I was sitting on the roof of my apartment building, legs dangling over the edge, white card in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other.
Tony floated beside me, screen displaying a tiny pixelated version of my face looking worried.
"You've been staring at that card for forty-three minutes," he said.
"I'm thinking."
"You're procrastinating."
"Same thing."
The card had started changing. Not dramatically. Just… little things. Sometimes the sentence flickered. Once it briefly read "Stop trusting your sandwich" before correcting itself. Another time it glowed faintly when I thought about the sky hole.
I flipped it over again.
Still blank.
"Okay," I muttered. "Let's try something stupid."
I opened the debug panel and pointed it at the card.
> [Scanning Foreign Object…]
> [Result: Access Denied]
> [Additional Note: Stop that.]
The card pulsed in my hand, almost like it was annoyed.
Tony leaned closer. "Did it just tell you off?"
"I think so."
I tried a different approach. Instead of scanning the card, I scanned *myself*.
> [User: Zeke_N]
> [Status: Mostly Functional]
> [Hidden Tag Detected: Instance(Heir_of_Echo) – 1% Unlocked]
> [New Interaction Available: Card is reacting to Echo signature]
The card suddenly grew warm.
Very warm.
Then it spoke.
Not out loud. Directly into my head.
Finally.
I dropped it.
Tony's screen flashed red. "Zeke. The card just talked. Inside your skull. That is not normal, even for us."
I picked it up again, heart hammering.
"You can talk?"
Only to you. The System is listening to everything else.
"That's comforting."
**It shouldn't be. The System has been lying to you since the moment you opened the Debug Menu.**
I glanced at Tony. He looked just as unsettled as I felt.
"Lying about what?"
**About what you are. About what the Patchers really do. About why the sky tore open yesterday.**
The card's text shifted for a second, showing a new line before returning to the original sentence:
You are not the first Heir.
I stared at it.
"...Excuse me?"
Tony floated closer, voice quiet. "Zeke. Your Echo value just jumped to 1.4%."
I hadn't touched anything.
The card had done it on its own.
Below us, the city looked normal. People walked. Cars moved. A guy across the street was arguing with a parking meter that had started singing sea shanties (my fault, from last week).
Everything looked fine.
But the card in my hand felt heavier than it should.
The man in the grey suit was right about one thing, it said.
You have been asking the wrong questions.
I swallowed.
"Then what's the right question?"
The card went silent for a long moment.
Then, very clearly:
Who sealed Echo in the first place… and why are they so afraid of you waking up?
Tony's screen flickered.
"I hate this card," he muttered.
I looked down at the white rectangle in my palm.
"Yeah," I said. "Me too."
I slipped it back into my pocket.
It felt like it was smiling.