The Signal

Chapter 2 — The Voice

Malick Lee replayed the recording until sunrise.

The signal lasted only eleven seconds, yet something about it disturbed him. Beneath the static was a faint voice, almost impossible to distinguish. It sounded distant, as though someone were speaking from the other side of a tunnel.

He increased the volume and played it again.

At first, he heard nothing but interference. Then a whisper emerged.

“Malick.”

He immediately stopped the recording.

Nobody outside his family knew his full name. He checked the file properties, hoping to discover where the sound had originated, but the information was incomplete. The recording contained no recognizable location data, no sender identification, and no explanation for how it had appeared on his laptop.

He tried again.

This time, the voice was clearer.

“Don't let it wake up.”

Malick stepped away from his desk.

What was supposed to be a strange electronic disturbance had suddenly become personal. He checked his phone, laptop, and radio, ensuring none had accidentally recorded his own voice. He even searched through his recent downloads, wondering whether he had unknowingly opened a file containing the recording.

Nothing explained what he had heard.

At breakfast, Malick barely spoke. His mind kept returning to the message, especially the final words.

Don't let it wake up.

That afternoon, he searched online for similar recordings. He found reports of unexplained signals detected by radio enthusiasts in different countries. Most had been dismissed as interference, equipment failure, or fabricated stories.

One discussion caught his attention.

A user claimed to have received the same eleven-second signal seventeen years earlier.

The post ended abruptly, with no further explanation.

Malick clicked the user's profile.

It had been deleted.

He searched the discussion's archived pages until he discovered an attachment containing the original recording. After downloading it, he compared it with his own.

They were identical.

Except for one detail.

The older recording contained a faint voice at the very end.

Malick put on his headphones and raised the volume.

The voice whispered three words.

“Find Daniel Lee.”

Malick removed his headphones.

Daniel Lee was his father.

Years earlier, Daniel had disappeared without leaving a convincing explanation. Malick had grown up believing his father had abandoned the family, although his mother had always refused to discuss the circumstances surrounding his disappearance.

Now, seventeen years after the original recording, a mysterious signal was directing him toward the same man.

He opened a search engine and entered his father's name alongside the words communications station.

Several unrelated results appeared. Then he discovered an old newspaper article about an unexplained incident at a research facility outside Nairobi.

The article mentioned a communications engineer named Daniel Lee.

Malick clicked the headline, but the page refused to load.

He tried again.

A message appeared on his screen.

ACCESS DENIED.

Before he could take a screenshot, his laptop restarted.

When the desktop returned, a new folder had appeared.

Its name consisted of eleven characters:

0317_SIGNAL

Malick opened it.

Inside was a single photograph of a dark building surrounded by trees.

It looked abandoned, yet a light glowed behind one of its windows.

On the back wall, barely visible through the darkness, was a symbol he recognized immediately.

It was the same symbol hidden inside the signal.

Below the photograph, a text file contained one sentence.

YOUR FATHER DID NOT DISAPPEAR BY ACCIDENT.