Static Hours

Track 10 - Codeword:LEO

Another book lay open on the geography shelf, despite no sign of readers. Inside: a dried red poppy, pressed between the pages. Its stem curled into a treble clef.

The smell of burnt circuitry rose faintly from the vents.

She passed an old donation ledger.

A name jumped at her.

Rosario, Emil.

She blinked.

Flipped back three pages. The name wasn't there.

Forward again. There it was.

Donated: A Field Guide to Acoustic Warfare. Annotated.

She traced the title with her finger, heart pounding louder than the silence. Why would Emil donate that book? And why annotate it? She flipped pages, finding underlined passages: "Frequency shapes memory." "Silence is a weapon." "He who controls decay, controls history." In the margin, a half-torn sticky note:  > "She's buried in the bridge."No context. No signature. Just the past trying to explain itself.

Sora (muttering): "Don't go rewriting yourself, Emil."

The lights died. Then changed.

The overhead fluorescents didn't flicker — they just swapped. Cold blue turned ultraviolet. Text across every spine glowed faintly — reversed titles, corrupted symbols. Sora's arms lit up with faint text: lyrics, phrases, some she hadn't written yet.

She spun.

The map had changed.

Where once was Leo's original trail, another red pin blinked into existence — near the harbor.

She didn't touch it. She hadn't even been facing it.

Then:

Maeve (reappeared): "No, but you will."

BC Library – August 11, 2025 – 11:34 AM

Maeve didn't blink.

Sora stood frozen — half-lit in that ultraviolet twilight, ink glowing along her skin, shadows stretching behind the shelves like they were reaching for context. Maeve stepped forward. Quiet, deliberate.

Maeve: "You remember what he said before the split?"

Sora: "I remember a lot of things that didn't happen."

Maeve: "That's because they haven't yet."

She offered a slip of paper — not handed, just placed on a side table between them like a truce. Sora didn't touch it. Instead, she glanced again at the map. The new red pin pulsed softly. The exact location she'd dreamed about two nights ago — the warehouse with the broken windows. She hadn't told anyone.

Sora: "You're not a librarian."

Maeve (smiling): "Not lately."

She vanished between the stacks again. No footsteps. No motion trail. Just gone.

Sora picked up the paper.

It was a playlist.

Ten tracks. All familiar. All hers. Except the last one:
Track 11 – CODEWORD: LEO
Duration: ∞
Status: Unlisted

The infinity symbol blinked once. Then again. Like a pulse. She felt it behind her eyes — a rhythm syncing with her own thoughts. Somewhere in her mind, a note held too long, bending at the end. Not dissonant. Not consonant. Just unresolved. The kind of sound that loops not because it's beautiful, but because it refuses to die.

She walked out into a different morning.

The sun hit her eyes too late, like it had been paused behind clouds that didn't exist. Her phone vibrated. No messages. Just a single notification:

New Memo Received: "From Leo"

No number. No file ID.

She played it anyway.

Leo (distorted, panned left): "You're close now. But she's closer."
beat static
Leo (clearer): "When the signal peaks, don't harmonize. Solo. Always solo."

Later — Cass's Apartment – 3:13 PM

Cass laid out every remaining trace of Leo's recordings. The modified waveforms, backmasked stems, field tapes. Each one now contained fragments of what Echo had said to Sora in private — words never spoken aloud, recorded, or shared.

Cass: "She's not remixing what exists. She's leaking what hasn't happened yet."
Sora: "Or what already did... but didn't take."

They looked again at the tape he'd named "Ending_Alt_(e).v4". The waveform had changed.

A single note now hung like a spike at the center.
It aligned exactly with the timestamp on Sora's nightmare.

Cass: "You're the signal now."

Sora: "She's not haunting us."
Cass: "Then what?"
Sora: "She's composing."

Final Scene — Archive Hallway, Greyline

Sora wandered back into her flat late. Everything felt staged — too dark, too quiet. Her keyboard blinked. No power connected. One key lit:

E

Then:

C

Then:

H

One by one.

Her DAW opened on its own. A project titled:
"11 – LAST VOCAL"

She hit play.

It wasn't Echo.

It was her voice.

Not singing — narrating.

Sora (from the file): "If you're hearing this... I don't remember recording it."

"But I left it. For you. For me. For whoever I became."

"You weren't supposed to finish the track. Just open it."

The DAW glitched briefly. The project split into stems. One labelled "Memory (Demo)", another "Echoes (Wet Mix)." Then a third appeared out of nowhere: "Leo_Flipped." She didn't open it. Not yet. There was something sacred in the unknown. Or maybe dangerous.  The screen dimmed. The cursor hovered. Then moved — by itself — toward the playhead.  > She closed the lid before it clicked.

A second layer faded in. Echo's pitch — modulated, crystal-sharp.

Echo's voice was laced with choral backing — not harmony, but replication. Sora could hear six versions of herself in it: laughing, breathing, humming, screaming. All processed, all rhythmic. It wasn't a chorus. It was a compression. Sora reached for the mute toggle, but her finger froze mid-air. Not fear. Not hesitation. Something else. A pressure behind her ear, like a voice waiting for permission to be remembered.

Echo: "She'll always remix herself. Until the chorus breaks."

The file ends with silence. Not blank. Measured.

A perfect loop.

author's note
i didn't expect her to say it.
not like that.

you ever have a dream where you're walking through a place you know too well, but it's off by like... half a second?

that's what writing this chapter felt like.
like the library already knew what was gonna happen, and it was just waiting for me to catch up.

also, quick tip: if a playlist shows up with a track you didn't record — don't press play.

unless you already did.
in which case, yeah...

good luck.

—j