The apartment Helena rented sat four stories above an abandoned music shop, its cracked windows still plastered with faded posters of jazz trios and orchestras that hadn't played in a decade. Rowan stood by the window, watching rain drip down the glass, while Helena cleared space on her dining table.
She placed Kaia's red journal beside a metal lockbox.
"This was mailed to me two years ago," she said quietly. "No return address. Just a note inside that said: 'You'll know when to open it.'"
Rowan's brows pulled together. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't trust myself," she replied. "I haven't trusted my own reflections in over a year."
She keyed the lockbox open.
Inside, a stack of notebooks—Kaia's handwriting unmistakable—and a small black device. A portable audio recorder. Rowan picked it up carefully. The casing was scratched. The label on the back had one word:
"Echo_0."
Helena sorted through the notebooks and passed one over.
Kaia's log entries, dated chronologically. They began clinical, objective.
"Subject: Echo sample recovered from grid point Δ-4. Analysis pending. Pitch undetectable to human ear, yet measurable via EM-field distortion. Possibility of pre-verbal data encoding."
But as the pages turned, her tone shifted.
"Entry 12: I've been hearing it even when the device is off. I ran scans—no leaks, no secondary frequencies. The echo is inside my memory. It replays in dreams."
"Entry 17: I looked in the mirror and saw myself say something. But I hadn't opened my mouth. I recorded the gesture—then replayed the footage. There was no movement. But I remember speaking."
"Entry 21: It speaks back now. In pulses. Patterns. There's something under the noise, like a reverse voiceprint. Something wants to be known."
Rowan exhaled slowly. "She wasn't just studying it. She was absorbing it."
"She called me once," Helena said, sitting down. "Midnight. Said she figured it out. Said the echo wasn't a broadcast. It was a replica."
"A replica of what?"
Helena looked up. "Of thought. Intent. A way to bypass language completely. You don't hear the echo—you remember it. Like someone else's memory got written into your head."
Rowan's hands tightened around the recorder. "So this file—'Echo_0'—is the first full copy?"
Helena nodded. "Play it. Just… not near the mirrors."
---
They set the recorder on the kitchen counter and backed away. Helena dimmed the lights. Rowan pressed play.
At first, nothing. Static. Then—a low frequency rumble, soft as a heartbeat. Beneath it, like a whisper through cracked glass, came fragments of words.
"…not voice…"
"…not sound…"
"…mirror knows…"
"…remember me, even when I'm not…"
Rowan's jaw clenched. His vision blurred—not from volume, but from weight. The sound pressed against the inside of his skull like fingers probing through bone.
The lights flickered.
Helena slammed the stop button.
Both of them were breathing like they'd sprinted.
Something moved behind them.
Rowan turned slowly.
The reflection in the window didn't match.
He was standing still.
But the reflection was reaching for something.
He grabbed Helena's arm and dragged her away from the window just as it shattered inward. Glass sprayed the floor. Wind howled through the broken pane.
But no one was outside.
Only rain.
---
Later, Rowan sat on the bathroom floor, the door locked, the mirrors all covered. He held one of Kaia's other notebooks—an older one.
Inside, something caught his eye: a sketch of a circle made of mirrors, inscribed with foreign markings.
Below it, she'd written:
"The Ring doesn't reflect. It records. Each piece holds a copy of whoever stands inside."
"Echo_0 was never a sound. It was a being."
His hands began to tremble.
"What the hell were you building, Kaia…"
---
That night, Rowan dreamed of water.
An endless lake, black as ink. He stood at its edge, staring at his reflection.
Kaia stood beside him.
But not as he remembered her.
This Kaia was thin, translucent—like she was made of vapor and starlight. Her eyes were filled with static.
She touched his hand.
"You brought the seed back."
He tried to speak, but couldn't.
"The echo is awake now. You can't silence it. You can only decide what it becomes."
Then she looked at him—no, through him.
"They'll want to use it. To copy minds. To duplicate soldiers. But they don't understand."
The water behind her bubbled. A shape rising beneath the surface.
"You don't get to duplicate the soul."
And then she was gone.
---
He woke gasping, chest soaked in sweat, Kaia's words still echoing in his mind.
He looked at the recorder.
It was still off.
But the light was blinking.
---
Helena burst into the room, breath ragged. "You need to see this."
On her laptop, a waveform analysis was running—based on the Echo_0 playback.
"It's not random," she said. "It's recursive. Folding in on itself, building something."
"Building what?"
She clicked a key.
The waveform unfolded into a 3D map.
A city. Or a mind.
Dozens of interconnected nodes—mirrored halls, data loops, phrases etched along invisible walls.
"It's a map of cognition," Helena whispered.
"Of someone's mind. A digital echo."
And at the center of the map, one word pulsed.
KAIA