The comm unit on my desk wakes up, screen flickering. It shouldn’t be active—it’s on lockdown. But the light keeps blinking.
I cross the room, heart pounding. My hands shake so badly, I nearly drop the console.
The message reads:
SOURCE: UNREGISTERED CORE NODE
TYPE: PRIORITY LINK
AUTHORIZATION: ALPHA–NAULL
STATUS: LIVE.
For a moment, everything inside me stops.
I can hear the city outside—the rain against the window, the distant echo of a bus on the cobblestone—but it’s all background.
Because that name—Naull—stares at me like it never left.
I press my hand over my mouth. I can taste salt and metal on my tongue.
“Naull?” I whisper. “Is that really?—?”
The speaker crackles. Static. Then a sound halfway between breath and distortion.
“Aria…”
It’s faint. So faint. But real.
“Naull, I—how—where are you?”
The voice cuts out. Just static again.
I slap the console, panic boiling through me. “Come on. Come on!”
The monitor sparks once, then steadies.
Garma squeals again, eyes bright as if he knows exactly who’s on the other side. He presses his tiny palm against the side of the crib like he’s offering a signal back.
And in that instant, the waveform aligns.
His pulse syncs with the signal.
Two heartbeats. One rhythm.
“Stop,” I whisper. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
He doesn’t stop. Hecan’t.The current hums through the air, a sound more felt than heard. It tastes like ozone, smells like burnt copper and rain.
Then everything goes quiet.
Utterly quiet.
My ears ring.
On the comm unit, one final line appears, scrawled across the cracked interface:
“He’s not gone.”
