BLOODCAPE
Chapter 124 – Echo Logic

Chapter 124: Chapter 124 – Echo Logic

Zeta-3 was quiet in the wrong way.

Not dead. Not abandoned. Just... listening.

The streets were clean, overgrown only at the corners where maintenance drones hadn’t passed in weeks. Streetlamps flickered through low fog, casting soft halos across cracked walkways and biotech signage choked with moss. Every step echoed too far. Hernan didn’t like the rhythm of it. It sounded staged.

"Signal sweep’s clean," Nico said, eyes on the readout flickering across his forearm display. "Thermals flat. No movement since we entered the sector grid."

"Then why does it feel like something’s breathing down my neck?" Gemini muttered.

Her voice didn’t sound like hers. The sharp syncopation — the confident cadence that always mirrored her twin — was off. Scratchy. Uneven.

Hernan heard it instantly. So did Nico.

"You okay?" Nico asked, attempting levity. "You sound like you gargled copper."

She didn’t respond.

Her helmet tilted slightly to the left — listening. But not to them. Her eyes, visible beneath the HUD glow, were wide and distant. Tracking something just outside the room.

"Cadet Gemini," Hernan said quietly. Even. Testing her response.

Her fingers twitched.

Her jaw did too.

"No one else hears that?" she asked, voice pitched too high. "Like a whisper on loop. It’s not mine. It’s not—" She cut off. Her mouth snapped shut, nostrils flaring with each breath.

Nico shifted. "Residual comm bleed, maybe? Happens sometimes in—"

"Shut up." Her voice lashed out sharp enough to draw blood. "You don’t hear it. So don’t pretend you—"

Then came the spike.

A flicker of power — raw, bright, unfiltered — leapt from her hand. It missed Nico by inches, struck a scout drone instead. The drone twitched in mid-air, crashed hard into a wall, and hissed out a final puff of smoke before shutting down.

Nico stared at it. "Okay. Message received."

Gemini looked down at her hand like it didn’t belong to her.

Her breathing surged, staggered, then stopped.

Hernan stepped forward — not as a commanding officer, not as a friend. As something else. Something colder. Calibrated. He didn’t rush. He didn’t raise his voice.

He said one word.

"Rena."

She froze.

Her eyes snapped to his.

Then he followed it — not in his own voice exactly. Smoother. Sharper. Too precise.

"Regroup. Breathing box. Now."

She obeyed.

No hesitation. No pushback. She moved like a reflex — like the order had come from her brother himself. Same tone. Same phrasing. Same trigger.

Hernan blinked, slowly.

He hadn’t planned that.

He hadn’t known he could.

She looked at him like he was wearing someone else’s face.

Nico broke the silence, voice hushed. "You just pulled her out of it."

Hernan didn’t respond.

Nico looked at him differently now — more than surprise. There was awe in it. And something else.

Fear.

"Seriously," Nico pressed, "how did you know what to say?"

Hernan didn’t answer. He was already scanning.

Two fingers slid silently across his HUD interface. He triggered a passive scan of the zone’s perimeter — electromagnetic pings across the vertical structures surrounding the biotech plant’s eastern wall.

The result came back faint. But real.

Organic signatures. Irregular spacing. Not drones.

He toggled to team comms.

"Form recon triangle. External perimeter hold. No entry until we sweep verticals."

Gemini nodded, too fast.

Nico straightened, his hand still hovering near his sidearm.

Hernan took one last look at the plant’s entrance — doors intact, but the dust around the hinges disturbed.

This place hadn’t been empty in days.

The hum of the Academy comms wing at night was a different kind of silence.

Too sterile to be comforting. Too quiet to be safe.

Tessa moved fast, hoodie pulled low, credentials spoofed with a sidekey Nico helped her clone. One-time use. Officially, she wasn’t here. Unofficially, she was almost out of time.

She bypassed a biometric lock, slipped through a side door, and entered the secondary relay room.

The door sealed behind her.

Two screens were active — both set to Zone Epsilon. No one watching Zeta-3. Not from here.

She opened a ghost tab. Routed her way into the real-time telemetry feed from Hernan’s squad. Nico’s override key still worked. This was use number two. After this, she had one chance left.

The screen flickered.

Field Recon: Team #83A-2Z | Subdistrict Zeta-3Live Comms Feed: UNSTABLESignal Integrity: 38%

Most of it was noise.

Video corrupted. Thermal scatter blurred. Audio a smear of digital compression.

But one clip slipped through.

2.7 seconds.

She scrubbed.

And it played.

"You always turn left at the split. Just like he did."

Tessa’s blood went cold.

Not because of the voice.

Because of the phrasing.

It was exact.

Solaris had said that phrase during the Volant Run. Not in briefing. Not in training. But mid-mission. Real-time command feed. It wasn’t public. Wasn’t logged anywhere outside her mother’s encrypted archive — a clip she’d heard once, a decade ago.

"You always turn left at the split. Just like he did."

Same rhythm. Same breath. Same downward tone on split.

This wasn’t mimicry.

It wasn’t even studied behavior.

This was inheritance.

She stepped back from the console, breath caught high in her throat.

Her mind spun — trying to apply logic. Maybe he found an old audio feed. Maybe he reconstructed dialogue. Maybe—

But Hernan hadn’t just said the words. He’d said them like Solaris. As if the memory wasn’t remembered.

As if it was his.

The system flickered. Trace protocol triggered. She only had seconds. She saved the clip. Encrypted it. Purged her presence.

Then she ran.

Up three flights of stairs. Past cadet dorms. Past the admin corridor. Up to the rooftop.

The door opened to wind.

Clean, thin, cutting.

She stepped to the edge and stared at the skyline. Zeta-3 was far beyond view. But that didn’t matter.

She wasn’t looking at the district.

She was trying to anchor her thoughts to something that made sense.

Because this wasn’t about reflexes anymore. It wasn’t about cheating or powers or psychic bleed.

It was about Hernan.

He hadn’t just imitated Solaris.

He’d spoken with his voice.

And maybe, without even realizing it.

Tessa’s hands shook as she pressed them to the railing.

Her whisper came out hollow.

"What are you?"

There was no answer.

Just citylight haze. Comms static.

And somewhere out there, Hernan Solari was remembering things no one else could have lived.

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