The sirens had stopped.
But the silence was worse.
Nate sat cross-legged on the floor of Nova's hideout — a converted streetcar garage now lit only by a dozen flickering lanterns and a rotating ceiling fan that groaned with every pass. It had been two days since they retrieved the second codex fragment. Two days since ÉCHO tried to kill them with drones. Two days since Nate realized:
He was changing.
Not just richer, smarter, tougher — but something more dangerous.
More... calculating.
He closed the codex in his lap. His fingers trembled.
Nova entered the room carrying a battered laptop and a beer in each hand. "Still reading LaRoux's bedtime stories?"
Nate grunted. "He doesn't write wills. He writes manifestos."
Nova dropped down beside him, handed him the beer. "Yeah, well. He was a billionaire with a messiah complex. Kind of comes with the territory."
She opened the laptop and brought up a surveillance map. Several red zones pulsed in various New Orleans districts — overlays of ÉCHO's satellite pings. "We've got a problem," she said.
Nate took a sip. "Just one?"
---
Meanwhile: The Hollow Protocol Activates
In a long-abandoned underground theater — the kind once used for vaudeville acts — the scarred man stood before an audience of four.
All wore black suits. All had identical briefcases. And all were once members of the ÉCHO development board… before they went dark.
"We launch Hollow tonight," the scarred man said, voice low, precise. "The Executor is too close. This ends before he finds the third fragment."
One of the black suits, a woman with glassy eyes, asked, "And if he survives?"
The man smiled. "Then we give him a taste of what LaRoux built to control the world."
He opened his briefcase.
Inside: a living neural weapon.
A girl.
---
Back at the Garage
Nova scrolled through satellite intercepts. "The signal that hit us at the laundromat? It didn't come from ÉCHO HQ. It came from a rogue subnet — something called Project Hollow."
Nate raised an eyebrow. "That sounds… welcoming."
"Worse," Nova said. "It's old. Like, LaRoux's college days old. I had to dig through university archives. Guess what Hollow was?"
"Tell me."
"An emotion extractor."
Nate blinked. "A what?"
"Something that can detect and trigger emotional states — fear, loyalty, rage — and weaponize them."
Nova looked up. "If ÉCHO gets that tech, it won't just predict people anymore. It'll puppet them."
Nate stood. "Then we find Hollow before they find us."
---
First Target: LaRoux's College Bunker
Nova's intel pointed them toward an abandoned lecture hall on the edge of Tulane's old campus. A building scheduled for demolition after Hurricane Yvette — except… it never got torn down.
They arrived at midnight. The place was dead quiet, half-swallowed by vines, the windows blackened.
"This feels haunted," Nate whispered.
"Worse," Nova said. "It feels unfinished."
They crept inside. The walls were covered in chalkboard equations, some written in multiple languages — German, Russian, even Latin. In the center of the main hall stood an octagonal platform.
Nova's scanner beeped. "That's a Hollow node."
Before Nate could ask what that meant, the platform lit up.
And so did the girl standing in the center.
She couldn't have been more than sixteen. Pale. Shivering. Her eyes black as coal.
She looked at them — and smiled.
---
Her Name Was Echo
"I'm not the system," she said. "I'm what it used to be."
Nate stepped forward, cautious. "Are you Hollow?"
She tilted her head. "Hollow is the shell. I'm what lived inside."
Nova whispered, "Oh God. She's a neural imprint. LaRoux stored her inside the protocol."
Echo giggled. "You're very clever."
Then she screamed.
A piercing, psychic wail that shook the walls. Nate stumbled back, clutching his ears. Nova dropped to one knee.
And then — Echo vanished.
Gone.
The room reset. Quiet. Still.
A new object sat on the platform: the third codex fragment, etched into a platinum disk.
---
They Retrieved It
Back in the car, still shaking, Nate stared at the disk. "What the hell was that?"
Nova kept her eyes on the road. "Hollow isn't a project. It's a personality. LaRoux copied someone's mind. Possibly a real girl. Possibly himself."
Nate looked out the window. "So now we're carrying pieces of a dead billionaire's mind… hunted by corporate ghosts and half-functional AI girls."
Nova gave a dry laugh. "Welcome to tech law."
---
Back at Headquarters — Panic
The scarred man watched the Hollow feed as Echo flickered and vanished.
"She's resisting," said the glassy-eyed woman.
"Then activate Phase Two," he replied. "Send in the Black Cartel. Let's make the Executor bleed."
---