The train they hijacked ran along dead rails—tracks forgotten by time, too twisted and rusted for official use. It was slower than any Republic transport, but it was invisible to surveillance. The perfect ghost ride.
Arian stared through a narrow window, watching the trees blur past like smudged memories. Each breath felt like it belonged to someone else now. He still hadn't gotten used to the idea that his voice, his name, might have been written by someone else's hand.
Across from him, Nima was studying an old digital map. Static interference cut through the terrain lines every few seconds. She was tense—more than usual.
"You trust this route?" Arian asked.
"No," she said. "But it's the only one that gets us to Kes without crossing a Republic control grid."
"Assuming Kes is even real."
Nima glanced up. "He's real."
"Then why hasn't he surfaced in all these years?"
She closed the map.
"Because if Varen Kes wanted to be found… we'd already be dead."
They arrived at dusk. The safehouse was buried deep in the Ardent Pines, where signal couldn't reach and even drones got confused. The trees whispered with wind that sounded almost like voices.
The door was unmarked. Rusted steel with no handle. A scanner protruded from the trunk of a fake tree.
Nima stepped forward, pressing her wrist to it.
The scanner beeped.
"Access denied."
A second later, a voice echoed from the speaker. Calm. Cold.
"No visitors. Especially not ghosts."
Arian stepped up. "We're not ghosts."
Silence.
Then: "No?"
He leaned into the scanner.
"Ash remembers."
A pause.
Then a low chuckle.
"You brought me poetry?"
The door slid open.
Inside was a labyrinth of twisted metal and forgotten machines. Analog tech lined the walls—reel-to-reel recorders, CRT screens, ancient typewriters. A place untouched by the Republic's digital silence.
And in the middle sat Varen Kes.
Tall. Lean. His gray hair was swept back like iron filaments. His face, weathered by guilt. Eyes sharp like cracked ice.
He didn't look surprised to see them.
"You're him," Arian said.
Kes nodded once. "And you're the boy who woke the Broadcast."
Arian stepped forward. "You built the Silence. You erased my father. You stole my name."
Kes didn't deny it.
"I erased millions, boy. Yours was just one more puzzle piece."
Nima drew her pistol. "Then give us a reason not to end you now."
Kes didn't flinch.
"Because the Silence is cracking, and when it breaks, the Republic will fall into chaos. Unless someone knows how to navigate memory when it floods back."
He stood, walking toward a wall covered in hand-drawn schematics.
"You think voices were stolen? That memories were deleted?"
He tapped a massive blueprint—circular, symbol-laced, like a clock with no numbers.
"They weren't. They were redirected."
Arian frowned. "To where?"
Kes turned.
"To people like you."
He led them deeper underground. Each level descended further into the forgotten.
On Level Six, they found a vault filled with voiceprints—etched into glass cylinders, each labeled with a name and a symbol. Thousands.
"Every erased voice," Kes said, "was threaded into a living neural map. Seven carriers. Seven Echo Hosts. When you speak certain words, you trigger fragments."
"So what happens when all seven speak at once?" Nima asked.
Kes smiled faintly.
"The Republic loses control."
Arian stepped close to a cylinder labeled MIRA VALE.
His mother's name.
He touched it.
A soft chime echoed.
"Arian," a voice whispered. "Don't forget who you were before they told you who to be."
His hands trembled.
"I want to bring her back."
Kes stepped between him and the cylinder. "She's not gone. She's in you. That's what Echo Hosts are. Memory vessels. Sound banks. They didn't just rewrite you — they used you."
"Why?"
Kes's face hardened.
"Because the Republic feared one thing more than rebellion: remembrance."
They gathered around an old table.
Kes laid out seven symbols — the same ones Arian saw in the mirror vault.
"One for each Host," Kes said. "Each symbol unlocks a voice fragment — a piece of the code."
"What happens when we have them all?"
"You'll hear the Root Phrase. The original command that seeded the Silence."
Arian narrowed his eyes.
"What happens if I say it?"
Kes looked him dead in the eye.
"You break the Republic."
That night, Arian couldn't sleep.
He stepped outside, into the misted woods. The stars above were unfamiliar—shifted by time or maybe by memory.
He heard footsteps.
Nima stood beside him.
"Think he's telling the truth?" Arian asked.
"He's Varen Kes. The only truth he serves is the one he built."
"Then why help us?"
She looked away. "Maybe he wants to destroy what he made."
They were silent for a moment.
Then Nima whispered, "You ever wonder what you were before they erased you?"
"All the time."
"I used to dream I was a painter. Before the Silence. But now, when I pick up a brush… my hands don't remember."
She held up her fingers.
"Memory isn't just thought. It's movement. Instinct. It's the way your voice cracks when you lie, or the way your body shifts when you hear a song."
Arian stared at her.
"We're not rebels," he said. "We're archives."
She nodded. "And the Republic built us to forget that."
In the lowest level of the tower, far below even Kes's lab, a single machine blinked to life.
Unseen.
A forgotten piece of tech.
A face appeared on its cracked screen. Static-faded. Artificial.
"Echo alignment: 2 of 7."
It scanned a map.
"Next Host identified: Codename SERAPH."
It smiled.
"Let the resonance begin."