The Signal That Wasn't There

The rain returned in pulses, soft and rhythmic, like Tokyo itself was breathing. Rei moved through the back alleys of Akihabara, her jacket zipped high, phantom card tucked inside a hidden pocket stitched beneath the lining. She’d memorized the route to the next node—Node-9—an abandoned pachinko parlor turned data vault.

Namie had warned her: “This one’s not a test. It’s a live signal. If you’re traced, you’re burned.”

Rei didn’t flinch. She never did.

The entrance was behind a rusted arcade cabinet. She tapped a sequence on the broken buttons—left, left, up, down, circle—and the wall slid open with a hiss. Inside, the air was colder. The lights dimmer. The silence heavier.

Node-9 was different.

No music. No graffiti. Just rows of servers humming like distant thunder.

A man stood near the far wall, back turned, coat long and dark. He didn’t move when she entered.

“You’re late,” he said.

“I wasn’t invited,” Rei replied.

He turned slowly. His face was half-covered by a mask—sleek, matte black, with a single red line running down the center. His eyes were sharp, unreadable.

“They call me Kairo,” he said. “I manage the signals that don’t exist.”

Rei raised an eyebrow. “Sounds poetic.”

“It’s not. It’s dangerous.”

He gestured to a console. “There’s a breach. A ghost signal. It’s bouncing between nodes, rewriting fragments of memory. We think it’s targeting phantoms.”

Rei stepped closer. “You think it’s targeting me.”

Kairo didn’t answer. He tapped the console, and a hologram flickered to life—a map of Tokyo, pulsing with red dots. One blinked faster than the rest.

“That’s you,” he said. “Or rather, the version of you they’ve reconstructed.”

Rei stared at the blinking dot. It was moving. Fast.

“How do I erase it?”

“You don’t,” Kairo said. “You overwrite it.”

She left Node-9 with a data chip embedded in her jacket lining and a warning echoing in her ears:

> “If the signal reaches Node-12, you disappear. Not physically. Digitally. Your name, your missions, your memories—gone.”

Rei didn’t believe in ghosts. But she believed in erasure. She’d seen it happen. Agents who vanished not because they died, but because they were rewritten.

She wouldn’t be next.

Rooftop – 02:47

Riku was waiting, sketchbook open, headphones playing something soft and lo-fi. He looked up as she climbed over the railing.

“You smell like static,” he said.

“I touched a ghost,” she replied.

He didn’t ask what that meant. He just handed her a warm can of coffee and scooted over.

Rei sat beside him, watching the city blink.

“They’re trying to rewrite me,” she said. “Piece by piece.”

Riku tore a page from his sketchbook. It was a drawing of her—standing in front of a vending machine, but this time, her reflection was missing.

“I drew this before you came back,” he said. “Didn’t know why.”

Rei stared at it. Her throat tightened.

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

Riku didn’t speak. He just leaned his shoulder against hers, grounding her.

Later That Morning

Rei stood in front of a mirror in a capsule hotel bathroom, tracing the barcode stitched into her jacket. She pulled out the data chip and slotted it into her burner phone.

A message appeared:

> “Node-12 breach in 6 hours. Overwrite required. Target: Echo-Rei.”

She stared at the screen. Echo-Rei. The version of her built from fragments—surveillance footage, intercepted messages, simulation data. A ghost with her face.

She had six hours to kill herself.

Digitally.

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