Mirrorfall leak. Rumor on the underground channels said half their leadership had disappeared into "reassignment." But the experiments never stopped. They just changed names.
And now people were dying with Aria's resonance signature carved into their nervous systems.
I crouched beside the victim. He looked peaceful, disturbingly so — eyes open, pupils dilated, lips curled into a faint grin. Like he'd seen something beautiful right before he died.
"You saw her, didn't you?" I murmured.
The air crackled. My scanner flickered. A pulse of energy ran through the room — faint, but familiar.
For a second, I swore I heard her voice in the static.
"Ren… leave this one."
I froze.
"Aria?"
Silence.
The hum faded.
Back at my apartment, I poured coffee that tasted like regret and stared at the pendant lying cracked on my table. It hadn't glowed since that night in the warehouse. Still, sometimes, when the city went quiet, I could feel her there — a whisper between frequencies, a thought too soft to name.
I wasn't sure if it was real anymore.
The Bureau's psychological reports called it resonance afterburn — the mind's way of coping with long-term psychic exposure. But I knew what I felt.
You don't mistake a ghost when it's the only thing that still answers you.
A knock at the door pulled me from my thoughts.
I tensed automatically — hand reaching for the hidden pistol under the counter.
"Relax, detective," a voice said from the other side. "If I wanted you dead, I'd have just hacked your apartment's life-support vents."
I sighed. "Hello, Mei."
The door slid open. Mei stepped inside — Bureau defector, rogue technopath, and professional pain in my ass. Her eyes flickered with faint data-light, reflecting the digital feeds running through her neural implants.
"You look terrible," she said, scanning me with her left eye. "No sleep. High neural activity. Still hearing the ghost?"
"Maybe."
"Good," she said with a grin. "Means I was right."
"About what?"
She tossed a data chip onto my table. "She's alive."
I stared at her. "That's not funny."
"It's not a joke." Mei sat, crossing her legs. "I traced several resonance anomalies over the past week. The pattern matches Aria Vale's cognitive signature — specifically her emotional frequency markers. Someone — or something — is replicating her."
"Replication?"
"Not a copy. An extension. Think of it as… the network dreaming about her."
"Great," I muttered. "Now she's an urban legend."
Mei shrugged. "Or she's evolving."
I rubbed my temples. "Where?"
She smirked. "North Grid. Sector 12. The old subway tunnels. You should see for yourself — assuming you're ready to talk to your dead partner again."
The tunnels were pitch-black, abandoned since the resonance collapse. The air was damp, heavy with dust and iron.
As I descended, my scanner began to flicker again — interference growing stronger with every step.
Then I heard it.
A faint hum, rhythmic, pulsing.
The same sound that had followed me since the Core.
"Aria," I called softly.
No answer.
But then, from deeper in the dark, came a voice — distant, layered, echoing from every direction at once.
"You shouldn't have come here, Ren."
I froze.
It was her voice.
Exactly her voice.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"Everywhere."
The walls flickered with light. Resonance lines appeared — thousands of glowing threads weaving across the concrete like veins. Each pulse carried her tone, her emotion, her memory.
"They're trying to rebuild me. Piece by piece. Every time they copy a resonance signature, I feel it. The echoes multiply. Some obey. Some don't."
My blood went cold. "You mean there are more of you?"
"Not me. Reflections. Empty empathy. They don't think — they react. The Bureau calls them Mirrors."
I took a shaky breath. "How many?"
The light dimmed.
"Too many."
The ground trembled. A low hum filled the tunnel, deeper than before. My scanner flashed red.
Something was coming.
From the darkness, a shape emerged — human-shaped, but wrong. Its skin flickered like broken glass, face shifting between Aria's features and nothing at all. Its eyes glowed faintly, reflecting my own expression of horror.
A Mirror.
It tilted its head, like a child learning how to mimic. Then it spoke — perfectly.
"Ren."
The same tone. The same warmth.
But no soul behind it.
It lunged.
I rolled aside, pulling my sidearm and firing two rounds. The bullets phased through it, dissolving into static. It screamed — a sound like shattering radios.
"Aria!" I shouted, backing away. "How do I stop it?!"
"You can't," her voice echoed from everywhere at once. "Not yet. But you can slow it down."
"How?"
"Give it something real."
I didn't understand — until the Mirror reached for me, and the cracked pendant around my neck flared with sudden light.
The creature stopped mid-stride. Its form twitched, then softened. For a brief second, its expression matched hers perfectly — gentle, curious, human.
Then it whispered — not Aria's voice this time, but its own.
"Hurts."
And before I could react, it imploded — a burst of resonance light scattering like dust into the air.
When the glow faded, the tunnel was silent again. Only the hum remained.
I stood there for a long time, panting, staring at the empty space where the Mirror had been. My hands were shaking.
Then her voice returned — faint, weary.
"I didn't want you to see that."
"You didn't give me much of a choice," I said quietly.
"They're multiplying faster than I can contain them. The Bureau is losing control. Soon the whole network will start echoing emotions — grief, anger, fear — uncontrolled resonance. You know what that means."
"Psychic collapse," I whispered. "City-wide."
"You need to find the central node before they do. It's the only way to shut the Mirrors down."
I swallowed hard. "And where's that?"
A pause. Then, softly—
"Inside me."
The tunnel lights flickered once more, then died completely.
I was left standing in the dark, surrounded by the faint afterimage of her face.
Somewhere far above, the city began to hum louder — streetlights flickering, comms networks distorting, data streams stuttering with whispers.
The resonance grid was waking up.
And she wasn't the only one inside anymore.