The city doesn't forget.
It just pretends, the way people pretend when they don't want to talk about the fight they had last night.
Traffic crawls in perfect lanes. Billboards sell toothpaste like nothing ever tried to eat the sky. A kid on the subway films a dumb dance while the PA loops the same three-second jingle like a broken toy.
But the city remembers.
Every place Ryo bled a little code.
Every reflection that blinked half a second late.
Every time the world stuttered and he was the only one who noticed.
He wakes up on a bunk that smells like bleach and old secrets. The pin is warm against his chest, like it's been waiting for him to open his eyes.
A knock.
Mara walks in without waiting, hair still wet, one holster on, one off-duty. She looks like someone who's been up arguing with ghosts.
"You're early," he croaks.
"So are you," she says, tossing him a slate.
He reads.
PERSISTENT NON-VERBAL SIGNATURE
LOCATION: VARIABLE
DESCRIPTION: "pulse without source"
His stomach drops into his boots.
"The Void?" he asks.
"Maybe," she says. "Maybe you. Maybe something that was listening when you told the universe no."
She jerks her head. "Sato's downstairs. Sorensen gave us a leash and a prayer. We're going hunting."
He pulls on boots that still remember yesterday's mud. "Hunting what?"
"That's the fun part," she says.
"It's moving."
—
Garage level smells like oil and bad decisions.
Sato leans against the cruiser like he's already accepted today might kill him.
Rey hands Ryo a paper cup labeled CHEMICAL HAZARD in shaky marker.
"It's coffee," Rey says. "Mostly."
Ryo drinks anyway.
Mara climbs in the driver's seat. "Briefing. Something's walking around inside District Seven's wiring wearing your face. Not a harrower. Not the mountain. Not even the Void. New flavor."
"New how?" Sato asks.
Rey pulls up the scan. A ghost signature drifts across the map like smoke looking for a chimney.
"It's… you," Rey says, wincing. "Or the echo of you. The part the Void smoothed out when it left."
Ryo feels cold. "I thought it cleaned up after itself."
"It did," Mara says. "But the city kept the receipt."
—
They stop on an abandoned overpass where the fog rolls in thick from the river.
Ryo steps out first.
The tug is gentle, almost shy.
Like a kid pulling your sleeve to show you something cool.
"There," he says.
They walk.
The fog swallows sound.
Sato's hand rests on his sidearm like it's an old friend.
Then the world tilts.
Not a lot. Just enough.
The fog swirls and condenses into a shape.
Human.
Male.
His height.
His face.
But wrong.
Like someone tried to draw him from memory after too many drinks.
The echo tilts its head.
It doesn't speak with sound.
It speaks with shape.
The air folds into letters only Ryo can read:
RETURN
Ryo's throat is sand. "Return where?"
The echo raises a hand that flickers at the edges.
Behind him, Mara's voice is low: "Ryo. Don't."
"It's not threatening," he says. "It's… asking."
The echo staggers, like it's running out of battery.
YOU LEFT US
The words land like a slap.
Rey whispers, "It's destabilizing."
Sato: "Should I—"
The echo flares, desperate.
YOU LEFT A DOOR OPEN
Then it collapses.
No drama.
Just… folds in on itself like paper in fire.
Gone.
But the message hangs in the air like smoke:
YOU LEFT A DOOR OPEN
Ryo feels the blood leave his face.
Mara grabs his shoulder. "Ryo."
"I didn't close it," he says, voice small. "When the Void left… I opened the knot just enough. I thought it would be okay. I thought—"
He can't finish.
Because he knows.
He left a seam.
And something walked through.
—
Back at Central, Sorensen is waiting like bad weather that learned how to wear a suit.
She doesn't sit.
"Explain."
Ryo tells her everything.
She listens the way a scalpel listens.
When he's done, she taps her stylus once.
"So," she says, "you have created a leak."
"It wasn't on purpose."
"Intentions are for memoirs," she says. "Results are for now."
Mara steps forward. "Director, he contained the Void without turning the city into a throat. If there's fallout, we clean it."
Sorensen's gaze doesn't warm. "We don't clean. We trace."
She turns the display.
New signature.
Not mountain.
Not Void.
Something else.
Lines that look like the city dreaming with its eyes open.
Kwan skids in, breathless. "I finished the decomposition—"
Sorensen gestures. Show him.
The hologram blooms.
It's beautiful.
And it's wearing Ryo's face.
Not perfectly.
Like a rough draft.
A shadow learning how to stand.
Rey's voice is small: "It's not an echo of him. It's… the city trying to finish a sentence it started when he first bled code."
Ryo feels sick.
Sorensen doesn't blink.
"You left a door open," she says. "Something is walking through it. And it's learning your accent."
Mara: "We keep him moving. Supervised. Controlled exposure. Let it track him on our terms."
Sorensen considers.
Then nods once.
"But he doesn't go alone."
The doors open.
The tall figure from the briefing steps in.
Eira.
Resonance signature flickering like candlelight.
She looks at Ryo with eyes that have seen too many doors.
"You left a door open," she says, soft.
"We're going to walk through it together."
Ryo's skin crawls.
Mara steps between them on pure reflex.
Sorensen raises a hand.
"Stand down, Lieutenant. Orders."
Mara's jaw could cut steel.
Eira doesn't smile.
She just says, quiet:
"The city isn't angry.
It's curious.
And it's calling you Dad."
Ryo closes his eyes.
The hum under his ribs answers with something that feels a lot like hello.
He didn't mean to leave a door open.
But he did.
And something is already home.