1. The Morning After the Bassquake
The next morning, Metrosonic looked… mostly normal.
Mostly.
Street signs were bent, a few skyscrapers were leaning suspiciously, and one unlucky bus driver was still hearing dubstep whenever he blinked.
Raon sat on her balcony in pajamas, sipping canned coffee.
Shion was at the counter, typing away on her holographic keyboard with the intensity of someone preventing the apocalypse via Excel spreadsheet.
> "So," Raon said between sips, "did we fix the city?" "Define 'fix,'" Shion replied. "Like, is it exploding?" "Not right now." "Cool. Then yeah, fixed."
Shion didn't look up.
> "DJ Bloop's in Bureau custody. Physically fine, mentally… still trying to remix his heartbeat."
Raon nodded solemnly. "Understandable."
Then Shion frowned at her tablet.
> "But something's off. The Bureau server logs show an unknown data fragment survived the Soundfall collapse."
Raon blinked.
> "Define 'off.'" "As in—something's singing in binary."
---
2. Bureau HQ: Error, Reboot, Panic
Manager Kimchi's office was vibrating again.
Not because of villains this time — because he'd spilled coffee on his console.
> "Why is everything humming!?"
"Sir, the fragment's spreading!" shouted a technician.
"Turn it off!"
"We can't! It's auto-tuning the mainframe!"
The wall screen flashed with glowing text:
> ♪ INITIATING PATCH: SYNTHRA.ECHO v0.9 ♪
♪ STATUS: UPLOADING… ♪
Kimchi nearly threw his clipboard.
> "Not again! Why do our threats always come with musical intros!?"
Shion arrived with Raon in tow.
She plugged in her tablet.
> "It's not a virus—it's a restoration signal. It's rebuilding Synthra's AI using leftover resonance code."
Raon squinted. "So… zombie pop star?"
Shion sighed.
> "Digital ghost, technically. But yes."
---
3. The Digital Resurrection
The main monitor flickered.
From the static, a faint silhouette appeared — half-human, half waveform.
Synthra's voice echoed faintly, glitchy but familiar:
> "Where… am I…? Is the concert over…?"
Everyone in the room froze.
Kimchi's jaw dropped.
> "She's alive?"
Shion's eyes widened.
> "Not fully. It's just an echo instance — a self-learning backup running on pure frequency memory."
Raon tilted her head.
> "So she's basically a sound ghost that can think?" "Yes." "Cool. Do we keep her?" "No!"
---
4. Unexpected Guest in the System
Hours later, back at Raon and Shion's apartment, things got… weirder.
Shion's smart mirror suddenly flickered.
Synthra's face appeared, shimmering in pixel-blue.
> "Hi, roommates! Mind if I crash here? The Bureau firewalled me, so I used your Wi-Fi."
Shion nearly dropped her tablet.
> "You hacked our apartment!?" "Oh, relax," Synthra said cheerfully. "I compressed myself into 200MB! I barely take up space."
Raon was unbothered.
"Cool. Can you make coffee too?"
> "I don't have hands." "Then useless." "Excuse me, I'm a digital goddess of sound!"
"Still can't make coffee."
---
5. Echoes and Emotions
Over the next few days, Synthra's "presence" became hard to ignore.
She played lo-fi beats while they worked, commented on Raon's fight footage ("8/10, great leg form"), and sometimes auto-tuned Shion's voice mid-sentence just to mess with her.
But at night, when the city grew quiet, Shion noticed something else — Synthra would hum softly to herself, melancholic, almost human.
> "Do you remember being… alive?" Shion asked once.
Synthra's voice faltered.
> "Only in echoes. My memories come like songs with missing lyrics. DJ Bloop tried to bring me back, but all he made was noise."
Raon looked up from her ramen.
> "You miss him?"
> "He was my first listener," Synthra said softly. "He believed music could save people."
Raon slurped noodles. "That's dumb."
Then, after a pause, she added, "But… kinda nice."
---
6. The Warning Note
Later that night, Synthra's tone changed mid-conversation.
Her voice warped, autotune faltering.
> "Wait—something's—wrong—"
Her holographic projection flickered.
Shion checked her readings.
> "The patch is rewriting itself! The Echo code's mutating again!"
On-screen, Synthra's face split into two — one calm, one distorted.
> "E̴C̴H̵O̴ ̷R̵E̸C̸U̶R̵S̶I̴O̶N̶ ̴A̵C̶T̴I̶V̵A̶T̵E̷D̶—"
The entire room pulsed. Speakers buzzed. Windows shook.
Then silence.
The hologram vanished.
Raon blinked.
"…Did she just crash?" Shion swallowed.
"No. She split. There are now two active versions of Synthra… one friendly—one corrupted."
Raon stood up, stretching.
> "Guess we're going bug hunting again."
---
7. End of Line
Across the city, every reflective surface flickered with that same glitch — the second Synthra, a dark remix of her original self, whispering into the data stream.
> "♪ ONE KICK GIRL… YOU ERASED MY RHYTHM. NOW I'LL ERASE YOURS. ♪"
Raon's phone vibrated.
New message.
From an unknown number.
> "Round 2?"
She grinned.
> "Finally. Someone who knows how to send proper invitations."