The first sound was not a voice.It was breathtaking.Not air moving through lungs, but the echo of something remembering how to exist.The city shuddered as Project Echo unfolded layer by layer, old code peeling back like scar tissue. Screens across the dead zone flickered, then stabilized, flooding with symbols that predated every language Adrian knew. They were not commands. They were impressions. Emotional markers embedded into logic.Fear.Curiosity.Rage.Hope.Adrian staggered back a step, his hand pressing to his chest as the presence surged closer, threading itself through Origin’s core with intimate familiarity.It did not feel hostile.That terrified him more than if it had.Alina’s fingers flew across her console, her voice tight but steady. “Echo isn’t hijacking Origin. It’s… harmonizing with it. Like it’s always been there. Like a shadow.”Hale had gone completely still. Whatever triumph he had worn moments earlier had drained from him, leaving something raw beneath the

The voice did not arrive through speakers.It did not echo through comms or manifest as text across Origin’s interface.It arrived the way memories did.Suddenly. Intimate. Unavoidable.Adrian staggered as the presence settled into the architecture around him, not invading, not forcing, but unfolding with a familiarity that made his chest tighten. The city dimmed slightly, lights lowering as if in deference, as if something older than Origin itself had just taken a breath.Irena caught him before he fell.“Adrian,” she said, gripping his jacket, her eyes searching his face. “Stay with me.”He nodded, though his gaze had gone distant. “It’s not a signal,” he whispered. “It’s a perspective.”Around them, the Vanguard assault stalled completely. Units froze mid advance, weapons locked, their systems caught in a recursive loop Origin had not authored.Alina stared at her tablet, fingers hovering uselessly over the screen. “This isn’t Origin behavior. This is… negotiation logic. Two system

The voice did not come from the speakers.It came from everywhere else.From the spaces between systems, from the pauses Origin left behind when it waited for Adrian to decide, from the quiet hum beneath the city that no longer sounded like machinery but like thought.“Do you hear it too?”The words slid into Adrian’s mind with unsettling familiarity. Not invasive. Not violent.Intimate.He staggered back a step, breath catching as the sensation took hold. It felt like remembering something he had never been allowed to keep.“I know that voice,” he whispered.Irena tightened her grip on his arm. “Adrian, talk to me. What’s happening?”Before he could answer, the city shifted again.Not defensively.Not protectively.Curiously.Lights dimmed across the skyline as Origin reallocated attention inward. Roads froze mid-adaptation. Surveillance feeds paused. Vanguard units trapped in dead corridors found their HUDs blanking out, not jammed, simply… ignored.The system was no longer watching

The voice did not arrive through speakers.It arrived through memory.Adrian felt it like a hand brushing the inside of his skull, gentle in the way only something that knew him perfectly could be. Not invasive. Not violent. Familiar enough to be unbearable.You always did hesitate.His breath caught. Around him, the city continued to breathe, lights pulsing in patient rhythms, Origin holding its equilibrium as if sensing his falter. The others felt it too. Not the voice, but the shift. The air thickened, pressure building without sound.Irena tightened her grip on his arm. “Adrian. Talk to me.”He swallowed. “He’s here.”Marco’s jaw clenched. “Who.”Adrian closed his eyes.“The part of me that never left.”The projection above the fractured ground warped, its geometry bending inward. Data streams collapsed into a single vertical form, light shaping itself into something almost human. Almost.A boy stood there.Not a child exactly. Early twenties perhaps. Same height as Adrian. Same p

The first thing Adrian understood was that the presence did not feel new.It felt memorable.Not as a face or a name, but as pressure behind his thoughts, like a second set of fingerprints on every decision he had ever made. Origin’s lattice vibrated beneath his feet, not in alarm, not in resistance, but in recognition that ran deeper than logic.Project Echo was not a system waking up.It was a conversation resuming.The air around him cooled as light condensed into form. Not a hologram. Not an avatar. Something closer to a shadow learning how to stand upright.A figure emerged from the fractured glow at the city’s core.Human in outline. Indistinct in detail.And unmistakably deliberate.Adrian’s breath hitched as the presence settled into clarity, the way a storm does when it finally chooses where to break.The voice came without sound, threaded directly through his perception.You took longer than I expected.Irena felt it too. Her hand tightened on Adrian’s sleeve as if she were