The tower never turned back on.
We stayed until dawn, waiting for the hum to restart,
but it didn't.
Only frogs, and the slow tick of cooling metal.
Hana said we should review everything, see what connected.
So we did.
One tape after another, stacked on the floor like offerings.
The pattern was obvious now:
every case circled back here.
Every voice, every chant, every timestamp—
all pointing to August 10, 2004.
Manit's date.
The first case.
The one we stopped mentioning months ago.
We played his tape again.
Static, rain, a half-sentence.
Then a loud crack—
like a wire snapping underwater.
I remembered that sound.
The flash in the corner of my eye.
The smell of burning rain.
But memory is tricky.
It rearranges itself to keep you safe.
Hana wrote notes in her small ledger, the paper rippling from humidity.
She circled my name three times.
When I asked why, she said quietly,
"Every tape calls for you. Not me."
I laughed, but it sounded hollow.
"Because I hold the mic."
She didn't argue.
We checked the footage from the post office again.
In the reflection of the window,
only one person moves.
The other—the one holding the camera—
is still, mouth half-open, eyes unfocused.
I told her it was shutter lag.
She said nothing.
The later reels had changed.
Whole minutes missing.
New sounds added—
breathing that didn't match ours.
On the Floodplain reel,
someone whispers my name
before the recorder starts.
Before we arrived at the site.
Hana found something else:
a final entry in Manit's logbook.
The page was warped, the ink bled out,
but the words still readable.
"Power surge during storm.
Koy still outside checking the relay."
She looked up at me slowly,
eyes wet, face unreadable.
"You never came back that night," she said.
I opened my mouth, but the sentence wouldn't form.
There was a ringing in my ears—
the kind you get after lightning.
The tower lights flickered once.
Only once.
The speakers on the desk hissed,
then played something new.
Not static.
A voice, calm and close.
Mine.
"Signal received. Field stable.
Tell Hana I'll stay until it clears."
I don't remember saying that.
The air turned colder.
The floor beneath the desk shimmered wet,
as if water were seeping through the concrete.
Hana backed away.
Her reflection stayed where it was.
She whispered,
"You've been here the whole time."
The recorder clicked.
The hum returned—
soft, patient, endless.
We both stared at the tower through the window.
Every bulb glowed again,
each pulse slower than the last.
I tried to stand,
but the room felt heavy,
like the air itself had hands.
In the reflection, Hana was crying.
I wasn't.
My face just watched her, calm,
as if it had already known.
The last thing the recorder caught
was her voice, shaking:
"I found him."
Then static.
Then nothing.
(End of Chapter 10 — "The Quiet Broadcast")