Echo Boy

by Matt Haig

  It was exactly where Alissa had grabbed me, and I automatically tried to resist. It was no use. He was even stronger than Alissa had been. He pulled me forward and started to run, and inevitably – being a human – I struggled to keep up. I could see the lobby, where the battle was still raging. A clock on the wall was hit; the face fractured, then instantly repaired itself. I could also see some of the protestors lying dead on the floor. The Echos – and Iago – clearly had the upper hand now.

  ‘Slow down! You’re hurting me!’

  A thin stream of blood trickled down Daniel’s cheek like a tear.

  He went into the living room where I had been taken on my first night. A female protester in a dolphin mask was in there, slicing through the Picasso painting with a knife. She roared and charged towards us with the knife, but Daniel held out his hand. The blade cut him, but he pulled the knife out of her hand easily, while still holding me with his other hand.

  He looked out of the window to see Iago now out on the driveway with some Echos; many of the remaining protestors were fleeing.

  The woman who’d had the knife ran out of the room. But we heard her scream a second later, a scream that ended too abruptly. And then we saw why. Madara was there with a gun, a gun she’d obviously just used, and she was running towards us.

  Daniel saw her and led me towards a doorway at the far end of the room. ‘Door open,’ he commanded. The doorway led to some stairs. At the top of the stairs we ran along a landing I hadn’t seen before.

  I was scared, I must admit.

  Beyond scared.

  After all, here was an Echo, evidently malfunctioning and holding a knife. My parents had died this way. Maybe I would too.

  Had he saved my life? Or did he want to kill me himself?

  We reached a room with windows for walls. A room that showed the rear of the garden. I had been shown the garden before, the day I went to see Mrs Matsumoto, but then my senses had been dulled by the neuropads. Now, my mind hyper-sharp with adrenaline, I realized that it was an amazing garden, maybe the most amazing I had ever seen, the grass all shades and colours, the trees genetically perfect like something out of the wildest daydream. I saw the wall the protestors had climbed over. Madara was getting closer.

  ‘Open,’ Daniel called, and the window opened. And then, with troubling ease, he picked me up in his arms and jumped out onto turquoise grass. He landed awkwardly, but kept hold of me.

  What was he?

  Saviour, or monster?

  I didn’t even touch the ground.

  He ran, and kept running. Behind us, I could see Madara at the window aiming the gun at Daniel. But she didn’t fire it.

  ‘I’ve disobeyed Master’s order. Madara will have been sent to pursue me, but not to terminate me.’

  Disobeyed Master’s order.

  ‘Order?’

  ‘To stay with him. To protect his life at all costs.’

  We passed through a row of silver birches. I struggled, trying to free myself from his arms. Above, in the distance, I could see a police car come to a stop on the magrail, and a robotic officer (a traditional metallic Zeta-One) leaned out of the window and switched his voice-setting to loudhailer mode as he stared down at the driveway on the other side of the house.

  ‘Trespassers, you have ten seconds to leave the property. Failure to comply will mean death.’

  The Zeta-One wasn’t talking to us, but Daniel was still running.

  ‘Let me go! Where are you taking me? Let me go!’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.’

  Something about his voice made me almost believe him.

  As he ran, he looked anxiously around at the grass, as if hidden danger lurked there.

  ‘I heard your scream,’ he said. ‘I came to save you.’

  ‘I want to go back. Take me back to the house.’

  ‘No.’ He cut left, behind some high, dense goji bushes, then stopped running. ‘It’s not safe. There are still protestors on the grounds and in the house.’

  ‘The police are there now. Ten seconds has passed.’ I thought about screaming. If I screamed the word ‘police’, then the police would surely come. But if Daniel wanted to kill me, he would have time to do so between my scream and the rescue attempt. He had superhuman strength and was holding a knife.

  Daniel looked down at his bleeding hand. He winced, as though in pain, though I knew he couldn’t feel pain.

  ‘Listen, we probably don’t have long. Madara will be telling Master that we escaped out of the window. I just need to tell you something. I tried to tell you before. I tried to come up to your room.’

  I looked into his green eyes as if they were possible to read, which of course they weren’t. But I was here with him, at his mercy, so I could do nothing except go along with whatever weird Echo game he was playing.

  ‘What did you try and tell me?’

  ‘That I knew her.’

  ‘Who?’

  Blood dripped from his hand onto my cloth shoe, disappearing the moment it landed. Then he told me.

