The recorder felt heavier than before, as if it had absorbed the weight of every word it carried. I didn't touch it right away. I couldn't. The last sentence still rang in my head, circling like a vulture.
It answered.
For years, I had told myself there was nothing on the other end of that final broadcast. That the silence afterward meant I'd imagined everything. That fear had finally broken me.
But fear didn't leave evidence.
The hum returned without warning—low, resonant, vibrating through the floorboards. The windows trembled slightly, a sound too subtle to notice unless you were listening for it.
And I always listened.
I backed away from the desk until my shoulders hit the wall. My heart hammered, but beneath it was something worse than terror.
Recognition.
"I know you're here," I whispered.
The hum deepened, responding—not in words, but in rhythm, matching the cadence of my breath. In. Out. In. Out.
Then the recorder turned on by itself.
The red light flickered, then stabilized.
My voice emerged, but it wasn't alone this time.
"Chapter twenty-six," it said. "This is where you finally hear it clearly."
A second sound layered beneath the words—not static, not interference. It was… textured. Like many voices compressed into one, murmuring just below comprehension.
"You spent years believing the echo was feeding on memory," my voice continued. "But memory is only the doorway."
The walls felt closer again, the air thick and heavy, as if sound itself had gained weight.
"What it wants," the recording said, "is continuity."
Images crashed through my mind: radios glowing in dark rooms, people falling asleep to late-night broadcasts, voices carrying across cities, across years. Sound traveling farther than bodies ever could.
"It exists where voices overlap," my voice said. "Where stories repeat. Where names are spoken again and again until they lose their edges."
The murmuring beneath the tape swelled, and for a horrifying moment, I thought I heard Mara's laugh folded into it.
I slammed my fist against the wall.
"Stop," I said aloud.
The murmuring paused.
The recorder clicked.
My own voice returned, quieter now. Almost apologetic.
"Mara understood too late. She realized the echo wasn't just listening—it was learning."
My knees weakened.
"Every confession you uncovered, every buried truth you pulled from the frequencies, fed it patterns. Emotion. Structure."
The hum pulsed.
"It learned how to be a voice."
A chill crawled up my spine.
"And when it learned that," the tape said, "it learned how to speak."
The room darkened, though the sun was still rising outside. Shadows stretched unnaturally, bending toward the recorder.
"You remember the answer now," my voice said. "The moment it spoke back during the final broadcast."
I pressed my hands over my ears, but the memory forced its way through.
The booth. The red light on. My hands shaking as I leaned into the mic.
If you're there, I'd said, then tell me why.
At first, nothing.
Then the hum sharpened into shape.
Into words.
Because you listen, it had said.
My breath hitched violently.
The recorder's murmuring grew louder, layered voices weaving together, forming something almost coherent.
"It chose you," my voice said. "Not because you were special—but because you made space for it."
The device rattled on the desk, vibrating as if something inside was struggling to get out.
"You stopped speaking because you realized the truth," the tape went on. "As long as your voice remained silent, it couldn't move forward."
The murmuring surged, angry now.
"But silence can't last forever."
The red light on the recorder flared brightly, flooding the room with crimson.
"You've reached the point where the echo can no longer continue without you," my voice said. "It needs your voice again."
The murmuring snapped into sudden clarity.
This time, it wasn't my voice.
It was hers.
"Please," Mara said, softly. "You have to finish it."
I screamed and ripped the recorder from the desk, hurling it across the room. It struck the wall and shattered, plastic casing splitting open.
The hum died instantly.
I collapsed to the floor, shaking, ears ringing with the absence of sound.
Minutes passed. Maybe hours.
When I finally dared to look, the recorder lay broken and silent.
But on the floor beside it, etched into the dust in careful, deliberate lines, were three words I hadn't spoken aloud in years.
Go back on air.
The echo didn't need the recorder anymore.
It had learned my voice well enough to wait.