Silent Beat の小説・ストーリー

Not blinking. Something really isc razy. I feel it deep in my bones.

A faint, high hum at the edge of hearing, like a needle on glass. The anomaly. It’s heard us. We both freeze. Not a muscle moves. Not a thought forms. We are statues. Corpses. The hum fades. We’ve gone quiet again, just in time. The near-miss leaves us trembling, drenched in a cold sweat that is entirely our own.

Nolan didn’t say a word. His first move was to call for the doctors. A medical team rushed in and immediately performed a full examination. Even Horace Greystone, Alpha of Silverglade Pack, squeezed into the room. When he heard I was pregnant, his face went completely ashen. "Don’t worry," the doctor finally said, wiping sweat from his brow. "The mother and baby are both stable. She’s just suffering from shock and silver poisoning. Once we cleanse the toxin and treat the wound, there’ll be no harm to either of them."

A row of numbers runs across the top of the page; not for decoration, but to make decisions from. “Short report,” she says before I can ask. “On the second level, the three ‘silence points’ before the hollow all signaled at once — a fine thickening. Not a wave, more like an inhalation. Duration: eight breaths. Later, during the night shift, the same thing happened again, but lasted for five breaths. The pattern suggests: something below is seeking rhythm.” She flips the page. “The endpoint — the ‘gate-that-is-no-longer-a-gate’ — didn’t move. It’s clean.”

A distant rumble shook the heavens. The crack above the city widened slightly. Everyone looked up. The darkness beyond reality was moving. Watching. Waiting. The First Silence. Nova felt it immediately. Not fear. Not anger. Curiosity. The First Silence was observing. Learning. Like it always had. The Third Silence noticed too. His expression hardened. "He's here." The First Memory nodded. "Yes." The city grew brighter. Silver light flooded the horizon. Then the world became quiet. Perfectly quiet. Every sound vanished.

As the impact hit, a bone-jarring crunch that turned the world black, the only thing left in the silence was that one, final, steady sound. Beep. Beep. Beep. Oh fuck.

"It’s called silence. People used to pay a lot of credits for it back in the Old Era." "It feels like being hollowed out," Sofia whispered, pushing herself up. Her muscles groaned, a slow, dull ache that felt entirely too real. "I keep waiting for the pulse. That rhythmic thud that tells me the grid is active. Now, all I hear is my own heart. It’s slow. It’s... pathetic."

He blushed as he was congratulated. One spectator from afar didn't like any of it. "Fast. Ingenious. Tsk. But he's still deaf. He's useless."