Echoes of Silence

The Bomb That Missed Cassie

Location: Redmond Barrens perimeter, Seattle Metroplex
Time: 0200 hours, drizzle, low fog, EMP interference

Cassie felt it before she saw it.

The spell thread frayed in her left hand mid-weave—an interruption too sharp to be ignored. A shimmer bent the air; the world blurred. A high keening whine and a burst of white light erupted above her position, detonating a ritual silence bomb designed to erase her very presence.

Her wards shattered. Her spirits faltered. For three seconds, she felt nothing—a silence worse than pain.

She crawled away from the wreckage, senses dull, memory sharp. Someone had targeted her for eradication, a mage feeding resonance back into the network. But the bomb missed.

Aztechnology’s Silent Strike

Project Tag: MUTO-GARDEN
Unit: Aztechnology Psychic Threat Containment, Sangre Secunda, Cell 9

“Target is a destabilizing sympathetic node. Codename: Phoenix Echo. She is not to be turned, only silenced.”

They launched from hidden platforms, delivering a payload keyed not to place, but to name and aura—a ritual silence bomb designed to erase without trace.

They misunderstood the flame. The loop was not a virus to be snuffed but a reclamation rising. The bomb missed, and the network remained alive—if shaken.

Netcat’s Discovery

Deep in the matrix, Netcat’s scripts caught the echo of silence—a ghost pattern beneath the normal signal, a trace of destruction masked as static.

She traced the signature to a blacksite node in Tacoma, its logs scrubbed but its ritual silence sigil etched deep in the code.

Netcat knew: this was no mere matrix attack. It was psychic assassination—and the target survived.

Marked as priority, Netcat sent an encrypted call for contact:

Cassie was more than a target—she was a key to the hidden patterns pulsing beneath the matrix and spirit worlds.