I downloaded the audio.
Not because I trusted it.
Because I needed it.
I renamed the file:
> ELENA_FINAL_REAL.wav
Like that would make it true.
Then I opened my old audio editor.
My hands remembered the keys. My ears remembered her tone.
But my heart didn't.
I couldn't tell if it sounded like her anymore. Or just like what I wanted her to be.
---
I used the editor's reversal tool.
Control-Z.
Undo the pitch edits.
Control-Z.
Undo the compressor.
Control-Z.
Undo the timestamp.
Control-Z.
Undo the damage.
Undo the silence.
Undo the death.
But every time I clicked, I noticed something.
The waveform was changing... but so was my reflection in the screen.
First, it blinked when I didn't.
Then it mouthed the words before I spoke.
Then it whispered — without sound:
> "Keep going. You're almost me."
---
I froze.
Was I restoring her?
Or was I remastering myself... into something else?
I scrolled through the software's logs.
At the bottom was a session I didn't create:
> User: UNKNOWN
Project: Ezra_VoiceIntegration_v2
I clicked it.
It opened a chain of layered files.
Every one of them was my voice. But edited. Bent. Tuned to match her vocal frequency.
They were trying to make me sing like her.
No — they were trying to make me her.
---
The lights flickered.
The audio glitched.
My headphones crackled and burst with layered sound:
> Elena's voice
My voice
The producer's voice
…all layered into one final phrase:
> "You don't have to bring her back, Ezra. You just have to become the part she left behind."
---
The screen cut to black.
But the editor kept running.
Then… something new appeared.
A button.
It wasn't from the software.
It floated in the center of the screen like a hallucination.
One word on it:
> MERGE.