The wind carried a sound that shouldn't exist.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't even clear.
It was organized — too precise for nature, too irregular for machines.
A pulse, repeated every few seconds: two beats, one pause, three beats.
Kael stood on the dunes, listening. "You hear that?"
Mira crouched beside the truck, scanning the horizon through cracked binoculars. "Yeah. Someone's tapping code. Only problem — there's no one there."
Rae's expression tightened. "Not someone. Something."
They'd been traveling east from Hollowgate for two days, skirting the rust plains where the desert turned metallic. Each night, the stars looked sharper — not brighter, sharper, like blades held against the sky.
The tapping came again. Two beats. One pause. Three beats.
Ashveil stirred inside him, restless.
> "That rhythm belongs to no mouth or machine. It's the sound of memory trying to imitate language."
"Translation?" Kael asked.
> "The world is still learning to speak."
"Great," Kael muttered. "Maybe it'll ask for directions next."
Mira shot him a look somewhere between exasperation and fondness. "If it starts charging rent, we leave."
---
They made camp in the hollow of an overturned satellite dish. The wind whistled through it, producing an eerie, flute-like tone that refused to stop.
Rae strung a line of copper wire around the perimeter — makeshift resonance alarms.
"Any movement, it hums," Rae explained. "Anything mimicking sound will trigger it too."
Kael tossed his jacket over a crate, stretched his sore arm, and stared into the distance. "How often does the world try to copy us before it gets bored?"
Mira smirked. "You're assuming it'll get bored. What if it starts getting creative?"
"Then I quit," Kael said. "Full stop. I'm taking up knitting."
"Sure," Mira said dryly. "You'd probably set the yarn on fire."
---
That night, the alarms sang.
It wasn't loud — a faint harmonic buzz, like the whisper of a violin string plucked underwater. Rae shot up instantly. "Something breached the perimeter."
Kael reached for his shard. Mira grabbed her weapon.
The sound pulsed once, twice — then faded.
Silence.
Then came the laughter.
Not close. Not human.
Distant, echoing — the sound of someone remembering laughter instead of doing it.
Kael's stomach dropped. "That's not possible."
Ashveil's voice was low, grim.
> "It's not laughter. It's imitation again. But the frequency's wrong. It's… layered."
"Layered?" Rae asked.
> "Two voices at once. The world, and something inside it."
---
The sand shifted. Shapes emerged from the dunes — humanoid, but wrong. They shimmered faintly, like heat mirages stitched into skin. The world's mimicry had learned new tricks: these had color, detail, and even clothing copied from memories.
Mira whispered, "They look like—"
Her sentence died in her throat.
One of the mimics stepped closer — and it was her.
Perfect face. Perfect scar. Same rifle.
Same sneer.
Kael froze. The air felt too thin.
Rae whispered, "They're copying us."
The other two forms followed. Kael saw himself, down to the black mark on his wrist, standing across the sand.
Even the stance was right.
Ashveil hissed in disgust.
> "Echo-tier reflections. They learned from the last resonance storm."
Kael swallowed. "What do they want?"
> "To complete the echo. To replace the original with the cleaner sound."
"Meaning?"
> "They want to overwrite you."
---
The Kael-copy moved first — jerky at first, then fluid, mirroring his exact movements with a half-second delay.
He raised his shard. It did too.
Mira fired first — a direct hit to her duplicate's chest. The body flickered, dissolved into dust, then reformed a second later with the wound glowing like molten glass.
"Bullets useless," Rae said quickly, pulling cables from their sleeve. "We'll need resonance interference."
Kael clenched his jaw. "Then I'll try something new."
Ashveil growled approvingly.
> "Yes. Sing back to the echo. Don't silence it — distort it."
He closed his eyes, focused on the sound of the duplicate's breath — wrong, too steady, too mechanical.
Then he matched it.
Then misaligned it.
The resonance field around him shifted. For a second, sound and silence collided. The copy of him stumbled, glitching, like a broken reflection in rippling water.
Kael stepped forward and spoke:
"Stop copying me."
The world answered.
A pulse spread outward — a harmonic backlash that tore through the air. The mimics convulsed, their shapes shattering into streams of light that slithered back into the sand.
Silence fell again.
Rae lowered their arm. "That was—"
"—a mistake," Kael finished. His shard was still glowing. "They weren't attacking. They were syncing. That wasn't a fight. That was training."
Mira stared at him. "For what?"
Ashveil's voice was faint, almost reverent.
> "For resonance war."
---
They buried what was left of the copper wires. The dish hummed faintly overhead, still carrying the wind's false flute song.
Kael sat beside the fire, rubbing his temples. "Every time I use this power, the world learns faster."
Rae adjusted the frequency scanner, lips tight. "Maybe it's not learning. Maybe it's remembering. Maybe resonance isn't communication — maybe it's contagion."
"Comforting," Mira said, checking her rifle. "We're basically walking viruses."
Kael snorted tiredly. "Speak for yourself. I'm more like bad radio."
But even as he said it, he could feel the shard's pulse syncing faster — almost eager.
Ashveil whispered softly, a tone that sounded almost like pride.
> "Keep going. Every imitation brings you closer to truth."
Kael frowned. "And when I find it?"
> "Then you'll finally see who's been listening."
The wind carried that tapping sound again.
Two beats. One pause. Three beats.
This time, it almost sounded like applause.
---