The trench used to carry rows of signal lines running through narrow channels beneath the city, like nerves. Now it was cracked open to the sky, its shell broken long ago by weather and pressure. Riven walked with one hand trailing along the wall, his fingers brushing dusty metal every few steps.
"This place was part of an old signal path" Riven said. "The trench was built to send fast messages between towers."
"Keyword: was."
"Doesn't mean it stopped."
Cassian muttered something under his breath and adjusted the strap on his shoulder. He hadn't slept well, Riven could tell.
The wind caught the broken cabling above them. It swayed slightly and made a whining metal sound.
Cassian looked up. "Creepy."
But Riven wasn't paying attention, he was tracking the way the conduits bent, each junction marked with faded paint and barely visible numbers. It was a relay trench, probably one of the old ones. The signal hadn't been strong in years, but that didn't matter if the frequency was still steady.
Cassian stopped walking. "Okay. You're scanning in your head again. Just... give me the version a tired idiot can follow."
Riven turned slightly. "If the Lady had remote access points, they would've run through this trench, same as the two we saw earlier."
"Great. And how does that help us? Do we knock on the cable and hope she answers?"
Riven looked ahead. A shelter took shape: scrap metal curved into a half-dome, built into the trench wall. They slowed down, trying to get a clearer sense of what they were looking at.
Cassian narrowed his eyes. "Please tell me that's just junk."
"It's a shelter... I think."
The closer they got, the easier it was to tell it had been built on purpose. Layers of mesh and wire held it together, and a rusted panel had been turned into a door, still marked with old tuning dials. There was no power, but it looked like someone had once used it to pick up signals.
Cassian leaned to one side. "You think someone's still inside?"
"I don't know" Riven said, calm as ever. "But whoever built this stayed close to the signal lines. I don't think that's a coincidence."
Cassian exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Wonderful. A recluse with a radio and a god complex."
He wasn't wrong, this place did feel different. It hadn't fallen apart in the wind, hadn't been picked clean, and it hadn't been burned like everything else. It looked like it had been standing for a long time.
Riven crouched near the edge of the structure, fingers tracing the welds. Someone had reinforced the lower joints with scrap shielding and it had been done with care, unlike slum-standard work.
Cassian stood back with his arms crossed. "You're really thinking of going in there?"
Riven tapped lightly on the panel three times.
After a short delay, the door creaked open a few centimeters and stopped. A faint mechanical sound slipped out, uneven and hard to place.
Cassian stiffened. "Okay. That's not nothing."
A low and worn voice came from the dark: "Did you bring her?"
Riven didn't answer at first. The question didn't make sense, so he waited, trying to make sense of it before speaking.
"No" he said finally, more out of caution than certainty.
The door opened another inch. "Then you're either deaf or cruel."
Riven straightened slightly, keeping his voice steady. "We're just passing through."
The man stepped into view. Thin, gray-bearded, with a wrap tied unevenly across one shoulder. A half-headset sat angled over one ear, wires trailing into a box clipped to his belt. One eye blinked slower than the other.
He looked at Riven, then Cassian. Then back again. "She doesn't speak to most."
Cassian slid behind Riven. "Is this how people start cults? Just checking."
The man ignored him.
Riven tilted his head slightly. "You're picking something up through your gear?"
"I don't hear" the man said. "I listen."
His voice was firm, but there was a worn edge to it, like he'd said the same thing too often, hoping it would eventually feel right.
Riven looked past him. The shelter walls were lined with old comms casings, stripped down and rebuilt into something like a listening station. Wires, knobs, and hand-pinned maps filled the gaps between exposed copper. There was no power source, no active grid, but one of the signal boards at the top still blinked faintly.
Cassian stepped closer now, curious despite himself. "You run all this on junk?"
"The signal is not about power" the man said. "It's about intention."
Riven studied the board. One of the side papers was marked with hand-drawn notations, lines, timestamps, waveform sketches. That pattern seemed familiar to him.
Cassian saw him looking. "You've got to be kidding."
Riven picked up the paper carefully.
The man lifted a hand but didn't stop him. "That one's from after the storms. Two years ago. I couldn't sleep much after that, that's when she started coming through more clearly."
"She?" Riven asked.
"The Lady's not gone. She's just out of reach. You only hear something when there's still something sending."
Riven's eyes moved to the edge of the page, where a string of numbers repeated: six digits, marked with two slight gaps. He'd seen them before, the last time the core had activated.