  ‘I knew Alissa.’

  9

  Fear crept over my skin like an ice-cold blanket. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We had the same designer.’

  I struggled to absorb this.

  So was this what it was all about? Revenge? Was he going to kill me because I had terminated Alissa?

  I knew this was a paranoid thought. I mean, Echos didn’t feel loyalty to other Echos. They didn’t feel anything at all. And besides, I thought of something else. Something that proved this Echo didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘No. That’s impossible. Alissa was a Sempura product. You’re a Castle product.’

  ‘You are not safe here,’ he told me. ‘I tried to tell you. I was going to tell you that day in my room.’

  I looked at his face. His eyes were wrong. Yeah. I had vaguely noticed it before, but now there was no mistaking it. There was too much there. He seemed more human than Echo. ‘You’re malfunctioning,’ I told him. ‘And I think you’ve probably been malfunctioning since I got here.’

  He held up his right hand, his cut hand. ‘It is not meant to be possible for me to feel pain, and I feel pain. I feel all kinds of things. And I feel a duty to tell you what I have wanted to tell you for a long time, and would have just run up those stairs and done it if it hadn’t put you in danger.’

  ‘What? Tell me.’

  He took a breath. Came close. Whispered. ‘You have to get out of here. You have to escape. After I have done this, there is no hope for me. Master will punish me for my actions. I do not care. This was partly my fault. Your parents’ death. It was partly down to me. I had her in my arms. I held Alissa the way I just held you. I could have stopped it at the start, but I didn’t.’

  Again, he looked anxiously at the grass around us, waiting for something. Then he looked at the high perimeter wall.

  I didn’t trust him.

  There was no way in the world I could trust him.

  Or at least, that’s what I tried to tell myself.

  Whatever silly weakness I had deep down inside me, a weakness that came of being alone and wanting someone to be there for me – well, I knew I shouldn’t let it get the better of me.

  That dream I’d had . . . that had just been a dream. He was an Echo, and a malfunctioning one. OK, so he had read Jane Eyre and he could feel pain, but what did that prove?

  But then he said it.

  He said something that sent a jolt through me and made me question everything else. He said: ‘Our designer’s name was Rosella.’

  Instantly Alissa’s voice echoed in my mind. Rosella.

  I looked into Daniel’s green eyes and felt another shock. A deeper one than any spoken words could have caused. Because as I looked into his eyes, I realized that I felt for him. There was something gleaming there. Something like fear, or courage, or determination, or honour, or a combination of all four. Yes, for that moment at least, it felt like I was looking at some
one who could be cared for. Worried about. Loved.

  10

  That is when the ground began to open up. Whole squares of blue and orange grass, tilting up and back like trapdoors all around us.

  ‘Here come the hounds,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Hounds?’ But even before Daniel explained, I remembered what Uncle Alex had told me.

  ‘Echo dogs.’

  Of course.

  And then they started to prowl out onto the grass. They looked very much like Dobermans, although their chests were plates of naked titanium and their eyes were bright red.

  ‘Step away from me,’ Daniel told me, shouting almost angrily. ‘Step well away from me and they won’t hurt you. They only want me. Trust me.’

  I stepped away from him, like he said.

  ‘So you wanted to kill me?’ I asked him, still uncertain what to think. ‘Was that your plan? Because of Alissa? She murdered my parents!’

  ‘No. No, she didn’t kill them. Not really.’

  The dogs circled Daniel. There were five of them. They were all giving the same synthetic growl. Madara must have told Uncle Alex about us by now. And so he’d set the dogs on us.

  ‘What are you talking about? I saw the footage. She was the only one there. She killed them.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said quickly. ‘She did it, yes. But I told you – it wasn’t a malfunction. She wasn’t a normal Echo. Your parents thought she was, but she wasn’t. She was a prototype, being made for Sempura . . . Rosella designed prototypes. One-offs. Tests.’

  Something about this rang false. ‘Designers only work for one company. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Rosella, she is the very best in the world. And she is a good human. Or she tried to be. The trouble was—’

  One of the Echo dogs suddenly swept in, and bit Daniel’s left leg. I caught sight of the gleaming titanium teeth, complete with two needle-sharp fangs, longer than the rest. It was these that penetrated Daniel’s flesh. Then another bit his right leg. A third jumped with a strength far beyond that of any purely biological dog, and pinned him to the ground.

