The Last Echo

Neural Retriever Vael has spent her career walking through other people's memories without ever losing herself. Until now.
Called to oversee a routine wipe at NeuraClear's clinic, she instead finds a dead man whose mind has collapsed around something impossible - a secret so volatile he chose death over letting it surface. When Vael enters the residue of Marcus's memories, something enters with her. Something that listens. Something that learns. Something that shouldn't know her name.
The deeper she goes, the more the boundaries slip: Marcus's emotions bleeding into hers, his memories twisting with her own, reflections that move a heartbeat too late. And the presence inside the link is no longer content to watch.
It wants her.
To uncover the truth Marcus died for, Vael must follow the Echo into the darkest parts of his mind - and the places she's spent her whole life avoiding in her own. But the closer she gets, the harder it becomes to answer the one question she can't outrun:
If the Echo inside her isn't Marcus...
Why does it feel like it's been waiting for her?