Lei slid into the residential tower lobby, the silence so profound he could hear the faint, high-pitched whine of the fluorescent light tubes on the ceiling. The building was old, its entrance secured by a biometric scanner that now blinked uselessly in the Quiet Hours. Most residents used a heavy, physical key for backup after the Ghosts learned to exploit digital signatures—but Lei knew Mei. She was practical.
He pulled a thin, polymer shim from a hidden pocket in his jacket. Mei's apartment, 1204, was on the twelfth floor. The elevator was out of the question; the mechanical hum of the cables would be an auditory lighthouse. The stairs were the only path.
Each step on the cracked marble staircase was a negotiation. He tested the weight of his foot on the edge of the riser before committing, using the momentum of his ascent to mask the small creaks the old building made. He reached the twelfth floor, his thighs burning, his breath coming in shallow, controlled puffs.
Mei's door was unlocked. Not open, but the key card reader showed an amber light—a forced override. Panic spiked Lei's adrenaline. Someone else had been here.
He pushed the door inward just enough to slip through, flattening his back against the wall of the narrow entryway.
The apartment smelled like her: jasmine soap, burnt sugar from a failed baking experiment, and the metallic tang of old circuit boards. It was messy, far more chaotic than Mei ever allowed. Books were knocked off shelves, and her corkboard—usually pinned with neatly organized research notes—was ripped halfway off the wall. This wasn't a robbery; it was a desperate search.
The realization brought a chill worse than the night air. The Jìngwù didn't search; they consumed. Someone human had been looking for something specific.
Lei crept to the kitchen, his mind racing. He remembered their last date, a week ago, where she was nervously tapping a thin, customized tablet. "It's the key, Lei. Not just to the Ghosts, but to what the government is doing," she'd whispered, her eyes wide with fear and excitement. She had sworn she would never keep it in the apartment.
No, he corrected himself, scanning the disarrayed cabinets. She wouldn't keep the tablet here. She would keep the backup.
Mei's passion was vintage tech. She loved the idea of data permanence. He moved to the small, dark bedroom and went straight for the ancient, hollowed-out CRT monitor she used as a nightstand.
It was empty.
His heart sank. He checked under the loose floorboard she'd shown him—empty.
Lei slumped onto the bed, the action letting out a sigh from the old mattress springs. The sound, muffled as it was, made him instantly regret the carelessness. He froze, listening. Nothing. Only the omnipresent, humming silence of the Quiet Hours.
As his hand brushed against the pillow, he felt a strange rigidity. He lifted the pillow, and there it was: a flat, silver data chip, taped securely to the seam of her pillowcase. It wasn't the tablet; it was a storage chip. A cold surge of gratitude and renewed fear washed over him. She hadn't been careless—she had been brilliant.
Lei quickly inserted the chip into his burner phone. The screen flashed a warning: Encrypted. Requires Bio-Sync.
He knew the protocol. He placed his right index finger over the phone's fingerprint reader. The screen glowed green, and a single, hastily written file opened.
The first thing Lei saw wasn't data, but a note from Mei, typed in a frantic, large font:
Lei—If you're reading this, I failed. They came for the data, not the location. This chip has the Source Echo and the frequency analysis.
Listen to this:
File: JINGWU_SOURCE_ECHO.WAV
The Jìngwù don't hunt sound. They hunt familiarity. Every time a government countermeasure is deployed—every Mute-Box, every city-wide broadcast—it trains them. They learn what noise is irrelevant and what noise is prey. It's a bio-cognitive feedback loop.
They are not aliens. They are adaptive listening tools. And the Source Echo proves they were built to respond to a very specific frequency. The government created the perfect hunter and then lost control of the mute button.
Lei stared at the screen, the world tilting. Not aliens? Adaptive tools? The government's assurances, the official reports, the entire foundation of the city's terror, was a lie.
He scrolled down and hit play on the audio file.
A low, gentle pulse, unlike anything he'd ever heard, began playing—too low for human ears, but he could feel the faint vibration through the phone's case. It lasted 1.7 seconds, identical to the mysterious sound in Elara Vance's data.
Ting.
Suddenly, the phone's built-in proximity sensor flashed red, overriding the display. The Sensory Augment app, still running in the background, was screaming a localized alert. Target Proximity: 30 Meters. Multiple Signatures.
The Ghosts were in the building. And they were coming up fast. The vibration he felt wasn't the Echo; it was the entire stairwell shaking with their heavy, rhythmic, segmented ascent. His phone, which was never supposed to emit an audible sound, was clearly broadcasting the Source Echo that commanded them. He had just activated the very signal the Ghosts were programmed to find.
Lei ripped the data chip out of the phone, his window of discovery slammed shut, replaced by the immediate reality of action and horror. He was trapped.