I didn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, the hum returned—low, insistent, vibrating behind my thoughts like a second heartbeat. It wasn't coming from the recorder anymore. It was inside me, woven into my breath, my pulse, my memory.
Mara's face surfaced again and again. Not the way she'd looked at the end—angry, afraid, distant—but the way she used to smile when I practiced scripts late at night, pacing the apartment while she lay on the couch pretending not to listen.
"You hear too much," she'd teased. "One day it's going to cost you."
I rubbed my face and stood as dawn leaked through the blinds. The city outside was waking, unaware that something old and patient was waking with it.
The recorder sat on the desk where I'd left it, innocent and cruel all at once.
Chapter twenty-five was already inside it. I knew that the same way you know when someone is standing behind you without turning around.
I reached for the device, then stopped.
For the first time since the tapes began arriving, I questioned whether I wanted the truth. Memory wasn't just recollection—it was responsibility. If my voice had uncovered something buried in sound, then listening again meant reopening a door I'd slammed shut for a reason.
But silence had never protected anyone.
I pressed play.
My voice emerged slowly this time, as if dragging itself forward from a deep place.
"Chapter twenty-five," it said. "This is where denial ends."
A sharp breath escaped me.
"You've been asking the wrong question," the recording continued. "It's not what you heard. It's who you heard."
The hum crept in again, threading through the words.
"There are voices in the world that were never meant to fade," my voice said. "People who died with too much unfinished. Too much unsaid. Their memories fracture, distort, and cling to frequencies most people ignore."
I squeezed my eyes shut, and suddenly I was back in the booth again—headphones heavy, lights dim, the air thick with dust and electricity. I remembered now. The night I first heard it clearly.
A voice beneath a voice.
Not static. Not interference.
A confession.
"You isolated the signal," the recording said. "Slowed it down. Cleaned it up. And when you did, you realized the impossible."
My stomach churned.
"The voice belonged to a man officially ruled missing. A man whose disappearance had been quietly buried by people with power."
The memory slammed into place like a missing puzzle piece.
The news article. The brief mention. A name that vanished from headlines within days.
And the voice I'd heard whispering through the broadcast—terrified, desperate, guilty.
"You aired part of it," my voice said quietly. "Just a fragment. Enough to let the truth slip into the world without anyone realizing what they were hearing."
My hands curled into fists.
"And people listened."
The hum intensified, vibrating through the recorder so hard it rattled against the desk.
"What you didn't know," the tape went on, "was that the moment you broadcast that memory, something listened back."
The room felt colder.
"Not a person. A presence. Something that feeds on remembered sound. On voices that refuse to die."
I stood abruptly, pacing.
"That night," my voice said, "Mara came to the station. She'd found your research. The recordings you hid. She understood before you did."
My chest tightened painfully.
"She said the voices were using you. That once opened, the echo would never close. That the more you listened, the more it would listen to you."
The tape paused, just long enough for dread to bloom.
"You argued," my voice resumed. "You told her truth mattered more than fear."
Tears slid down my face.
"And she told you some truths don't want to be free."
The hum dropped suddenly, plunging the room into a terrible quiet.
"When she left the station that night," the voice said, barely above a whisper, "she never made it home."
My legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the chair.
The memory I'd refused for years finally surfaced in full.
The late call. The police questions. The way everyone looked at me—not accusing, just… waiting. As if they expected something from me I couldn't give.
"You blamed yourself," the tape said. "But you didn't stop. Not immediately."
I looked up sharply.
"You went back on air," my voice continued. "One final broadcast. Not for the audience."
The hum surged, louder than ever.
"But for it."
My breath came shallow and fast.
"You spoke directly into the frequency. Challenged it. Demanded answers."
The recorder crackled.
"And it answered."
The tape cut off mid-sentence.
The sudden silence rang in my ears.
I stared at the recorder, heart pounding, understanding crashing over me in waves. I hadn't stopped speaking because of grief alone.
I'd stopped because I'd heard something speak back.
And whatever lived in the echo of my voice wasn't finished with me yet.
Somewhere, deep in the unseen spaces between sound and memory, the next chapter was already listening.