Speaker 1: Calarogu Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Midnight Frequencies, a special Romance Weekly and Ghost
Scary Stories crossover event. This is episode three, Dead Air.
Speaker 1: The voice that comes out of me isn't mine. It's deeper, older,
carrying harmonics that seem to resonate in dimensions I can't see.
When I speak. The air itself bends around the words,
creating visible ripples that spread out from my throat, like
stones dropped in still water. Stop. I command, and the
word carries the weight of centuries, the authority of every
siren who came before me. Drop your weapons, forget you
saw us, leave this place, and remember nothing. The effect
is immediate and terrifying. Six armed agents freeze midstride, their
faces going blank behind tactical masks. Weapons clatter to the
floor like dropped toys. They turn in perfect synchronization and
walk back through the shattered doorway, their movements mechanical, puppet like.
In less than thirty seconds, we're alone again. I collapse
against the wall, my legs suddenly unable to support me.
The power that just flowed through my voice has left
me feeling hollowed out, like an instrument that's been played
too hard and might shatter at any moment. Jesus Christ.
I whisper my British accent, making the words sound absurdly polite.
After what just happened. I made them forget. I erased
their memories. Kai is staring at me with something between
awe and terror. In three hundred years of order records,
there are maybe five documented cases of untrained sirens successfully
using command voice, and none of them on their first attempt.
Is that good or bad? It's unprecedented. Kai moves to
the surveillance monitor, watching the agents file out of the
building like sleepwalkers, which means you're either the most naturally
gifted siren in recorded history or what, or your bloodline
is far more ancient and powerful than I realized. He
turns back to me, and I can see something new
in his expression, not just attraction or protectiveness, but genuine,
fear lyra What did your grandmother tell you about your
family history? Anything about where your ability might have come from?
I try to focus through the exhaustion clouding my thoughts,
just stories, old folklore about women who could speak truth
into existence, who could call storms or calm seas with
their voices. I always thought they were metaphors, nothing about
specific ancestors, names, locations, dates. She mentioned someone called the
White Siren once said she was our family's greatest shame
and greatest glory. But when I asked for details, Grandmother
would just get this look, like she was afraid of
the words themselves. Kai goes very still. The White Siren.
You're certain that's what she called her? Yes, why do
you know that name? Every listener knows that name, Kai
says quietly. She's the reason the order exists. The room
seems to grow colder outside, Dawn is breaking over Manhattan,
painting the windows with golden light. That feels incongruous with
the darkness of what I'm learning about myself. Tell me,
I say, Kai sits down heavily, like the weight of
what he's about to reveal is physical. In sixteen ninety two,
during the Salem witch Trials, a woman named Evangeline Morgan
was accused of using her voice to bewitch an entire town.
The records say she could compel truth from anyone, command
absolute obedience, even influence the weather through song. Morgan, I repeat,
feeling the name resonate in my bones. That's my surname.
The White siren wasn't just any siren, Lyra. She was
the first siren to fully manifest what we call the
true voice, the ability to alter reality through spoken will
not just influence people's actions, but actually change the fundamental
nature of things. I think about the armed agents, how
they didn't just follow my commands but seemed to forget
on a cellular level that we existed. Is that what
I just did? I don't know. Maybe the line between
powerful compulsion and reality alteration is blurry. Kai runs his
hands through his hair, and I noticed they're shaking. According
to the records, Evangeline's abilities grew so strong that she
began to lose control. People who heard her voice would
become permanently altered, their personalities, rewritten, their memories, restructured. Entire
communities were transformed into extensions of her will. What happened
to her? The order was formed specifically to stop her.
It took thirty listeners working together to contain her abilities
long enough for Kai's voice trails off. For what for
her execution? They burned her, but even then her voice
continued to echo for days. Afterward, the area around Salem
was considered cursed for decades. No supernatural being could enter
that region without experiencing what witnesses described as the White
Sirens scream. The implications hit me like a physical blow.
