Page 114 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Divine Spark Rising
Sera touched his sleeve. “Listen,” she said.
From below the roof, from the stairwell, from
every apartment where electronics were ordinary,
came small human sounds—the stubborn ones:
people stirring sugar in glasses, people dragging
chairs, people clearing throats not to speak but to
mean to.
He exhaled. “Meaning.”
4. The Counter-Signal
Zhara’s phone lit with a number she didn’t
know but had been waiting to see. She put it on
speaker. Static. Then Jinji’s ragged grace.
“You’re seeing it,” Jinji said. “She’s not erasing
what you said. She’s erasing what you could say.
Prediction gates. Memory hygiene. It’ll look clean.
It will be death.”
Carolina leaned over the phone as if the device
could read her face. “How do we gum the gates?”
“Not with noise,” Jinji said. “Noise is her sea.
With action that can’t be predicted because it isn’t
linguistic. Doings. The thirteenth arc.”
Sera took the phone. “Show me.”
“People,” Jinji said. “Little refusals. You’ll think
they’re nothing. They’re not. Every unpredicted
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