[I]
The silence wasn't empty; it was heavy, like a physical weight pressing against the eardrums. In this lead-shielded anechoic chamber in 2049, the ambient noise level was held at a precise -10 decibels. At this depth of quiet, the human body begins to betray itself.
Shen Jie lay in the darkness, listening to the friction of his own eyeballs rotating in their sockets—a wet, gritty sound, like sandpaper on damp velvet. He could hear the rush of blood through his carotid artery, a relentless tidal wave that reminded him he was still, unfortunately, alive. This was his 18th awakening, and the silence was screaming.
[II]
"Subject 18, calibration sequence initiated."
The voice didn't come from speakers; it vibrated directly through his skull via the neural chip embedded in his medulla. It was Yan Zhong. The voice was stripped of all human timbre, processed through a cold, algorithmic filter.
Shen Jie's fingers twitched. He was a Master Sound Calibrator, a man who once lived to fix the world's noise. Now, he was the instrument being tuned. Across the pitch-black room, he felt a ripple in the air—a presence so faint it shouldn't exist. It was the girl. She was a "Biological Recorder," a living vessel of transparent flesh designed to capture the echoes of his own slow destruction.
[III]
"115 Hertz," Yan Zhong's voice whispered inside his head.
Suddenly, the silence shattered. A low-frequency vibration bloomed from the floorboards, surging up through Shen Jie's spine. It wasn't a sound you heard; it was a sound you felt in your liver, your lungs, your very soul. The internal organs began to resonate, shaking at their natural frequency.
This was the "Echo Project." Yan Zhong wasn't looking for music; he was hunting for the exact frequency of human fear.
[IV]
In the blinding agony of the resonance, Shen Jie reached out into the void. His hand brushed against something cold, smooth, and impossibly thin.
The girl.
As their skin touched, a spark of raw, uncompressed audio data surged between them. For a split second, the 115Hz torture vanished, replaced by a hauntingly clear melody—a mother's lullaby, buried deep within a nightmare of code.
Shen Jie opened his eyes. In the dark, he didn't see a monster. He saw a mirror.
"I will calibrate this world," he gasped, his teeth drawing blood as the 18th execution reached its crescendo. "Or I will die screaming in its noise."