Chapter 24: We Are the Echo |
Three days after the ceremony ended, Shen Mo tried to seal away the experience with work and cold rationality.
He edited the terrifying "simulated acceptance" video into a highly impactful worker safety education warning film.
In the video, he removed all the scenes that could not be explained by science, retaining only the hidden dangers of the staircase structure, blind spots in lighting, and the erroneous reactions of the human body in emergency situations.
He submitted the video to the Municipal Construction Committee's training center in his personal capacity, hoping that the embers of this tragedy could illuminate the path to safety for more people.
The training center was very efficient. Three days later, this video, titled "M8313: The Forgotten Thirteenth Step," was quietly launched on the internal safety education platform.
That night, Shen Mo returned home and threw himself exhaustedly onto the sofa.
He did not notice that in the corner of the living room, the home security camera, which was originally in standby mode, silently lit up its infrared indicator light, the lens precisely aimed at him.
As the night deepened, Shen Mo got up and walked towards the study, as if to look up some information.
However, he did not turn on the computer. Instead, he sat at his desk and picked up a spare signature pen.
He, a right-handed person, was now holding the pen with his left hand, writing the same sentence over and over again on a white piece of paper, stroke by stroke.
The handwriting was neat and forceful, yet so unfamiliar it seemed to be from another person's hand.
"We haven't finished walking."
His expression was wooden, his eyes staring blankly ahead, completely unaware of his own actions.
The computer screen lit up without any warning, automatically playing the teaching video he had just uploaded during the day.
The playback progress bar was violently dragged to the end by an invisible force, the screen freezing on the dark staircase entrance.
A line of pale white subtitles slowly appeared in the center of the screen:
"You have participated in the acceptance, you are also a witness."
At the same time, Su Wanying received a personal call from the director of the city museum. His tone was unprecedentedly grave and perplexed.
The safety helmet belonging to Zhao Mingyuan, brought back from the M8313 construction site, had had an incident.
It was originally placed in a glass case in the "Modern Industrial Heritage" exhibition area, as a microcosm of an era.
However, tonight, without anyone touching it and with the display case intact, it had slid from one end of the exhibition area to the other—to the "Supernatural Folklore" exhibition area, where items such as soul-summoning banners and paper figures were displayed.
What was even more horrifying was that the safety helmet was firmly pressing down on a comment card left by a visitor.
Su Wanying rushed to the museum and pulled up the surveillance footage.
The footage showed that the glass of the display case was perfectly sealed, with no signs of being pried open.
The movement of the safety helmet occurred in the instant that the corridor's lighting system flickered and went out due to unstable voltage.
The darkness lasted only a few tenths of a second. When the light returned, it had already completed this bizarre "journey."
She put on gloves and carefully took out the comment card.
The handwriting on it made her blood almost freeze.
"Thank you for hearing me."
It was a slightly trembling but highly recognizable handwriting, identical to the handwriting on the last engineering verification form that Zhao Mingyuan had personally filled out, which she had in her files.
The director's face turned pale as he added, "There's something even stranger. The three security guards on duty tonight all had the same nightmare. They said they dreamt of a man in a white lab coat and a woman in an old-fashioned cheongsam, holding a long list, calling out names one by one in the museum's corridors. The voices were right in their ears, but they couldn't wake up no matter what."
A white lab coat, a cheongsam... In Su Wanying's mind, Shen Mo's previous speculation flashed instantly.
This was not a lone ghost; it was an "organization."
This thought also took root in Shen Mo's mind and quickly grew into a towering tree, obscuring all his cognition.
He was no longer satisfied with the existing conclusions. Instead, he re-examined the detailed files of all the victims who had fallen, including their social relationships and personal resumes.
In the mountain of data, he was shocked to discover a terrifying coincidence that everyone had overlooked: besides the initial three workers, the identities of the subsequent few seemingly random victims were by no means accidental.
