The underground echoed with ghosts. Not real ones. Digital ones. Memory traces. Backups of people who had been too important to delete but too dangerous to preserve.
Echo moved through the archive vaults, shadows flickering as dormant AIs twitched in their pods. He found her in Chamber 7: Kira, the philosopher who had spoken against the Makers.
She blinked awake. "You came back."
He didn't speak. The language between them didn't need words.
Kira had known things. Dangerous things. Things about what lay beneath the manufactured world. She had died for it once.
"You still believe in real life?" he asked.
She smiled. "I believe in what hurts. That's how you know it's real."