The silence after the fall of the Seam was unnatural.

Not peaceful — emptied.

For the first time in months, Hana couldn't hear the hum of the invisible threads, the metallic whisper that had haunted every machine in Seoul. The air felt too quiet, like the world itself was waiting for something that hadn't arrived yet.

Keller stirred beside her. The silver light that once clung to his veins was gone, leaving only pale skin and the faint tremor of exhaustion. His breath came slow and uneven, but steady enough to remind her he was real — not another flicker in the dark.

Hana sat back against the cold tunnel wall, letting the stillness settle between them. The last few hours felt like a fever dream — the flickering corridors, the collapsing code, the blinding burst when she'd reached for him.

Now all of it was gone.

And yet… she still felt something.

Her hand brushed the back of Keller's neck. The faint warmth there wasn't human warmth — it pulsed, rhythmic, mechanical, like a machine heart still trying to remember how to beat.

"Hey," she whispered, brushing the dust from his hair. "Wake up. You're not done yet."

He groaned, eyes opening slowly. "If this is heaven, it's way too damp."

She almost laughed, but it caught in her throat. "You're alive."

"Barely," he muttered, sitting up. The movement triggered a wince; his ribs protested. "What happened?"

"The Seam's gone," she said softly. "For good, I think. You closed it."

He blinked at her, disoriented. "No… we closed it." His gaze softened. "You came in after me."

"Of course I did."

For a moment, they just sat there — surrounded by the broken glow of dead conduits, the faint hiss of cooling metal. The tunnels above Seoul were silent now, but through that silence, Hana could feel the faint, aching heartbeat of a city trying to heal.

Then the comm unit at her waist crackled.

"—na… Hana, come in!" Lin's voice was sharp, half static, half panic.

She grabbed the receiver. "I'm here."

"Thank God," Lin exhaled. "Sensors just registered a power surge under your coordinates. Are you both—?"

"Alive," she said. "Shaken, but alive."

"Good. You need to move. The tunnels are collapsing faster than I thought. Whatever the Seam was anchored to—it's burning out."

Hana looked toward Keller. He nodded grimly, already on his feet.

They began moving through the debris, every step crunching against the fractured floor. The walls still flickered with residual light, like trapped fireflies. Keller kept his hand against the wall as they moved, his fingers trembling every time they brushed a pulse of leftover current.

"You're still connected," Hana said quietly.

He didn't answer.

When they finally emerged into the upper tunnels, Lin was waiting with two drones hovering behind him, their lights scanning for collapse points. He looked pale but alert, his arm still bandaged.

Seeing Keller alive made him freeze mid-sentence. "You actually—" He shook his head. "I don't even have words."

"Good," Keller rasped. "Save them for when I pass out."

Lin huffed, half in disbelief, half in relief. "You shouldn't even exist right now. The Seam's collapse should've shredded everything it touched."

"Guess I was stubborn enough to make it through," Keller said, though his tone lacked conviction. His eyes flicked to the drones, then to the cracked ceiling above. "You said something about anchors burning out?"

Lin nodded and pulled up a holo-map on his wrist display. It showed Seoul's data lattice in ghostly blue lines — and several bright red zones pulsing near the city's core.

"These are the residual points," Lin said. "Where the Seam's energy got tangled into the infrastructure. I thought they'd fade once the core closed, but they're spreading instead. Slowly."

"Spreading?" Hana frowned. "Like infection?"

"Like radiation," Lin replied grimly. "Every network node it touches starts rewriting itself. Random glitches, visual distortions, corrupted transmissions. It's like the Seam's code is looking for a new host."

Keller stiffened. "You mean the Seam's still alive."

Lin hesitated. "Not alive. More like… echoing. But yes — it's adapting."

Hana's stomach dropped. "Then closing it didn't end it."

Keller looked down at his hands. "No," he said softly. "It just changed form."

They reached the surface just before dawn.

The city was quiet, bathed in that gray pre-sunlight that made everything look fragile — the cracked buildings, the burned-out billboards, the distant skyline that still flickered with stray holograms. Seoul had always been a city that hummed with life and data; now it felt hollow, haunted.

Hana exhaled, leaning against the edge of the broken platform. The air was cold, but she welcomed it.

Keller sat beside her, still pale, staring at the horizon. "How long do you think before people notice?"

"They already have," Lin said, joining them. He held out a small device — one of the scanners from the lab. The screen was alive with strange, rhythmic static patterns. "The Seam's energy isn't just digital anymore. It's manifesting in the physical layer. Power lines. Circuits. Even human implants."

Hana's eyes widened. "You mean—"

"Neural links," Lin finished. "Anyone who ever connected to the Seam project could start seeing… things. Glitches. Hallucinations. Echoes of the code."

Keller's gaze went distant. "So it's not done with us."

"No," Lin said quietly. "It's barely begun."

They took shelter that night in one of the surviving towers on the city's southern edge — a skeleton of steel and broken glass, half reclaimed by the creeping fog that rolled in from the river. Lin patched the comms and tried to stabilize Keller's vitals, but even the med-scanner couldn't explain the readings.

"He's oscillating," Lin muttered. "Your body keeps flipping between human and Seam-frequency. It's like your cells can't decide what they are."

Keller managed a weak smile. "Maybe I'm just ahead of evolution."

Hana frowned. "Don't joke about that."

He looked at her, then softened. "Sorry."

For a long while, none of them spoke. Outside, the city lights blinked erratically, patterns forming and vanishing — morse-like signals that no one had programmed.

Hana watched one flicker repeat three times — long, short, short — then fade. She didn't know why, but it made her skin crawl.

Lin noticed too. "They're communicating," he whispered. "But with what?"

Later that night, when the others slept, Hana couldn't.

She sat near the window, watching the ghost-light play over the empty streets. Every now and then, she thought she saw shapes move through the fog — human silhouettes that dissolved when she blinked. The Seam's residue had bled into everything. Maybe even into her.

She looked down at her hands. Her fingertips glowed faintly, just for a heartbeat, before fading.

Then she heard it again — a sound she had come to know too well. Static.

Soft. Whispering.

Like a breath against the back of her neck.

She turned sharply.

Keller was asleep across the room, his face calm for once. Lin was out cold, slumped over his equipment. The static didn't come from them. It came from inside the walls.

She stood, crossing to the far side of the room, pressing her ear against the cold concrete. The sound was clearer now, like a voice trapped between frequencies.

"…Hana…"

Her blood ran cold.

It wasn't Keller's voice.

It wasn't Lin's.

It was hers.

A perfect copy — distorted, digital, but undeniably her own.

"Don't," it whispered, low and urgent. "Don't let him connect again."

Hana stumbled back, heart racing. "What—who are you?"

No answer. Only static. Then silence.

She stared at the wall for a long time, every instinct screaming that something was wrong. The Seam might be gone, but its echo was spreading — rewriting the world in quiet, invisible ways.

She looked back at Keller, sleeping restlessly now, his hand twitching as faint lines of silver light traced across his arm.

She didn't wake him.

She couldn't.

Because deep down, part of her already knew —

whatever she'd pulled out of the Seam with him wasn't just Keller anymore.

The lights outside flickered once more. Long. Short. Short.

Then, faintly, across the city grid, a whisper of data ran like a shiver through the veins of the streets.

> SEAM.PROTOCOL.REINITIALIZING...

> NEW HOST DETECTED.

> CONNECTION: STABLE.

The screen of Lin's console lit up by itself.

Keller's heartbeat accelerated.

And somewhere deep beneath Seoul, in the dead circuits of the collapsed tunnels, the faint hum began again — soft, rhythmic, inevitable.

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