The next morning, the city's sky was tinted orange — not from sunrise, but from the haze of smoke drifting in from the east. Something had burned overnight.
Arian knew without asking: someone had found the mural.
He kept his head down as he walked past the Ministry checkpoint. Security was tighter. Drones flew lower. Uniforms stood with rifles unlatched. This wasn't routine.
Inside the Ministry of Reconciliation, the tension was a thread wound tight around everyone's necks. Files opened slower. Conversations were whispers. A cold pressure sat in the air, like the silence itself had sharpened.
Arian slipped into his cubicle and booted his console. A single file blinked:
PRIORITY CODE RED
Source: Intercepted Radio Transmission
Status: Unauthorized Broadcast
Title: THE BLACK BROADCAST
He frowned.
Black broadcasts were myth — stories used to scare Ministry recruits. Pirate signals that hacked through the Republic's sound walls. Forbidden voices, cursed music, propaganda from the "Erased."
He clicked PLAY.
White noise.
Then a whisper. Warped. Echoing.
"To those who still remember… the silence has cracked."
The voice wasn't mechanical. It wasn't filtered.
It was human. Live.
"Truth still breathes. Memory still burns. And the Ash will rise."
A shrill tone spiked, and the file cut to static.
Arian sat motionless. His hand was shaking.
That voice... it sounded like someone he knew. Someone he'd heard in old recordings — training files from the archives.
It sounded like his father.
He left his cubicle. Walked with purpose, but not too fast. Nima intercepted him in the corridor, pretending to organize her data pad.
"You heard it?" she murmured.
He nodded.
"Your father's voice?"
"Could be AI mimicry."
"No. The timing's too perfect. And if he's alive…"
She didn't finish. She didn't need to.
Arian took a breath. "We need the source."
"There's a trace log," Nima said. "One node pinged before blackout. Radio Tower Nine. Abandoned years ago."
"They'll already be there."
"Not yet. Security was pulled to the southern fire. Someone's covering for us."
Arian didn't ask who. Nima had connections he'd never understand.
The tower was a corpse in steel.
Once the crown of the city, Tower Nine had been gutted after the Erasure — its radio dish snapped in half, the elevator shafts flooded. But inside, whispers still echoed.
They slipped in through a broken vent, crawled past shattered walls and fire-black stairs. Graffiti covered the old studio walls. Most of it was nonsense — tag codes and gang signs — but one stood out:
"REMEMBER THE SOUND OF YOUR OWN NAME."
At the top floor, Arian found it — the old broadcast room.
Dust-coated consoles. Fractured glass. A rusted microphone still dangling from its wire like a noose.
He walked to the center. A light blinked. Faint. Red.
Nima stared. "That's live."
Arian approached the console.
The screen lit up. A single sentence:
"ARIAN VALE, SAY IT."
He looked at Nima.
She nodded once.
He leaned into the mic and whispered:
"Ash."
The light turned green.
And the console came alive.
A thousand images flashed across the screen — faces, maps, fragments of memory. Too fast to catch. Then it settled on a single file:
OPERATION: ECHO MANIFEST
Nima clicked it.
A video began.
Grainy. Old.
A room filled with people wearing cracked-circle masks. In the center — a younger version of Arian's father. Eyes fierce. Voice sharp.
"This is the last record before the burn. If you're seeing this, then silence failed. We tried to save memory. We stored it in ash, sound, dreams. We couldn't stop them all — but we seeded the code."
The camera zoomed in on a disk — etched with symbols. The cracked circle in the center.
"This is Echo Code 19. One of seven. It contains the root phrase."
The feed distorted.
"Your name, your life, your thoughts — all rewritten. The Republic doesn't erase memories. It replaces them."
The feed cut out.
Arian turned to Nima.
"What's the root phrase?"
She was pale.
"I don't know. But if it's real — it can undo the Erasure."
A metallic click echoed behind them.
Arian froze.
A red dot appeared on Nima's shoulder.
"Step away from the console," said a voice behind them.
Republic Security.
They'd found them.
They ran.
Down three flights. A wall of guards. They doubled back. Nima slammed a side door shut, then locked it with her bracelet key.
"They knew," Arian gasped. "They waited for us."
"They want the Echo Disk. They knew it would call you."
Bullets cracked against the walls.
They ducked into an old soundproof studio — a sealed chamber.
The walls inside were lined with black foam, molded into patterns.
Symbols.
Not random.
Arian ran his fingers over one. His vision jumped.
For a brief second, he saw another room. A crowd. A revolution banner.
A sound-mapped memory.
"This place is a vault," Nima whispered. "These shapes… they store fragments."
"But how do we access them?"
Arian stared at the pattern. Then remembered the broadcast.
He leaned close to the wall and said:
"Ash remembers."
The pattern pulsed. And his mind was pulled in.
He stood in the past.
But not as a spectator — as a participant.
He was standing in a courtyard, surrounded by masked rebels. Firelight. A stage.
His father on the podium.
"This city forgot itself," the man shouted. "So we gave it a memory. One that burns."
Arian felt everything — the heat, the fear, the thunder in his chest.
"They'll try to silence this moment. But as long as one voice remembers… we remain."
Then — soldiers. Gunfire. Screams.
Flames swallowed everything.
The memory shattered.
He fell to his knees back in the vault.
Blood from his nose.
Nima helped him up.
"You accessed a raw imprint," she said. "That's not supposed to be possible."
Arian stared at his trembling hands. "I felt him. My father. He was there."
Nima stepped back.
"Arian… you didn't just access the memory."
"What do you mean?"
"You were the center of it."
A pause.
"You weren't just watching the past."
"You were the past."