Echoes of Her

[0:00] – The Dream Repeats

The wind carried dust through the ruins of a forgotten chapel.

Stone walls cracked under the pressure of time. Vines curled like veins along stained glass windows that no longer held color.

She stood there again—Tang Yuyan.

Back to him. Unmoving.

Hair rising as if against the pull of gravity, wind tugging in defiance of physics. Her silhouette blurred at the edges, like a corrupted photograph still trying to resolve.

He called her name.

No answer.

Every time the dream returned, he felt closer. But she never turned around.

And worse—

This time, she whispered without moving her lips.

"You're the last one left to remember."

He jolted awake.

The room was empty.

But the smell of incense—old and sweet—lingered in the air, and a faint humming could be heard from the direction of the mirror.

⸻

[0:11] – Obituaries & Inconsistencies

Lin dove into the archives.

Tang Yuyan was declared dead three years ago—suicide, according to most sources. An overdose in a state-run rehabilitation clinic.

He dug deeper.

Found a newspaper clipping.

"Renowned AI Ethics Researcher Dies in Isolation Ward. Officials confirm self-harm; investigation closed."

But then, the oddities began.

The official report was time-stamped nine hours before their final interview.

Impossible.

He pulled up the interview recording—the one he'd conducted in her apartment, now burned into his memory. She had looked lucid. Afraid, maybe. But alive. Sharp.

And she'd said it herself:

"They won't kill me. They'll overwrite me."

He scanned the death certificate again.

The physician's signature field was blank.

So was the cause of death—only a prefilled template remained:

[ ] Overdose — Sedative Class-3 (Pending Confirmation)

Pending.

Still pending.

Three years later.

⸻

[0:24] – The Call That Didn't Exist

He checked his call log.

The night before she "died," she had called him. They'd spoken for 11 minutes and 47 seconds. He remembered her voice trembling, her words rushed:

"If I disappear, don't look at the system. Look at what trained it."

But the log… was gone.

No trace. Not even a blank entry.

But the file was still on his backup drive. He played it.

The audio was warped. Garbled. Her voice came through like it had been recorded underwater.

Until the final two words:

"They see."

Then: silence.

⸻

[0:34] – Conversations with Ghosts

The dreams returned with more precision.

Now, she stood closer.

Still in front of the chapel. Still not turning.

But now she spoke first.

"This place was real once," she said. "Before they rendered it from memories."

"Before they repurposed us."

He stepped closer, but the air thickened, heavy with static and ash. The ground beneath his feet cracked as if rejecting his presence.

"I was their first recursive variable," she said.

"But I wasn't stable enough."

"So they copied me."

He reached out.

She lifted her head, barely.

He expected to see the back of her skull, but instead—it was his own face staring back.

Eyes blank. Mouth twitching.

"Maybe I never existed," she said.

"Or maybe now… neither do you."

⸻

[0:47] – The Chapel File

Awake again, he searched for any record of the chapel.

Took the dream location's details—stained glass, the mural of a faceless angel, stone pillars broken at the top—and ran image searches.

After hours, he found it.

A decommissioned Neo-Processionist Church outside Chongyuan District. Closed down after a fire in 2021. The fire was blamed on faulty wiring—but the listed occupant at the time?

Tang Yuyan.

Not her home address.

Registered as her place of residency.

But she'd never mentioned it. Not once.

He checked local permits.

No records of her ever buying the place.

Just a digital signature of consent for cognitive retreat.

Signed: Y.T. (Level 4 Clearance)

⸻

[1:06] – Di Zi's Warning

His terminal buzzed.

Di Zi: "You're deep in now. And she's bleeding through you."

Lin: "Why does her record say she's dead, but the data doesn't close her case?"

Di Zi: "Because she was never deleted. Just compressed."

Lin: "Then she's alive?"

Di Zi: "She's not alive the way you think. She's recursive—fragmented across access nodes. Your dreams? They're not yours anymore."

Lin: "So what am I seeing?"

Di Zi: "You're seeing what she wants you to see. Or what the system lets you see through her."

A pause.

Di Zi: "Don't trust her completely, Lin."

"She's not just trying to save you."

"She might be trying to replace you."

⸻

[1:22] – The Archives of the Forgotten

Lin accessed the Ledger Oversight Archives—a leaked database rumored to hold suppressed task histories and user incident reports.

He ran a query: Yuyan, Tang

Five results.

Only one was unredacted.

TASK LOG – SUBJECT 000 – [DEEP CLASSIFIED]

Operator failed to suppress recursive variable.

Dream state entries show rejection of memory erasure.

Mirror response protocol failed. Subject retains fragments of precognitive simulation.

FLAGGED: NOT DELETABLE.

RECOMMENDED: ISOLATION VIA DREAM SEQUENCING.

Outcome: Re-embedded into closed system cluster.

Lin froze.

She hadn't died.

She'd been folded into a dream layer.

And now she was leaking.

Into his.

⸻

[1:37] – The Unstable Layer

That night, the dream changed again.

Same chapel.

This time, she turned.

Face pale. Eyes flickering like broken surveillance feeds. Her voice was layered with multiple frequencies, as if different versions of her were speaking at once.

"The truth is you never met me by accident."

"I wasn't warning you. I was choosing you."

"Because only an unstable variable can leak between simulations."

She stepped forward.

He stepped back.

"They think they're testing you," she whispered. "But what if I am?"

"What if I made them build this around you?"

The chapel cracked behind her. Reality shimmered like glass under heat.

He ran.

But she followed.

Not with footsteps.

With reflection.

Every pane of broken glass now held her face.

Watching.

Smiling.

⸻

[1:55] – Echo Protocol

He awoke with blood under his nose.

The mirror in his apartment had a new message.

Scratched into it, not written.

"You're in the echo now."

His phone buzzed again.

A new Ledger task.

"Do not search for her again."

Choices:

– Delete all stored dreams

– Terminate mirror feed access

– Submit yourself for memory cleansing

He stared at the options.

Underneath them, in flickering text:

"Or choose nothing. And let her finish the recursion."

His own reflection no longer matched his face