The silence after the Echoes' dissolution was different from the one that had followed the dampener's fall. That had been a healing quiet. This was the silence of a shocked battlefield, the air itself seeming to vibrate with the aftermath of a conceptual violation. The three of them stood amidst the inert, metallic slurry that had been their doppelgangers, not feeling triumph, but a deep, soul-level weariness.
Mara prodded the nearest puddle of nanites with her boot. It did not react. "He made puppets of us," she said, her voice hollow. "He took what's inside… and turned it into a weapon."
"It was the logical progression," Corvin replied, though his usual analytical tone was frayed. He looked ill. "He observed our individual notes. He observed our chord. The next step was to field-test a counter-chord. We were… beta-testing his anti-resonance weaponry." He shivered, wrapping his arms around himself. "He's getting faster. The iteration cycle is shortening."