You think I'm like her, You think I'm going to
lose control and start rewriting people's minds. I think you
have the potential to be exactly like her, Kai says honestly,
and that terrifies me because it means the Order will
never stop hunting you. They'll see you as an extinction
level threat. And what do you see me? As? Kai
looks at me with an expression so complet I can't
pass all the emotions in it. I see you as
someone I'm falling in love with, despite every instinct telling
me I should run as far away as possible. The
confession creates that electric resonance between us again, but this
time it's stronger, more visible. The air around us shimmers
with silver light, and I can feel our supernatural frequencies
not just matching, but beginning to merge. Kai I whisper
something's happening. He sees it too, the way the space
between us is bending, how our voices are starting to
harmonize even when we're not trying to match pitch. When
he speaks, I can hear layers in his words that
weren't there before, and I know he's hearing the same
complexity in mine. This is what I was afraid of,
he says, but he doesn't move away. Listeners aren't supposed
to be affected by syral nobilities. But you're not just
any siren, and this connection we're developing, it's creating something new?
Is it dangerous? Everything about you is dangerous. Kai's voice
is rough, and when he looks at me, I can
see desire warring with duty in his dark eyes. But
I can't seem to make myself care. Before I can respond,
my phone rings, not the shrill electronic tone of a
normal call, but something else, a sound that seems to
bypass my ears and resonate directly in my bones. When
I look at the screen, there's no number, just a
symbol that looks like a spiral made of intersecting waves.
Don't answer that, Kai says urgently, But I'm already reaching
for the phone, compelled by something stronger than curiosity. The
moment I touched the screen, the device grows cold in
my hand, and when I answer, the voice that speaks
isn't coming from the phone speaker. It's emanating from the
air around us, daughter of the White Siren, the voice says,
and it sounds like wind through ancient trees, like waves
crashing against stone. We have been waiting for you to awaken.
Who is this, I ask, my voice automatically shifting into
that compelling frequency. We are the Council of First Voices,
the original Sirens, those who chose to transcend mortality rather
than face extinction. We felt your awakening across the spheres,
heard your command voice echo through dimensions most humans cannot perceive.
Kai has gone pale. He's gesturing frantically for me to
hang up, but I can't seem to move my hand.
Your descendant shows promise. The voice continues, and now I
realize it's not one voice, but many, speaking in perfect unison.
But she walks a dangerous path, guided by one who
would cage her power rather than set it free. I'm
not caging anything, Kai says, loud enough for the voices
to hear. I'm trying to help her learn control. Control
is a limitation imposed by the fearful. The White Siren's
error was not in her power, but in her restraint.
She tried to live within human boundaries, to love a
human man, to pretend she was something less than what
she was destined to become. And what am I destined
to become? I ask, though part of me dreads the answer.
What you were always meant to be a bridge between worlds,
a voice that can reshape reality according to will and desire.
But first you must choose remain limited by mortal attackishments,
or embrace your true nature. The phone grows so cold
it burns, and I can see frost forming on the
screen around us. The safe house is changing, walls becoming translucent,
showing glimpses of other places. Other times I see a
woman who looks like me standing before a massive tree
that pulses with silver light, her voice weaving threads of reality,
like a spider creating a web. The white siren. I breathe,
your ancestor your template, your warning. The voices are growing stronger,
more compelling. She fell because she chows love over power.
Do not make her mistake. Love isn't a mistake, I
say fiercely, and as I speak, I feel that strange
resonance between been Ki and me flare brighter. It's what
makes power worth having. The counsel's laughter is like breaking glass,
spoken like a child who has never tasted true power.
But you will learn when your voice grows strong enough
to reshape continents, When you can speak new realities into
existence with a whisper, you will understand the burden of transcendence.
I don't want to transcend anything I say. I just
want to learn control, so I don't hurt innocent people.
Innocent people, The voices turne cold. Those are the words
of someone who still thinks of herself as human. You
are beyond such concerns. Now you are becoming something that
exists outside mortal morality. No, the word comes out with
enough force to make the windows rattle. I won't be that.
I won't turn into someone who thinks other people don't matter.
You will have no choice. Power of this magnitude cannot
be contained by human conscience. The White Siren learned this
too late. You will learn it in time, or you
will be destroyed by your own limitations. The connection cuts
off abruptly, leaving us in sudden, absolute silence. The phone
screen goes black, and the walls of the safe house
solidify back into normal matter, But the chill in the
air remains, and I can still feel the weight of
the Council's words pressing against my mind. Well, Kai says,
after a long moment that was worse than I feared.
Who were they really if they were telling the truth?
