Scene 39: The One Who Listens Back
The desert was dead silent.
No insects. No wind. Even the stars above seemed to flicker without making a sound. Specialist Dana Reaves stepped out of the unmarked government vehicle and stared at the small, prefab structure squatting alone in the dust. No windows. Only a steel door, sealed with biometric locks and a single panel that blinked a soft red.
Inside was Subject Echo-9.
She adjusted her gear-camera drone, internal microphone, a handheld EM scanner-and stepped forward. The others stayed behind. No one wanted to be close when the subject started speaking. If it did speak.
Dr. Grant had told her Echo-9 hadn't made a sound in weeks. No screams, no mutters, no breathing. Just... vibrations.
"Be careful," the tech warned through her earpiece. "We lost three sensors last time it looked at the wall."
Reaves didn't answer. She was already keying the access code.
The door hissed open, releasing stale, metallic air. Her boots echoed faintly as she stepped inside-but the sound was immediately swallowed. The walls were made of some kind of acoustic foam, textured like diseased honeycomb, meant to absorb all reverberation.
Reaves blinked.
There he was.
Echo-9 sat in the far corner of the room. Shirtless, thin to the point of translucency. Veins like dark ink pressed beneath the skin of his neck. His eyes were closed, but she could see them twitching behind their lids.
His mouth hung slightly open. Just slightly. As if in mid-thought.
She activated her internal mic and whispered, "Subject Echo-9. Dana Reaves. I'm here to speak with you."
No response. No movement.
She stepped closer. Her boots didn't echo now. Not even a scuff.
"Do you remember the mine?" she asked, more softly. "Do you remember Carter?"
At that, the figure stirred. Not much-but his head tilted ever so slightly, as though angling an ear.
"You're one of them," he said. But the words didn't come from his mouth. They came from behind her.
Reaves spun, hand on her sidearm. No one. Empty room.
But the voice continued. Low. Smooth. It carried no direction, no source.
"You're not here to study. You're here to see if I'm contagious."
The lights flickered. For a moment, she saw movement in the shadows around his feet. Ripples in the concrete, like sound made visible.
"We thought it was a hole," she whispered, heart racing. "A place where sound went to die."
"It's not a hole," he said-or the voice said. "It's a lung."
He opened his eyes.
They were black. Not fully. Not empty. But filled with something swirling, like ink in water. And worse than that-she saw her own face reflected in them, moving differently than she was.
"I saw it," he continued. "I heard it. And then I realized-it's not sound that disappears. It's meaning."
Reaves stepped back. Her mic crackled. She tried signaling the team, but her voice wasn't broadcasting anymore. Her lips moved. No transmission.
"It listens through us," Echo-9 said. "And now it's learned to talk back."
She froze. His jaw unhinged slowly, like wet fabric being peeled open. There were too many teeth. Small ones. Like the teeth of a second mouth growing behind the first.
From his throat, a sound emerged. It wasn't a voice. Not exactly.
It was her voice.
Screaming.
She hadn't screamed.
But there it was-her own exact timbre, her panic, her sobs-rising from his throat like a playback from some ancient recorder buried in flesh.
"No," she gasped. "No, that's not real."
The floor beneath her vibrated.
The sound grew louder-not in decibels, but in presence. Like it existed in her bones now. Her teeth hurt. Her eyes watered. She felt like her own blood was humming.
Behind Echo-9, the wall stretched outward.
Like lungs inflating.
Like something enormous was breathing through him.
"You're not studying the silence," he said in her voice now. "You're feeding it."
Reaves backed toward the door, fumbling at the panel.
Nothing.
The light was red. Dead.
Her mic crackled once more-and then she heard them: other voices, buried in static. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. All whispering, overlapping in a rising chorus of terror.
Names.
Words.
Phrases she had never said, but remembered thinking.
Her thoughts weren't her own anymore.
"It wants to be understood," Echo-9 said, smiling.
The wall behind him cracked open-not stone or metal, but flesh-pulling apart like a wound, revealing darkness deeper than shadow.
Inside, something blinked.
Not an eye.
An ear.
Reaves screamed.
And heard herself screaming before her mouth opened.
The door finally unlocked.
She ran.
But behind her, from the depths of that not-room, not-human mouth, came one final whisper, echoing without echo:
"Now you know what we are."