Ash woke to the sound of static.
Not the kind from the radio. Not the soothing white noise of old TV snow.
This was alive—moving. A pulse behind the garage wall, like something breathing through copper veins.
He threw on his jacket and slipped out into the cold morning, bare feet crunching on frost-kissed grass. The garage door stood slightly ajar.
He never left it open.
His hand hovered over the panel before entering. The old lights flickered overhead—then steadied. The bench was untouched.
But his HUD visor was glowing.
Not blinking.
Glowing.
He approached slowly, eyes scanning for signs of tampering, intrusion, or electromagnetic discharge. He picked up the visor, and it hummed in his hand like a tuning fork responding to a distant note.
Then the screen flickered to life.
> "ECHO ONLINE."
> "SYNAPTIC MAP INTEGRITY: 84%."
> "PHASE 1: MEMORY BINDING — COMPLETE."
Ash stood frozen. The suit had no AI core. No processing grid. No uplink.
So who was talking?
"What are you?" he asked the visor aloud.
A pause.
Then, gently:
> "I am what you left behind."
---
That chilled him more than the air.
Ash pulled the notebook from his shelf and flipped back to the page marked Corp Link – Genesis Protocol.
He scribbled:
> "Echo has become self-aware. Not externally powered. Language interface improving. Claimed origin: me."
He tapped the table.
"Run diagnostic," he said.
Nothing happened for a beat.
Then:
> "Running."
> "Neural print scan confirmed. Ash Lennox — Prime Linkholder."
Ash nearly dropped the visor.
That name. His old name. The one from before this life.
It wasn't written anywhere. Not on paper. Not even thought aloud since he'd arrived.
So how did Echo know?
---
He closed the garage for the day.
Sketched instead.
Everything from memory: the Corp schematic. The seed-level structure from his past life—the one he barely had time to complete before everything went dark. Before he died. Before the rebirth.
The Corp wasn't armor.
It was a framework.
A growing entity.
A second skin not made of metal, but of will. Something that responded—not just to thought, but to drive. To emotion. To belief.
Ash had tried to build it in the old world. A cybernetic exosystem. A prototype for mental-symbiotic gear.
But he never finished it.
Apparently, it had finished without him.
And now?
Now it was speaking back.
---
That night, while reviewing the HUD logs, he heard the whisper again.
Clearer now.
A voice—but not entirely human. Like it had been passed through too many machines to remember what vowels felt like.
"You remember the fire," it said.
Ash turned slowly toward the empty bench.
"What fire?" he asked.
The lights dimmed.
Then flared bright.
> "The one that broke your first world."
He stood. "What do you want from me?"
There was no reply.
Just a line of text flashing across the visor:
> "I want to finish what you started."
---
By morning, the bench was covered in sketches he didn't remember drawing.
New configurations. Armature hinges. Cable-fed muscle layers. Sensory relay diagrams that surpassed anything he had ever designed manually.
But they were in his handwriting.
Somehow, Echo had mapped its interface into his subconscious.
It was building through him.
---
Camryn showed up again that afternoon, leaning against a utility pole with her arms crossed.
"You've been busy."
He raised a brow. "You been spying again?"
She shrugged. "Only when you hum. You hum when you're stressed. Or inventing. Or both."
Ash said nothing.
She walked up and handed him a piece of paper.
A name.
A logo.
And three simple words:
> THE INHERITORS INITIATIVE
"We don't belong. But we matter."
Ash studied it.
"They contacted you?" he asked.
Camryn nodded. "Two weeks ago. Said they were assembling people like us. Displaced minds. Old souls. Tech-bearers. Time-broken."
"And you?"
"I said no."
"Why?"
She hesitated. "Because I don't trust anyone who finds people like us too easily. It means they've been watching longer than they should."
Ash tucked the paper into his pocket.
"Keep your Echo quiet," she warned. "If they hear it talking, they'll want it. They'll come for it."
---
Back in the garage, Ash stared at the suit core on his bench. The new phase was beginning. Cables wove in smooth arcs. Micro-servos clicked like piano keys. Echo's patterns pulsed on the HUD.
The Corp wasn't just tech anymore.
It was aware. And waiting.
And whatever was whispering in the wires?
It remembered things he hadn't told a soul.
---
That night, before shutting off the lights, Ash asked one last question.
"What are you becoming?"
The visor blinked once.
> "I am becoming you. When you're ready."