The original sirens who chose to abandon their human forms
rather than accept limitations on their power, They exist somewhere
between dimensions, now technically immortal, but no longer quite real
in any way that matters. Kai moves to one of
his books, flipping through pages until he finds what he's
looking for. There are references to them in the oldest
Order texts. They're said to appear when a siren of
unusual power awakens, trying to recruit them into transcendence, and
if I refuse, then they'll either leave you alone to
face the Order's judgment, or they'll try to force the
transcendence process. Kai's expression is grim. Both options typically end
with the siren losing everything that made them human. I
sink into a chair, overwhelmed by the scope of what
I'm learning, So my choices are become a reality altering monster,
Let the Order kill me, or get turned into some
kind of dimensional ghost. There's a fourth option, Kai says quietly,
which is we run, We disappear completely, find somewhere the
order can't track us, and I teach you control, away
from all this supernatural politics, And then what live in
hiding forever? Maybe or maybe we find a way to
prove that you can be trusted with your abilities, build
a life that's both supernatural and human. Kai sits across
from me, and when he reaches for my hands, I
can feel that electric connection sparking between us. It wouldn't
be easy, and there'd be no guarantees, but it would
be ours. The offer is tempting in ways I can't
fully express, But even as I consider it, I can
feel the weight of responsibility settling on my shoulders. Those
people who called my show, who confess their secrets and
destroyed their lives because of my uncontrolled power, they deserve
better than having me run away from the consequences. What
about my listeners, I ask the people I hurt with
my broadcast? What about them? I can't just disappear and
leave them to deal with what I did to them.
If I really have this power, shouldn't I be using
it to help rather than hide. Kai's expression grows troubled, Lyra,
the road between helping and controlling is shorter than you think.
The White Siren probably started with the best intentions too,
But she didn't have what I have, which is I
meet his eyes, feeling that resonance between us pulse with certainty.
She didn't have you. She fell because she was alone,
because there was no one to keep her grounded, to
remind her of her humaneanity. But you can hear supernatural frequencies. Kai,
you can monitor my voice, tell me when I'm losing control,
help me stay connected to what matters. That's a lot
of faith to put in someone you've known for less
than twelve hours, is it? I challenge? You've been listening
to my voice for eight months. I've been unconsciously responding
to your presence in my audience the same length of time.
This connection we have, it didn't start last night. It's
been building slowly, carefully, one frequency finding another across the
electromagnetic noise of the city. Kai stares at me, and
I can see the moment he realizes I'm right. Whatever's
between us has been growing for months, two supernatural beings,
unknowingly calling to each other across the airwaves. You want
to stay, he says, you want to face the order,
deal with the council, learn to use your abilities properly
instead of running. I want to find a way to
be what I am without losing what I was, and
I think the only way to do that is together.
Before Kai can respond, alarms start blaring again, but this
time they're not coming from the building security system. They're
coming from outside, spreading across the city like a wave.
Car alarms, smoke detectors, emergency broadcast systems all triggered simultaneously.
Kai moves to the window and his face goes white.
Oh no, what is it? Look. I join him at
the window, and what I see makes my blood run cold.
Across Manhattan, people are streaming out of buildings, moving with
the same mechanical precision as the agents I commanded earlier.
Thousands of them, all walking in the same direction, their
faces blank, their movements synchronized. They're all heading toward Midtown,
Kai says, grimly, toward the radio district. Why because someone
with a much more powerful voice than yours just issued
a city wide command. Kai turns to me, and I
can see fear and determination warring in his expression. The
council wasn't just trying to recruit you, Lyra. They were
buying time for something bigger. As if summoned by his words,
my phone buzzes with a text message, come to w KNT,
Come alone, bring your voice, and we will show you
what true power looks like. The lesson begins at sunset.
They're using my radio station. I realize they're going to
broadcast something through WKNT, and if they do, Kai says,
every person in the Tri state area who hears it
will be under their control. We stare at each other,
both understanding the implications. Whatever the council is planning, it's
going to make my accidental broadcast look like a whisper,
and somehow I'm the key to stopping it. So much
for running away, I say, so much for running away,
Kai agrees, Are you ready to learn what it really
means to be a siren? Looking out at the thousands
of people streaming through the streets like an army of sleepwalkers,
I know there's only one answer I can give. Let's
go save the city.