The desert of Narqai was not drawn on maps.
It shimmered with ghost heat, hiding ruins swallowed by time. At night, the sand turned black and whispered names in ancient frequencies.
They rode in silence aboard a battered crawler, its engine humming like a dying songbird.
Kes studied the echo disk.
"Five voices. One synthetic left. One hidden."
Arian asked, "How do you synthesize a voice?"
Kes didn't look up. "You don't. You build it. From pieces. From pain."
Nima checked the rifle's chamber.
"Then where do we find it?"
Kes answered with a grim smile.
"We don't."
He turned to Arian.
"It finds you."
---
They reached the Black Vault at midnight.
A forgotten Republic facility, half-buried in sand, designed for acoustic experimentation. It was here, Kes said, that they forged a voice without a soul.
They stepped through the front gate.
The doors opened before they touched them.
The Vault was waiting.
Inside: white walls, pulsing lights, and humming that made your teeth ache. The air felt thick—like sound was woven into the atmosphere itself.
They descended nine floors underground.
At the heart: a single chamber, perfectly circular, with a figure suspended in a glass orb.
Not male. Not female.
Not… human.
Just Orca.
Eyes closed. Breathing in chords.
---
Kes whispered, "This is the Sixth."
Arian stepped forward.
"Do they speak?"
Orca's lips moved.
A single word filled the chamber—
> "Arian."
The voice didn't just speak—it resonated. Vibrated through bone and blood.
"How do you know me?" Arian asked.
Orca opened their eyes.
> "Because I was made from you."
---
Silence fell like frost.
Kes went pale. "No. That's not possible. Orca was built by—"
> "Kes Thorne," Orca interrupted, smiling faintly. "You knew the truth, didn't you? You watched as they copied the waveform. From the boy who cried without sound."
Arian staggered.
"You mean…"
Orca nodded. "I am your echo. Your silenced scream, built into code."
Nima stepped forward, gun trembling in her hand.
"This isn't safe."
"No," Orca replied. "But it's necessary."
---
Suddenly, alarms flared.
The Vault had been breached.
Not by drones. Not by soldiers.
By Songbreakers.
The Republic's elite voice assassins. Trained to neutralize Hosts using anti-resonance.
A dozen of them flooded the halls.
Arian turned to Orca. "Can you help us?"
Orca smiled.
And sang.
The glass orb shattered.
The sound wave flattened three assassins instantly.
The others scrambled, disoriented.
Nima opened fire. Kes deployed a sonic scatter.
Arian felt something inside him shift.
The fifth echo stirred.
The sixth merged.
And suddenly, the disk glowed.
Six voices. One vessel.
---
Orca approached Arian, eyes bright.
> "You are almost complete."
> "But the seventh… is not like us."
Arian asked, "Who is it?"
Orca whispered:
> "Not a who. A when."
> "The seventh voice lies… in the past."
---
Outside the Vault, once safe again, Arian sat in the sand under a dying star.
Nima came to him, silent.
He said, "What if I'm not me anymore? What if I'm just… a collection?"
She put her hand on his.
"You're not a collection, Arian."
"You're a chorus."
And somewhere, buried beneath memory and myth, the seventh voice waited to awaken—
A voice older than the Silence itself.