Two of them were workers who had participated in the reinforcement and renovation of the staircase after the completion of the M8313 project; one was an intern reporter who had just entered the industry and was only responsible for organizing materials when the accident was reported; and the last one was the neighbor of the old man Xu, who had remained silent out of fear. Old Xu had, after drinking, intermittently revealed the inside story of the accident to him.
A terrifying inference formed in his mind: the "echo's" pursuit had long since gone beyond the scope of those directly responsible.
It was like a silent plague, capturing every "insider."
Anyone who had come into contact with that buried truth in any form—whether as a witness, a repairer, a recorder, or a listener—could inadvertently be marked by that lingering obsession and become a carrier for its extension.
He immediately called Su Wanying to share this discovery.
Su Wanying on the other end of the phone was silent for a long time, her voice trembling slightly, "Shen Mo, I have... worse news here."
She was sorting through the original archives of the "Urban Memory Oral History" project, a batch of old-style audiotapes that had long been digitized and should have been sealed.
While sorting through an interview recording about urban construction in the 1980s, she noticed the archivist's note: The end section has a full minute of strong background noise that cannot be eliminated.
Out of a historian's rigor, she imported the recording into professional equipment, trying to perform noise reduction.
When the hiss of the current and the blurry ambient sound were stripped away layer by layer, a whisper, so clear it made one's scalp tingle, emerged from the depths of history.
It was not the voice of one person, but the overlapping whispers of many people, men and women, old and young, repeatedly chanting two names.
"Shen Mo... Su Wanying... your names have been carved into the stairs."
Su Wanying suddenly remembered something, her face instantly turning deathly pale.
In that "simulated acceptance" ceremony, in order to reassure each other, they had shouted each other's names more than once.
The two of them, on opposite ends of the phone, fell into a dead silence.
A common, bone-chilling thought pierced through them: they were not "solving" the echo, but had been "registered" by the echo.
Their self-righteous investigation and intervention had not ended the curse. Instead, their own names had become the latest component of this massive obsession, carved into a new cycle of reincarnation.
Late at night, the autopsy room of the city's forensic center was brightly lit.
Shen Mo was dealing with the body of an ordinary sudden death case, trying to numb himself with high-intensity work.
The cold stainless steel scalpel cut open the deceased's chest cavity. He skillfully exposed and separated the organs.
Just as he was about to remove the left lung for weighing, his movements suddenly froze.
On the surface of the lung lobe, which was full of air bubbles and dark red, countless extremely fine scratches, as if carved with the tip of a needle, had appeared.
These scratches were arranged and combined to form two clear Chinese characters.
To be continued.
His hand froze in mid-air, the cold light of the scalpel reflecting his incredulous face.
Just then, the phone in his pocket vibrated wildly.
It was Su Wanying.
He tremblingly pressed the answer key. Su Wanying's voice, suppressed with fear and almost distorted, came from the receiver, "Shen Mo, I just had a dream... I dreamt that we were standing on an endless staircase, and behind us... behind us were countless figures. They... they were all looking at us, saying to us..."
Her voice paused, as if she were trying hard to recall that desperate sentence.
"They said, 'You've finally come. Now, it's your turn to lead the way.'"
The moment her voice fell, Shen Mo looked out through the glass window of the autopsy room.
Outside the window, in this vast and sleeping city, in all the old-style apartment buildings, the countless forgotten, ignored, and walked-over thirteenth steps, at the same moment, let out a barely audible yet perfectly synchronized "click."
The sound was like countless huge and ancient gears, after decades of silence, finally re-engaging, beginning their slow and irreversible rotation.
Shen Mo put down the phone, his mind a blank.
The phrase "it's your turn to lead the way" and the words "to be continued" on the lung lobe intertwined, making him feel dizzy.
He staggered against the wall, an unprecedented suspicion seizing him—suspicion of his own memory, suspicion of his own sanity.
That blank period at his desk, that unfamiliar left-handed handwriting, was like a poisoned thorn, deeply embedded in his subconscious.
He needed evidence, evidence that could prove he was still himself.
(End of Chapter)