Page 171 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Nicholas Boothman
“People are machines that suffer beautifully,”
she replied, and the candor hurt more than the
contempt.
Carolina’s analyzer jittered with a new band, a
loose serpent of signal. She frowned, thumbed the
gain, and froze.
“Henry.”
“What?”
“I’m reading a sweep,” she said. “Semantic
inversion. It’s a reversal field — it flips speech mid-
thought to cancel it before it forms.”
He looked down. “Coming from the tower?”
She shook her head. “From us.”
The tone deepened. The platform learned a
rhythm that made Henry’s breath want to sync and
stop. He dragged his lungs left of the beat. Sera
stepped back, bracing, and began to hum slightly
wrong.
Carolina lifted her head to say Don’t stop, keep
the wrong hum — and nothing came.
Her mouth formed the words; her throat made
the shape; her body prepared the sound. The
sentence fell through her like sand through fingers
that wanted to be a fist.
She blinked, tried again.
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