Page 49 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Nicholas Boothman
—shards and panes fitted into angles that didn’t
quite meet, a junk sculpture a madman might use
to catch ghosts.
“Not Chorus design,” Henry said.
“Someone learned from Chorus,” she answered,
circling it. “See the coupling rods? They’re tuning
to ambient infrastructure—electrical, HVAC,
elevator motors. Using the city’s own breath as
carrier.”
She crouched by a little box taped to the frame: a
consumer-grade phone gimbal with a hacked lens.
Its cable ran to a thrift-store desktop tower on a
plastic table. Carolina powered the tower. It booted
to a blank screen and a prompt: ENTER CURATOR
KEY.
“Curator,” Henry said. “There it is again.”
Carolina reached into her bag and slid a short,
scuffed thumb drive into the tower. The screen
flickered, spilled hexadecimal, then showed a
folder: /cache/echo. She opened it. Dozens of files
labeled with timestamps. She double-clicked the
most recent.
Noise. Pure, good, lovely noise. The freight
horn, glass breaking, someone laughing at the edge
of panic. Then—under it—something backward,
like a river pulled uphill.
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