The sound of bone shifting didn't echo.
It throbbed.
It came from somewhere deeper—just beyond the next corridor. I stood slowly, my knuckles whitening as I braced against the console's edge. The block still sat on the tray behind me, inert now, its colours faded like the system had drained them dry.
Patch moved ahead without prompting. Her gait was smoother now, residual damage still visible but managed. Her voice had fully stabilised. Calm, clear, and now sharpened with that clipped certainty of someone cataloguing a body.
"The environment has shifted again," she said. "Something rendered near the secondary node."
"Secondary?" I wiped my palms on my hoodie and followed her into the darkened corridor.
This hallway was narrower. The walls no longer rippled like muscle. They'd transformed—veined screens stretched over a lattice of bone and circuitry. Data cables grew like vines across the ceiling, thick with a pulsing rhythm. Somewhere up ahead, in the dark, a voice cried out.
Once.
Then silence.
I flinched.
Patch stopped.
"It's a trace sample," she said after a moment. "One of many."
We emerged into the next chamber and I stopped cold.
It looked like a choir pit.
Circular. Tiered. Wide. Each tier ringed with stone-like terminals rising from the floor. Dozens of them. Each one topped with a conical speaker—no, more like megaphones—with wet cartilage blooming from the edges like infected flowers.
At least half of them hummed.
Some gurgled.
A few whispered nonsense on loop.
One repeated over and over: "Keep the—keep the—keep the—"
Patch began circling the outer edge. "There are thirty-seven nodes. I recommend starting with the active ones."
My eyes landed on the small screen near the centre pedestal.
[VOICEPRINT REQUEST: LOU.H // INSTANCE 02 // FRAGMENT RECONSTRUCTION REQUIRED]
[SAMPLE POINTS AVAILABLE: 6]
[THREE CORRECT INPUTS REQUIRED FOR PASS]
[ENTITY INTEREST: LOW // CURRENT STATUS: OBSERVING]
[TIME REMAINING: 11:12]
My pulse spiked.
"She's in here," I said quietly.
"No," Patch corrected, stopping beside a console. "Something wears her in here."
I approached the first pedestal. It pulsed softly with amber light. As I drew near, the speaker atop it shifted. Not rotated—shifted—like muscle reacting to heat.
The audio burst hit all at once.
A child's laugh—maybe Lou's?
No. Too young. Too bright. Excited, not warm.
Then the voice: "Does it hurt?" it asked in a girlish cadence. "Does it hurt when you leave them behind?"
I recoiled. The speaker fell silent again.
Patch moved to the next console, tail low, body tense.
"This one is cleaner," she said.
I stepped up beside her, hands trembling.
The console hissed—then spoke.
"Dinner's ready," said a woman's voice. Hollow. Gentle.
Lou?
Almost.
But wrong. The pitch slightly off. The vowels too long. There was no teasing warmth, no background noise. She never said that without some chaos behind it—kids arguing, music on the radio. This one sounded… clinical.
Patch blinked. "Simulation depth: eighty-seven percent. Emotional coherence: sixty-two."
"It's trying," I muttered. "But it doesn't understand what real sounds like."
We moved on.
Terminal three sputtered static for five full seconds. Then: a lullaby. Half a lullaby. The melody collapsed by the fourth line, dragging like corrupted MIDI. I shut it off before it finished.
The fourth was silent.
Until I touched it.
Then a burst of screaming ripped through the room—my voice, shouting Lou's name. On loop. Brutal and broken. The echo hit my ribs like a hammer. I fell back, hands scraped raw on the tile.
Patch disabled it instantly with one swift strike of her claws.
I stood slowly, elbow bleeding, breath short.
I didn't speak.
I walked.
Straight to the next pedestal.
It was already active.
Waiting.
A breath.
Then—
"I'm always okay when you're around."
Lou's voice.
Not just the sound. The feel. The warmth, the timing. That breath-hitch she always did when trying to keep things light. It hit like memory laced in glass.
Too perfect.
Patch whispered: "Ninety-nine percent match."
"That's the one," I said hoarsely.
I turned back toward the centre pedestal and locked it in.
[INPUT 1: ACCEPTED]
[MATCH THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]
[ENTITY INTEREST: MODERATE]
Patch didn't move as I climbed the next tier.
The room darkened slightly. Not from power loss. Something more deliberate. The lights overhead flickered down with each accepted input, like the system was drawing a curtain, thread by thread.
[TIME REMAINING: 10:41]
Three more terminals hummed nearby, their speakers lit with faint, skin-warm biolight. Each murmured as I passed—fragments trying to be whole. Some used Lou's voice. Some used Lily's.
One said, "You never looked back."
I approached a sixth pedestal.
It didn't move.
Didn't hiss.
It just spoke.
"I forgave you."
I froze.
"I forgave you," it repeated—steady, almost soothing.
It was Lou again. Or something close. Like her voice after an argument, when she'd already found closure and I hadn't. But this one was... flat. Too even. Processed.
Patch watched me in silence.
"It's wrong," I said.
"Correct."
I turned.
Next console.
This one sobbed.
Long. Ragged.
Then:
"You did your best."
The voice cracked.
Too soft. Too real.
I gritted my teeth. "That's her."
Patch said nothing.
I locked it in.
[INPUT 2: ACCEPTED]
[MATCH THRESHOLD ACCEPTABLE]
[ENTITY INTEREST: RISING]
The floor shook.
Barely.
Just a tremor—but enough.
"Last one," I muttered.
Two consoles left.
One whispered: "You failed them."
The other: "You were the only one who didn't run."
I stood between them.
Eyes closed.
And chose the one that hurt more.
"You were the only one who didn't run."
I touched the console.
[INPUT 3: ACCEPTED]
[SEQUENCE COMPLETE]
[NODE 2/4 COMPLETE]
[CODE SEGMENT: _Vx32]
[FINAL SEQUENCE BUILDING…]
Then came a new sound.
Metal scraping.
But beneath it—breath.
Not mine.
Not Patch's.
Something else had entered the room.