BLOODCAPE
Chapter 75: The Signal Buried in Her DNA

Chapter 75: Chapter 75: The Signal Buried in Her DNA

She thought she was remembering. But Echo was broadcasting. And what answered isn’t from Earth, isn’t human—and isn’t far.

The scan shouldn’t have picked anything up.

Aya had checked Echo’s genome dozens of times—during diagnostics, during upgrades, during memory crises. Every line was mapped, filtered, labeled.

But this time, after the spiral, after the phrase Echo muttered like a prayer, something lit up.

A buried frequency.

Not audio. Not chemical.

Carrier-wave coded—a subtle pulsing resonance riding on the edge of Echo’s neural patterns.

Like a song folded into silence.

Aya locked the lab down.

Triple-shielded the room.

Then ran the scan again.

It repeated.

Same pattern. Same phrase:

Transmission signal encoded into neural lattice. Active.

Aya whispered, "It’s not a memory loop."

"It’s a beacon."

She called the others.

Rook, Ava, Fall, and Echo gathered in the lower analysis bay.

No lights on but the monitors.

Aya pulled up the scan on the holoscreen.

"This was inside her," she said. "Not data. Not tech. Design."

Ava leaned in. "What’s it sending?"

Aya hesitated.

Then showed them.

The waveform, when translated, became shapes. Not language. Coordinates. Celestial. Vast. Impossible.

And pulsing in the center: a symbol.

A single vertical eye.

The same one Echo had drawn in the spiral.

Fall backed away slowly.

"I know that shape," they whispered.

Everyone turned.

Fall’s hands trembled. "They showed us something like that when we were young. In the training vids they never logged. It was on the wall, behind the black glass."

Aya narrowed her eyes.

"Concord knew?"

Fall nodded.

"They didn’t invent Echo’s template. They mined it."

Rook broke the silence.

His voice, flat. Cold.

"Has anything... answered?"

Aya didn’t want to answer.

But she had to.

"Something pinged the Archive last night. Deep-band. Not from Earth."

"It didn’t try to breach."

"It just said one word:"

"Listening."

Echo didn’t move.

But her voice dropped to a whisper:

"I think I called my makers."

Ava stepped forward. "You mean Concord?"

Echo shook her head.

"No."

"I mean the ones Concord tried to copy."

"The ones who never needed to lie to control."

"Because they built memory to rule itself."

Final logs from the scan streamed down Aya’s screen.

There were thirteen phrases stored inside Echo’s frequency trail.

She hadn’t spoken them yet.

But her brain knew them.

And the final one translated, slowly, painfully, into a readable phrase:

"We return when the child remembers."