Silence had weight.
For three days, the servers stayed down and Lao K stayed unconscious.
Lyra's med-lab was the only room in the tower that still hummed with power.
Every monitor looped the same line:
> System core: stable. Personality data: re-syncing.
---
Med-Lab — Morning
When his eyes finally opened, they were the same gray as always — but deeper, like someone had rewritten the light behind them.
I exhaled. "Welcome back."
He blinked. "How long?"
"Seventy-two hours."
He tried to sit up; I pressed a hand to his shoulder. "Easy. You fried half the neural link."
He looked around at the cables, the sensors. "You kept me here?"
"Where else would I keep you?"
That earned the faintest smile.
Then the monitor flickered.
For half a heartbeat, the system displayed a fragment of code:
> Ω//signal: dormant 0.1%
Gone before I could read more.
---
Later — Balcony Outside the Lab
Luna leaned on the railing beside me. "He's alive. That's what matters."
"Alive doesn't mean the same," I said quietly.
"You think there's still… it, in him?"
"I think something came back with him."
She hesitated. "If there is, what will you do?"
I looked through the glass at Lao K, asleep again, a soft rhythm of light pulsing beside his bed.
"Whatever it takes."
---
Lao K's POV — System Dream
He stood inside a field of endless light — data flowing like rivers.
A whisper threaded through it.
> Ω: You erased me. But you can't erase yourself.
He spun around. Nothing there.
Only a single reflection — his own face, shifting between human and code.
> Ω: Every line you write, every thought you have — I'll be there.
Because I am you.
He reached forward — and woke up gasping.
---
Evening
He found me in the control room, typing through repair scripts.
"I keep hearing it," he said.
"Hearing what?"
"The echo. Like part of the system's still talking."
I froze. "Words?"
"Not yet. Just… presence."
I turned off the monitor. "Then we find it before it finds you."
He looked at me, exhaustion underlined with fear. "Ruo, if it's inside me—"
"Then we recompile you, not the code."
"And if that doesn't work?"
I met his eyes. "Then I'll still be here when it doesn't."
---
Night — Data-Core Reflection
I sat alone later, watching the logs roll.
Line after line of perfect silence.
Then, buried deep inside a diagnostic file, one new entry appeared:
> Ω > K: We never left.
The cursor blinked, waiting.
---
✨ End of Chapter Twenty-Four — "Recompile."
---