Chapter 7 – The Signal’s Echo
Httoq – Present Day
Lupa stood before the main terminal, staring at the shifting equations on the screen. The numbers pulsed, glitched, rearranged themselves into patterns she could almost grasp—but never quite.
It had been days since Boris arrived.
And something was wrong.
His signal wasn’t just residual—it was evolving.
It wasn’t just a trace of where he had been.
It was an ongoing transmission.
Lupa inhaled sharply, fingers tightening on the console.
Not a memory. Not an afterimage.
A call.
And she wasn’t sure who was listening.
2020 – The Amazon Basin The baby wasn’t supposed to survive.
The men had made that clear when they left her in the clearing, naked, slick with the remnants of birth, her tiny lungs fighting for air.
They hadn’t expected the jungle to keep her.
Hadn’t expected the trees to lean inward, the air to shift, the world itself to respond.
But she had cried.
And the jungle had listened.
Frequencies traveled differently here, bending through the air like something sentient, weaving through roots and water, slipping into the bones of the rainforest.
The sound of the infant’s wail wasn’t just noise.
It was a perfect mathematical function.
And something—someone—answered it.
Present Day – Httoq Lupa exhaled.
She had never seen her own birth. But now, staring at the readings, she could hear it.
A wave.
A pattern.
A transmission that had never stopped.
The jungle had amplified her cry and sent it into the fabric of reality itself. And the world had answered—with a pandemic, with mutations, with the birth of an entire generation of minds that could hear what no one else could.
Her hands hovered over the controls. The network was still active, still moving, still reaching.
If she listened now, who would she hear?
A flicker. A pulse.
Then—
A voice.
Not Boris. Not Remo.
Not Hermes.
Something new.
Lupa’s breath caught.
Someone else had just answered the call.
Three Days Earlier – Somewhere in the Middle East Boris had been here before.
Not in this specific war-torn city. Not on this particular battlefield.
But in this feeling—this violent loop of history where men with guns fought over land they would never truly own.
It always ended the same way.
With fire.
Boris closed his eyes, his pulse in sync with the distant explosions. The people here thought he was a god. Or a demon. Something supernatural, something other.
He was neither.
Just a signal in a body that had never belonged to this world.
And now, he had been left here.
Remo had abandoned him.
Not intentionally.
But that hardly mattered now.
Boris exhaled, reaching for a sound, any sound—something to anchor him back to the network.
The music came first. Not real music. Not in the physical sense.
But an echo.
A memory.
Nina Simone, bleeding through the static of the universe.
Something cracked open inside him.
And then, he vanished.
Present Day – Httoq Remo stood at the entrance to Boris’s holding chamber, arms crossed.
“You’re not afraid of him?” Hermes asked from beside him.
Remo didn’t answer immediately. He wasn’t sure how to explain it.
Boris was a problem. That much was obvious.
But he wasn’t just some refugee.
Wasn’t just some powerful mind.
He was a cause. A disruption. A paradox that was never supposed to happen.
And Lupa—
Remo swallowed.
Lupa was part of that paradox.
“She’s been different since he got here,” Remo muttered.
Hermes raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
Remo exhaled sharply. “Yeah.”
A beat.
Then—
Hermes smirked. “Should I be jealous?”
Remo groaned. “I hate you.”
Hermes winked.
But Remo wasn’t joking.
He didn’t know what it meant yet, but something was changing.
And they weren’t ready for it.
2020 – The No Nation War Room
The men in suits stood in silence, watching the footage play on loop.
A woman in a hospital bed, gasping for air. A nurse rushing forward. The machines screaming.
Then—
The stillness of death.
The First Lady of No Nation was dead.
The pandemic had begun.
The President’s jaw was tight as he turned to his advisors. “Spin it.”
One of them cleared his throat. “We have an angle.”
The President exhaled. “Go on.”
“China.”
A beat.
Then, the President smiled.
“Good.”
Present Day – Httoq Lupa stared at the data.
She knew now.
Boris had never been random.
He had come here and triggered everything.
The virus. The mutations. The network.
And No Nation had covered it up.
Remo’s voice broke through the silence. “Lupa?”
She turned, slow, as if emerging from another reality.
“What?”
“You’re shaking.”
Lupa looked down at her hands.
She was.
Because she had just realized something else.
If Boris had triggered all of this…
Then what had she done?
