I didn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, the card whispered the same sentence in the back of my head:
Who sealed Echo… and why are they afraid of you waking up?
Tony had parked himself on my nightstand like a worried nightlight. His screen kept cycling between a frowning face and the number 1.4%.
At 3:17 a.m. the percentage ticked up to 1.5% on its own.
I sat up.
"Tony."
"I saw it."
"I didn't do anything."
"I know."
We both stared at the white card on the desk. It looked completely innocent. Just a blank playing card with one creepy sentence.
I reached for it.
The moment my fingers touched the surface, the entire apartment glitched.
Not a small glitch.
The walls briefly turned into blue error screens. My bedframe became a loading bar. The ceiling fan started spinning backwards while softly playing elevator music.
Then everything snapped back.
Tony's voice was very small.
"Zeke… your Echo value is now 1.7%."
I looked at my hands. They looked the same. Felt the same.
But the debug panel had changed.
A new tab had appeared at the top. It was locked, greyed out, and labeled only with a single word:
ECHO
Underneath it, in tiny red text:
> [Access Restricted – Current Permission: 1.7%]
> [Warning: Further increase may attract attention from sealed entities]
I didn't like the sound of "sealed entities."
Neither did the System, apparently. Because the next second a new message forced itself across my vision:
> [SYSTEM NOTICE]
> Unusual activity detected in User Zeke_N.
> Deploying low-priority observation unit.
> Please continue being a normal human.
> (This message will self-delete in 10 seconds)
It self-deleted in three.
Tony floated closer.
"They're watching us again."
"I noticed."
I picked up the card. It felt slightly heavier than before.
"Any advice?" I asked it.
The reply came instantly inside my head, calm and almost amused:
Stop trying to stay at 1%. You're already past the point of quiet.
"That's not advice. That's a threat."
It's both.
I groaned and fell backward onto the bed.
Tony projected a tiny pixelated version of me face-planting into a pillow.
"Very mature," I muttered.
"I learned from the best."
I stared at the ceiling. Somewhere above the city, the sky was still pretending to be normal. Somewhere out there, a man in a grey suit knew more about me than I did. And somewhere deeper, something that had once been sealed was starting to remember my name.
I sat up again.
"Tony."
"Yeah?"
"New plan."
He already looked tired. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"
"We find out what Echo actually is."
"And how do we do that?"
I held up the white card between two fingers and gave it a little shake.
"We ask the creepy rectangle that keeps calling me incomplete."
The card pulsed once, almost like it was laughing.
Tony's screen displayed a single word:
Doomed.
I grinned despite myself.
"Probably."