Chapter Text
Vox had watched the same broadcast thirty-seven times.
With a burst of static—eye-searingly bright in the dark—he rewound it again.
The black screen reflected him: slumped against the cushions, one leg hanging off the armrest, his display dimmed to conserve power he didn't actually need to conserve.
He'd been alone in his room for—who knew how long. Long enough that the air had gone stale and thick, carrying the sharp reek of spilled liquor. He hadn't bothered turning the lights on; the screens were enough. Not that more than two of them were active.
The rest stared back at him, dead and black, their surfaces dulled with a fine layer of dust he would have been mortified by under normal circumstances.
Empty bottles lay scattered around him. Full ones waited within reach whenever frustration or boredom pushed him toward another drink.
His ratings screens had been dark for days, their usual frantic scroll of numbers replaced by flat, accusatory zeros.
Zero engagement.
Zero reach.
Zero signal worth broadcasting.
The numbers stared back at him like an indictment.
He wasn't locked out. That would have been easier—something concrete to fix, a system to hack, an obstacle to dismantle.
But no.
He could still pull up the city feeds. Monitor the networks. Watch Hell spin happily without him.
The broadcast lines were open. He could go live whenever he wanted—push his face onto every screen in the Pentagram and reclaim his empire with a single transmission.
But the thought of it made something twist in his chest.
Sharp. Humiliating.
What would he even say? How would he explain the absence? The silence? The fact that he'd vanished and Hell had barely noticed?
It was easier to let Valentino run things for now.
So instead, after spending long enough as just a head, Vox had started digging through old files. Archives he'd ignored for decades, footage he'd never bothered reviewing because he'd been too busy expanding.
Having a body again was nice, at least. He could hold a bottle properly now. Could pace when the restlessness got too bad.
Though lately he hadn't bothered.
The couch had developed a Vox-shaped indentation that felt almost comforting in its familiarity.
He'd get back to everything else later.
Hell could wait.
Right now there was only the recording. The static. And the maddening certainty that he was missing something.
Something buried somewhere in these old files.
Something about him.
About why—even now, displaced and desperate and drinking alone in the dark—Vox couldn't stop searching for traces of—
The bottle in his hand was half-full.
He stared at it for a moment, watching the amber liquid catch the screen-light, then tipped it back and drained it in three long swallows.
It joined the rest of the empties on the floor with a hollow clink that echoed too loudly in the silent room.
A hand came into view first, adjusting the camera until it focused.
His younger self grinned, stepping back and gesturing broadly. The rest of the room came into focus behind him, wires tangled across the walls.
"Look at this! Real-time transmission, no delay," he said, eyes flicking to someone off-screen.
Signal interference bled across his voice, a minute lag before he spoke again.
"This is the future of Hell right here—imagine it. Screens in every house, on every corner."
His excited voice warped and cracked, the image grainy and blurred on Vox's high-definition display.
Radio static bled into the audio, a shrill burst of microphone feedback that would have annoyed him if not for how used to it he'd become.
The smile on his younger face widened.
The audio waveform spiked unnaturally, but the words Vox knew were there remained inaudible.
That wasn't compression noise.
And it definitely wasn't signal degradation.
Recordings didn't generate new signals.
They replayed them.
He paused the recording. Scrubbed it back. Played the burst again—slower.
Hours later, he'd managed to parse fragments of words from the static.
His younger self's bashful smile as he looked off to the side made something twist in Vox's chest.
The way his screen brightened just slightly. The tilt of his head. The almost eager way he glanced toward whoever stood just beyond the camera's frame.
A faint teal glow bled across Vox's current screen before he could stop it.
He pressed his palm against the glass of his face, as if he could physically push the color back down.
Another burst of radio static.
"My— we am—"
What did he say?
Vox's hand trembled slightly as he reached for another bottle. He didn't bother checking which one. They all tasted the same at this point.
Alastor's voice shouldn't appear in a video file.
The Radio Demon didn't show up on screens. Didn't leave traces in visual media.
That was the whole goddamn problem.
It was just interference. Had to be.
Some kind of frequency overlap. A stray broadcast. A technical glitch.
He could isolate it. Identify the source. Prove it was nothing.
Then he could move on.
Val might be CEO now, but it had been long enough. Vox needed his ratings back. Needed to stop hiding in his room like some pathetic shut-in.
Needed to stop searching for traces of someone who'd made it abundantly clear that Vox was—
The static burst again.
His younger self's smile widened.
Stop looking at him like that, Vox thought viciously. Stop being so fucking obvious.
"Fuck," Vox muttered.
His screen flickered, teal bleeding through again despite his efforts to suppress it.
If only he could isolate the frequency.
Vox scrubbed the recording back and played it again.
Thirty-eight times now.
Maybe thirty-nine.
He'd stopped counting.
His hands were already pulling up the editing software.
The frequency overlap was apparent from the beginning, the crackle of interference bleeding even into his own voice.
Outdated tech? Maybe.
The recording had been one of his first.
test_recording_07.
The file should have been deleted years ago.
It had no practical value.
And yet.
He isolated the audio track. Studied the waveforms.
Radio transmission embedded inside a television recording.
That shouldn't have been possible.
So how was it happening?
He routed the audio through different systems—filters, amplifiers.
The speakers shrieked loudly enough that he nearly blew out his processors.
But he was getting somewhere.
The signal flattened.
Nothing.
"Really? Just work already," he muttered.
Beneath the distortion, he finally heard it.
A voice buried in the signal.
Familiar.
"My, my. Aren't we ambitious?"
The signal spiked.
The waveform didn't just surge—it exploded.
Every piece of tech in the room erupted at once.
Speakers shrieked with feedback. Powered-off televisions flared to life in a cascade of light. Backup monitors ignited one after another, flooding the room with harsh white glare.
He hadn't activated any of them.
"What—"
Vox lunged for the controls.
The screens didn't respond.
The monitors flashed bright, then dark, then bright again.
The recording began playing again without his input.
Vox's reflection multiplied across every display in the room.
Dozens of him.
Hundreds.
Rainbow static crackled across the screens as the recording scrubbed itself backward.
"What the fuck?"
His voice came out strangled as he gripped the nearest monitor.
His own voice vanished from the audio track.
Cut off mid-word.
The video kept playing.
The smell hit him then—acrid, sharp.
Overheating circuits.
Melting plastic.
Smoke curled from one of the monitors.
The room was getting hotter.
"Stop," Vox said, and hated the way his voice shook.
His hands flew across the keyboard.
"Stop, stop, stop—"
The signal wasn't replaying anymore.
It was responding.
The recording froze.
His younger self hung there mid-gesture, screen bright with that eager expression that made Vox want to reach through time and shake him.
The world glitched.
Reality stuttered like a corrupted video file.
The walls rippled. The floor flickered beneath him.
Vox stumbled, grabbing for the desk.
His hand went straight through it.
The signal surged.
And then everything collapsed into static.
Vox woke to silence.
And somewhere that definitely wasn't his tower.