Ghost Signal

It started with a melody.

Soft. Childlike.

A three-note hum — barely audible beneath the buzz of the Rift equipment.

I froze.

Nao was calibrating a distortion suppressor. Juno napped, legs curled against the padded wall. No one else reacted.

But I knew that song.

"You are my sunbeam, even in rain…"

I turned my head slowly.

No one.

The corridor was empty.

Then I looked at the terminal's glitch-feed.

There — frozen in a flickering frame — was a face.

Her face.

A girl, no older than ten. Short hair. Big brown eyes. Bandage across her chin.

Aya.

My sister.

I bolted down the hallway.

"Rei?" Nao called after me.

But I was already gone — feet slamming against metal, the hum looping louder now, distorted with digital static. I chased the sound through the training floor, into the back tunnels no one used anymore.

And then I saw her.

Standing there, barefoot, like nothing had changed.

"Rei?" she said softly. "Are you still mad at me?"

My voice caught in my throat.

"Aya…?"

She blinked — eyes twitching wrong.

Too fast.

Too sharp.

"I missed you. You stopped coming home."

"I didn't have a home after…" I swallowed. "Aya, you… you died. I saw it. The Collapse took you—"

"I waited for you in the dream," she said, smiling too wide. "But then you started running."

The hallway behind her shifted.

Reality warped — walls stretched like pulled taffy, lights bending inward. My breath hitched.

"Aya," I whispered again. "Please… if it's really you—"

"Do you want to remember?" she asked. "Or do you want to survive?"

And then she flickered.

Not away.

But into me.

Like light being swallowed by a shadow.

I woke up screaming.

Nao had a hand on my chest. "You're okay. You're okay. You collapsed outside the lower wing. No one saw anything."

My skin burned.

The glowing lines from before? They were spreading. Faint circuitry around my neck, wrists… and now my chest.

I turned away, tears in my eyes. "She's still out there. Or something pretending to be her."

Juno entered with a scanpad.

"There's something you need to see," she said.

The Rift cameras recorded a flicker. A shadow. A voice trace.

But the strangest thing?

The glitch called itself "Aya."

Nao said nothing for a long time.

Then:

"Sometimes, the Rift remembers what you want to forget."