Echo Chapter 6

The violence of those final spikes told a story I didn't want to read. Terror. Pain. And then—nothing. A flatline that matched the timestamp on the official accident report.

"He fell," I said, my voice hollow.

"He jumped." Gray's correction was clinical. "The Oracle had become... incompatible with his neural patterns. Sometimes the most brilliant minds are also the most fragile."

I forced myself to look away from Liam's death chart. "You drove him to it."

"I offered him paradise. He chose chaos." Gray touched another screen, and suddenly I was looking at myself—my own biometric data, streaming live. My heart rate was elevated, cortisol spiking. "You're experiencing similar incompatibility, Dr. Reed. But unlike Liam, you're sophisticated enough to be saved."

"I don't want to be saved."

"Not yet." He smiled. "But you will."

The lights flickered back on overhead. Gray glanced at his wristband—not the standard-issue model the residents wore, but something more advanced. "The Oracle is coming back online. We should return to my office."

"What if I don't?"

"Then Marcus and his team will escort you. Either way, you're not leaving this building until we've had a proper conversation." He stepped back, gesturing toward the corridor. "Please don't make this difficult."

My phone buzzed in my pocket—a message notification. Impossible. The community blocked all external signals. Gray noticed my expression and frowned.

"Who else knows you're here?" he asked.

"My brother. My department chair. Half a dozen colleagues." I lied smoothly, buying time. "If I don't check in by tonight, they'll notify authorities."

"Authorities." Gray laughed. "Dr. Reed, we're thirty miles from the nearest paved road, and we have complete discretion over who enters this community. By the time anyone reached us, you'd simply be another satisfied resident, singing the Oracle's praises."

The phone buzzed again. I pulled it out carefully. Two messages from an unknown number: *Basement. Server room. Hurry.* And then: *- J*

Juno.

"Who is that?" Gray demanded.

"Spam call," I said, pocketing the phone. "You were saying something about a conversation?"

His eyes narrowed, but he nodded. "Indeed. This way."

We walked back through the service corridor in silence. My mind raced. Juno had somehow gotten me a message—which meant the Oracle's systems were more compromised than Gray realized. The storm, the power fluctuation... it wasn't just weather. Someone had created an opening.

Gray's office was chaos when we returned. Sophia Chen stood by his desk, frantically typing on a tablet. Through the window, I could see residents still moving in those disturbing loops, though some had begun to snap out of it.

"Status?" Gray asked sharply.

"Partial restoration," Sophia replied without looking up. "But we're seeing cascading failures in the neural interface protocols. Someone accessed the backend during the outage."

"Seal all exits. I want security sweeping every building." He turned to me. "Sit down, Dr. Reed."

"Actually, I need to use the restroom."

"No."

"I'm sorry?"

"Sit. Down." His voice carried an edge I hadn't heard before—the real Alistair Gray, stripped of his visionary façade. "Sophia, bring up the access logs for the past fifteen minutes."

I remained standing. Through the window, I watched a woman in the plaza suddenly collapse. Another resident rushed to help her, but his movements were jerky, uncoordinated—like a video game character glitching.

"Your system is falling apart," I said.

"Temporary disruption. The Oracle is self-correcting." But his hand clenched at his side. "The real question is who helped you plant malware in my network."

"I just got here two days ago."

"Liam got here fourteen months ago. How long does it take to hide a time-delayed virus?" He nodded to Sophia. "Show me the library surveillance from this morning."

The tablet screen appeared on the office's main display. I watched myself entering the library, approaching Juno's desk. The video quality was extraordinary—I could see the titles of books I'd browsed, the way my fingers had traced the shelf.

"There," Gray said. "Freeze frame."

The image stopped on Juno's face as she glanced at something off-camera. Her lips moved—no sound, but I could read the words: *Not yet.*

"Our dear librarian." Gray's smile returned, colder than before. "I should have known. Juno, would you please join us?"

A long silence. Then Juno's voice came through the intercom, distorted with static: "I'm afraid I'm busy, Mr. Gray. We're experiencing some technical difficulties with the catalog system."

"That wasn't a request."

"Nevertheless More static. "I think you'll find I'm exactly where I need to be."

Gray's face darkened. He pressed a button on his desk. "Marcus, get to the library. Now."

"Sir, we have a situation in the wellness center," Marcus's voice crackled back. "Multiple residents are experiencing severe disorientation. Dr. Fischer is requesting emergency protocols."

"Handle it. I need Juno brought to my office immediately."

"Copy that."

I took advantage of Gray's distraction to inch toward the door, but Sophia moved to block my path. She was small, but her eyes held a warning: *Don't.*

My phone buzzed again. I risked a glance: *Stairwell. Go.*

"Dr. Reed seems eager to leave," Sophia observed.

Gray turned back to me. "You're going to tell me everything Liam shared with you. Every file, every password, every piece of code he might have sent before he died."

"He didn't send me anything."

"You're lying." He pulled up another screen—my email records, my text messages, my entire digital life laid bare. "We've been monitoring your communications since you agreed to come here. But there's a gap in Liam's final hours. Eight minutes where we lost track of him. Eight minutes where he could have hidden something, sent something, given something to someone."

"If you can't find it, maybe it doesn't exist."

Thunder crashed outside, loud enough to rattle the windows. The lights flickered once, twice—and then died again. This time, the emergency lights didn't come on.

Complete darkness.

I moved. Sophia grabbed for me, but I twisted away and bolted for where I knew the door should be. My shoulder hit the frame, pain exploding through my arm, but I kept going. Behind me, I heard Gray shouting orders, but the words were drowned out by a new sound: alarms, wailing through the entire building.

I found the stairwell by touch, my hands scraping against concrete walls as I descended. Three flights down, the blue emergency lighting finally kicked in, bathing everything in that eerie glow.

The basement level was flooded with that same light. I could see the server room ahead—a reinforced door standing partially open. Steam or smoke was seeping out from inside.

"Dr. Reed." Juno emerged from the shadows, her face illuminated by the glow of a laptop. "I was beginning to worry you wouldn't make it."

"What did you do?"

"Finished what Liam started." She gestured to the laptop screen. "The Oracle isn't just compromised anymore. It's dying. And it's taking everyone's manufactured memories the building, I could hear screaming.