## **Chapter 28: Interference Protocol**
A thin veil of fog clung to the rooftops of Auric as early morning light struggled to penetrate the city's haze. Power conduits hummed beneath the streets, but something in their pulse was wrong—too rhythmic, too clean. In the Ruined Haven's lower signal chamber, Maren sat rigid before a console, one gloved hand tightening around a receiver's knob. Across three sectors, rebel listening posts had gone silent in perfect synchrony.
"They weren't taken out," she murmured. "They're still online. But the frequency's... off."
Kian crouched beside her, brows furrowed. He scanned the playback. "Same pulse rhythm. No deviation. But it's not *ours.*"
Rex crossed his arms. "Then whose?"
Maren isolated the waveform. What emerged wasn't static—it was mimicry. A perfect clone of the rebels' non-verbal code: three soft pulses, two short delays, five soft bursts. Clean. Intentional.
"They're copying us," she whispered.
Serena stepped into the room, her voice calm but taut. "The Empire cracked our rhythm?"
"More likely they observed enough to build an imitation," Maren said. "It doesn't lead anywhere, but it *feels* like us."
The realization settled like dust. The Empire had learned the rebels' language of silence, and now they were speaking it—projecting their own version across sectors as lures. The implications were immediate and dangerous.
"They're feeding ghosts into our system," Serena said. "False sync points, phantom transmissions. Leading us into traps."
"Who's moved recently?" Kian asked.
"Team Ravel," Rex replied. "They left Haven three hours ago, following a new echo loop out of Sector Six."
"Which we didn't authorize," Maren finished.
Kian's jaw clenched. "Then we get them back."
By midday, the response team assembled: Kian, Serena, Maren, and two scouts—Blay and Tyse. Their route led through the bowels of Auric's west trench, a forgotten sector once used for freight transfers but now choked in dust and magnetic decay. As they descended into the corridor, the air thickened. Faint electronic signatures drifted in waves—wrong in texture, too smooth.
"They've deployed repeaters," Maren noted, pointing to a conduit panel. "Probably dozens scattered across defunct networks. All clean, untraceable."
At the third junction, they found Ravel's marker—a notch in an alloy beam, still fresh. But no team. Just silence and a pulsing light from the far wall: five quick flashes, just like the rebellion's rhythm. Too perfect.
Blay touched a receiver to the panel. "Same cloned signal. No origin tag. Whoever's behind it is good."
"They're not broadcasting to be heard," Kian said. "They're broadcasting to *replace.*"
They tracked the signal deeper into the compound until they reached a sealed vault chamber coated in dust. Inside stood an array of slim, mirrored pylons connected by fiberlight threads that looped between them like neural lines. The air buzzed with subtle energy.
"They built a mirror field," Maren whispered. "Every time we use a frequency, this setup learns it. Adapts."
Serena peered at the central node—six pads mounted in a hexagon, all blinking in silent coordination. "They're learning how we *move.*"
"They're trying to predict us," Kian added. "Before we act."
No guards. No drones. Just the echo machine—broadcasting deception. A trap not meant to kill, but to make truth uncertain. To erase the rebellion's voice by diluting it.
"We destroy it now," Serena said.
"No," Kian replied, eyes narrowing. "We overwrite it."
He stepped toward the center, raising his right palm. Electricity surged around his fingers, subtle and golden. For weeks he had trained in restraint. Focus. The flicker of power moved not to burn—but to connect.
He pressed his palm to the node.
Instantly, feedback screamed across the pylons. The threads shimmered, rejecting the surge—then unraveling. Kian didn't retreat. He poured the rhythm back into it: three steady pulses. One long. A pause. Then he fractured it with asymmetry.
A rebel's rhythm wasn't perfection.
It was human.
The node resisted. Then sparked.
Serena yanked him back as the pylon nearest them shattered in a burst of white light. The machine convulsed and collapsed. Its false rhythm faded like a dying breath.
Behind them, Ravel's team emerged from a crawlspace near the northern bulkhead—dusty, wide-eyed, intact. They'd sensed the mimicry too late and had gone to ground, fearing the rhythm was real.
Kian nodded. "Next time, trust the irregularities."
Back at the Haven, the playback of the echo grid showed marked differences. The cloned pulses were gone. Signals across the city sharpened, fewer but more intentional. Even rebels operating independently responded with syncopated delays—imperfections that proved their humanity.
Lina smiled at the display. "We never needed perfection. That's *their* code. We just need truth."
Kian stood behind her, arms folded. "They wanted to replace our voice. All they did was remind us it's real."
Later that night, the relay beacon pulsed again—this time with a new addition.
Three beats. One pause. Two uneven bursts. One sustained hum.
No one needed to decode it.
The city already knew.
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