New Atlas City, 2179. 2:13 A.M.
Neon lights pulsed through the rain like restless nerves. Massive ad-screens lit the sky with flickering, sleepless faces repeating endlessly.
"Choose your personality backup like you'd choose a bottle of wine."
The cheery slogan stood in eerie contrast to the dead silence of the street.
Kael Voss leaned against the cracked seat of a mag-lev taxi, eyes fixed on the body being wheeled out under a rain-slick tarp.
It was the seventh "neural echo" case this month—the victim's body certified dead, but their implanted neural chip remained active for 72 hours postmortem, even sending out data streams.
Though the body was covered, a faint glimmer blinked at the corner of the eye—
The chip still reaching for a connection,
As if the dead were still trying to speak.
"What do you think?" Lieutenant Miro's voice was low, tense beside him.
Kael didn't answer immediately. His fingers tapped rapidly on his wrist console, rerouting the signal to his personal decryption grid. Code scrolled violently, then—
A clean voice, breaking through the noise.
A woman's voice, distorted, unstable, as if echoing from deep underwater:
> "Kael… do you remember me? Don't trust them… You… you've died before too..."
Kael's pupils contracted. That voice—impossible.
It was Amira.
She'd died six years ago in a failed AI transfer experiment. There shouldn't have been any consciousness left.
And yet here it was—her voice riding a signal from a stranger's brain, calling out like a ghost from the abyss.
Miro looked at him. "You know that voice?"
Kael nodded slowly.
Said nothing.
The rain intensified.
And he knew: he was pulled back in.
Not into a murder case—
But into a pit deeper than death itself. A pit of lost memories, synthetic ghosts, and truths no one dared name.
And still, the voice echoed,
A whisper from a dream he'd forgotten:
"You… have died before…"