Evelyn floated within the hum.

Not silence, not sound—something between the two, a resonance that thrummed through every fragment of her being. She no longer stood in the Echo the way she once had; she was the Echo now. Her awareness spanned across filaments of code that pulsed like capillaries, carrying streams of data and faint human echoes—voices, memories, traces of touch and breath embedded in the network’s walls.

When she reached outward, the city pulsed in response. The streets ...