I'm half-dreaming when I realize I'm not the only one in my skull anymore.
Not the mirror, not the mountain—just something cool and quiet, like a finger tracing a slow circle on the inside of a window.
—hold—
It's not a command. It's a pause button pressed gently so I don't fall off the ride.
The red under my ribs hums back, satisfied. My name sits on my tongue like a coin I'm refusing to flip.
Recovery Three is dark except for the soft blue glow of monitors pretending they're night-lights. The door's frosted halfway so I can't see the hallway and the hallway can't see me crying if I decide to. I'm flat on my back, counting ceiling tiles like they owe me money.
Mara made me lie down twenty minutes ago with a look that said "try me." I heard Sato's boots stop outside. Rey's probably stress-eating vending-machine crackers somewhere. Kwan is definitely sweet-talking a server rack. Hale is upstairs lying to people who needs lying to.
The circle finishes.
—send—
"No," I whisper to the empty room and to the thing that's borrowing my headspace.
—already sending—
Of course it is. I've turned into a radio somebody else tuned.
The map inside me stretches, yawns, then flings itself wide open like a hand letting go of a fistful of seeds. It doesn't hurt. It feels like the moment right before rain, when the air forgets how to be dry.
Mara's voice slides through the intercom, calm as always. "Ryo. Talk."
"Something's using me like a cell tower," I say. "It's polite about it."
"You okay with that?"
"Not even a little," I say. "But I'm listening."
—hold—
Again, gentle. Like a seatbelt clicking right before the crash.
I close my eyes.
And the signal goes.
It doesn't travel. It just… arrives everywhere I've ever been part of.
—
A control room tech watches every screen blink once, perfectly together, like the city took a single breath.
A night-bus driver feels his dashcam draw a golden line across the windshield for half a second, showing a safer route home. He takes it without thinking. Gets there five minutes early. Never knows he almost didn't.
A kid in some classroom two neighborhoods over doodles a circle on his desk and writes RYO inside it in careful block letters. Teacher tells him to stop. He tries to erase it; the pencil skips over the name like it's already permanent.
A woman at a kitchen sink looks up for no reason, feels her chest cave in with a sudden ache shaped like apple shampoo and a laugh she can't place. She whispers a name that isn't hers and doesn't know why her eyes are wet.
An astronaut floating in a maintenance bay presses her palm to cold metal because the whole station just sighed like it recognized someone.
An old man on a park bench squeezes a hand that isn't there anymore and the wind squeezes back.
A little girl wakes up, writes a word that isn't in any alphabet her mom knows, and shrugs: "It fits."
Servers in a cold aisle pause for one tenth of a second, just long enough to listen.
—
Back in Recovery Three I open my eyes. The room is exactly the same and completely different.
Mara steps in without knocking because knocking is for people she trusts less.
"Scale of one to ten?" she asks.
"City just got a text message from me and I didn't type it," I say. "Call it a seven."
"You still you?"
"Still arguing with the new roommate," I say. "He's winning on manners."
She nods like that's good enough. "Hale wants us upstairs. The whole city just felt its phone buzz."
"Again," I mutter, swinging my legs off the bed. The red purrs, content. The quiet voice—balance—leans against my ribs like a tired friend.
—done—
"What did we just mail?" I ask it.
—attention—
"To who?"
—you—
"Real comforting."
—not meant to be—
Mara watches me have half a conversation with myself and doesn't blink. "News is already on it," she says, tilting her tablet so I can see.
The clip from last night is everywhere. The kneel. The red glow. The off-screen woman growling "Don't you dare." Overlay text screaming WHO IS HE? in three languages.
I feel sick and famous at the same time.
"Upstairs," she says. "We get to decide what story they tell before someone else writes it for us."
"Will it work?"
"No," she says. "But we're doing it anyway."
—
Meeting B again. Same room, worse vibes.
Hale looks like he aged a year in an hour. Kwan is practically glowing. Procurement lady has her "reasonable offer" smile glued on. Legal guy is beige personified.
Hale freezes the video right before the kneel. "It's viral," he says. "We can't kill it anymore. We shape it or we drown."
Kwan can't help himself. "Resonance nodes just lit up across the city like Christmas. The signal used him as a tuning fork."
"How long until one becomes a mouth?" Mara asks, flat.
"Days if we're lucky," Kwan says. "Minutes if we poke them."
Hale rubs the spot a wedding ring used to be. "They're going to want to move you again."
Mara doesn't even bristle. "They can want in one hand and crap in the other, see which fills first."
I surprise myself by laughing once, short and sharp.
Hale looks at me. "You okay with staying?"
I think about the quiet voice that just mailed the whole city a postcard that said look at this kid.
"Yeah," I say. "I want them to come here. On my map. My rules."
Mara's mouth does that tiny twitch that's the closest she gets to smiling in public. "Then we stay."
She turns to Hale like he's a paperwork problem. "I want Sato, Rey, and Kwan on a leash. Nobody touches the kid without going through me."
Kwan opens his mouth.
"Cot and leash," Mara adds.
Kwan closes his mouth.
Hale nods, tired but relieved. "We'll tell them you're cooperating. We'll tell the news you're a civilian who helped. We'll tell the city the situation is contained."
"Will they believe it?" I ask.
"Long enough," he says.
We file out. The corridor feels narrower, like the building's hugging itself.
Halfway to the elevator the quiet voice speaks again, softer.
—more will come—
"How many?"
—enough—
"Great."
—stay heavy—
It shows me the picture again: coin on tongue, Mara's hand on my shoulder, circle around a name.
"Next time," I tell it, "you ask before you borrow my mouth."
A pause that feels like a shrug.
—next time you'll say yes—
I don't answer. I just keep the coin where it is.
Mara glances sideways. "You good?"
"Still me," I say. "Just got a plus-one who's better at sharing than I expected."
She snorts. "Get used to it. You're everybody's plus-one now."
We step into the elevator. Doors close.
Somewhere deep under the river, something that has never had lungs takes its first full breath and tastes my name on the air.
I taste it back.
And I keep walking.