Cassian caught the look. "Tell me you're not buying this."
"I'm not buying anything" Riven said.
He continued studying the page, though.
The man stepped past them, turning a dial on the box at his belt. It gave a short whine, then eased into a steady, low hiss, like shallow breathing. He held it up between them.
Riven studied the box. It picked up whatever signal still lingered in the trench: small fluctuations, traces of current moving through the old lines. The device didn't process or respond to anything, it simply transmitted the sound. The man treated that faint hiss like it meant something, as if the signal continuing at all was enough.
"She doesn't talk in words" he said. "But you can feel it if you're quiet enough."
Cassian stepped back. "I already feel it. It's called tinnitus."
The man didn't react to the remark, he looked at Riven instead. For a moment, the edge of the satchel tugged open slightly as Riven moved, and the fabric pulled just enough to reveal a sliver of what was inside. The casing caught a bit of light, unnaturally clean compared to everything else they carried. The man's eyes locked on it, and that one glimpse was all he needed.
You're the one carrying it, aren't you?"
Riven didn't move, but his attention snapped to him.
Cassian glanced between them. "Okay, what?"
"You've kept it too near" the man said. "If you let it sit against your bones long enough, you stop noticing its sound."
Riven's grip tightened slightly on the strap.
Cassian's eyes narrowed. "Okay, no. We're done. I'm not spending another night with a man who's trying to commune with radio ghosts."
Riven kept his gaze on the man. "What do you think it is?"
"I don't think anything" he replied. "I listen... that's the whole point. Everyone else keeps trying to make it say something, but that's not how it works."
He let out a slow, worn breath.
"I've had to explain a lot of silence to people who only trust sound."
Riven lowered his voice, careful with his words. He was trying to meet the man where he stood. "What do you hear, exactly?"
"Mostly echoes. Sometimes it's nothing, just a bit of noise or light. Sometimes it sounds like code not meant for us to understand. But when it's real, when something's actually there, you feel it. It gets clearer."
Cassian muttered: "Fantastic. He's describing a seizure."
Riven's hand moved to his coat, fingers brushing over the shape of the core through the fabric. The man's words were strange, but something about them felt real.
The man turned away. "If you came hoping to figure something out, you're in the wrong place. This isn't where you get answers."
Cassian took a step forward. "You have any food? Water?"
The man didn't answer.
Cassian exhaled disappointed. "Right. I didn't think so."
He turned to go, then paused when Riven didn't follow. "Don't tell me you think this means something."
Riven looked down at the page, eyes on the repeated numbers. "It's the same pattern we saw during the last activation... or something very close to it."
Cassian looked between Riven and the shelter. "Or maybe it's just math. You ever think you're not the only one obsessed with patterns?"
Riven folded the page in half and tucked it into his jacket.
The man watched him do it. "That one's yours now" he said. "But it won't tell you anything unless you stop needing it to."
Cassian's voice was flat: "What does that even mean?"
But the man didn't answer. He adjusted the dial and the mechanical sound picked up once more, clearer this time.
--------
They kept walking in silence. Behind them, the trench narrowed and the old signal lines disappeared beneath broken rock. Out here, there was no sound, only the faint cold wind.
Cassian finally broke the silence: "You really believe that guy?"
"No."
"Good."
Riven adjusted the strap of the satchel and continued: "But he may not have been entirely wrong."
Cassian scoffed lightly. "About what? The Lady being a sentient static cloud?"
Riven didn't look over. "I meant what he said about listening. People are loud all the time now, we forget how to truly pay attention to something."
Cassian kicked a piece of debris off the path. It bounced once, then rolled to a stop. "You don't need mystics for that, you just need ears."
"No. You need patience."
Cassian rubbed his temple as the wind picked up, threading through the broken conduit above. Somewhere ahead, metal creaked softly in the distance.
"So what's the plan?" he asked. "We walk another dozen klicks and listen real hard until a miracle pops out of a vent?"
Riven took the page from his coat and unfolded it. The paper had softened along the folds, worn down by handling. The numbers were still there: six digits, repeating with slight gaps. It was familiar. Maybe just a coincidence, maybe not.
He glanced toward the ridge ahead. "There's another junction up east. If the trench lines are still active, we might get a clearer signal there."
Cassian groaned under his breath. "Of course there is."
"It's not far."
"You said that last time."
"And we got something."
Cassian didn't argue. He adjusted the strap on his shoulder and kept walking.