[Intro: Metallic hum, slow beat awakening under street ambience] [Spoken] Rain collects secrets the pavement forgets. Every reflection tells the same lie twice. [Verse 1] Plastic shadows in borrowed light, faces loop on billboard skies. Footsteps scatter through coded glass— I keep chasing shapes that never pass. [Pre-Chorus: low drones, delayed guitar stabs] They flicker when I blink too slow, names erased before they’re known. [Chorus – sung, mantra-like] Ghosts in the alleyways. They know my name, but not my face. Ghosts in the alleyways. They fade, but never go away. [Verse 2] Paper hands in a data stream, voices melt into machine dreams. Every word a counterfeit prayer, I breathe it in; it’s still not air. [Bridge – half-time groove, vocal whisper] Don’t ask what’s real, just what remains. The signal lies, but the echo stays. [Chorus – extended with layered harmonies] Ghosts in the alleyways. They know my name, but not my face. Ghosts in the alleyways. They fade, but never go away. [Outro: drums dissolve into soft mechanical hiss] [Spoken] Somewhere between the noise and the rain, something human almost speaks.