  Daniel looked at me with weary eyes. Those dogs had injected something into him via their fangs. ‘You must escape. Find Rosella,’ he said, before that third hound’s fangs pierced his neck.

  He managed a final word – ‘Remember . . .’ – and then collapsed on the grass. A sleep beyond sleep. And as those Echo hounds ran towards the house, no doubt being remote-commanded to help the Echos and the police eliminate the last of the protestors, I went over to Daniel and crouched down to inspect him. The most visible wound was the knife cut on the palm of his hand, which was still leaking fresh blood onto the lawn. And he had a mark on his cheek from where the rock had caught him. Where the dogs had bitten him there were only the tiniest dark dots, as if from injections or vampire bites.

  I no longer feared him. It was quite impossible to fear someone who was lying unconscious on the grass in front of you. In fact, I wanted him to wake up or come round. He had more information to give. But it wasn’t just that. He had saved my life. And I knew I’d been wrong about him.

  ‘Wake up! Wake up! Can you hear me? Daniel? Daniel! Wake up!’

  There wasn’t the slightest response, even when I slapped his face. I checked his pulse. I had never felt the pulse of an Echo before, but I knew that their hearts beat slightly faster than a human’s, to ensure blood pumped more quickly around their bodies, leading to more efficient muscles and organs. And although Daniel’s pulse wasn’t beating quite that fast – he was unconscious, after all – it was still beating as fast as mine would in a state of absolute panic. To be honest, I wasn’t far from that state.

  A thousand questions sped around my mind.

  Why had he saved me?

  Why had he left my uncle’s side when he knew he would be punished for disobeying an order?

  Could any Echo ever feel guilt?

  And had that really been Uncle Alex’s order? Wasn’t it more likely that Uncle would have told him to come and help me? After all, there were other Echos to look after Uncle Alex. But why had another Echo chased us?

  And what was this stuff about Alissa? He had heard me say Alissa’s name on that first night. He could have been lying. But then, he had mentioned Rosella. Why would he have said that name?

  But was he lying? It came back to that.

  Was he lying?

  Was he lying?

  He was an Echo. An Echo that Iago had already told me was weird. And even the least weird Echo in the world couldn’t be trusted. But if he was lying, then why would he be risking everything to tell me that he knew Alissa? Why would he have brought me out here, into the garden, knowing that the Echo hounds were out here? And why had he told me to find Rosella?

  I knew I didn’t have long.

  As soon as the protestors had been dealt with – maybe even before – someone would be out searching for me. Searching for Daniel. I looked at him lying there on the ground. At the arms that had carried me, at the hand that been cut trying to defend me, at the bruised and grazed cheek that had taken the force of a rock, at the strong pale neck that had been pierced by the fangs of an Echo hound. All those wounds. All for me. I looked at his closed eyelids, shielding those green eyes. I looked at his face, trying to see if there was some clue on it. If there was something that could tell me if he was lying or not.

  Of course, it was impossible to tell. All I knew is that I was staring at a perfect face, and the trouble with perfection is that it doesn’t give you any answers. Indeed, all it did was confuse me further. He was an Echo. I couldn’t feel anything for an Echo except fear, and yet there I was, feeling all kinds of things.

  But then I remembered. Echos have origin marks, singed onto the skin. It was roughly the same size as the mark on the back of an Echo’s left hand. The E.

  I had never seen Alissa’s origin mark up close. Had never had any inclination to do so. But my parents would have done, I supposed, when they first purchased her. Yeah. Probably. Maybe.

  There was the sound of footsteps, heading closer. I looked through the bushes and saw Uncle Alex, flanked by Madara and the other Echo who had been guarding him – the tall, muscular dreadlocked one – walking across the lawn towards me. Within twenty seconds they would be here.

  Wasting no time, I tugged at Daniel’s clothes until I saw his naked shoulder, and that origin mark. A band of text, neat bold capitals forming words almost too small to read:

  DESIGNED BY

  ROSELLA MÁRQUEZ (B-4-GH-44597026-D)

  FOR CASTLE INDUSTRIES

  ‘Activate info-lenses,’ I said. And within a second the familiar green dot was hovering in front of me, to signify that the lenses were on. ‘Camera,’ I commanded. ‘Take image.’ I blinked. Rosella Márquez’s ID number was now recorded. Just in time, as it turned out.

  ‘Oh, Audrey, thank God.’ Uncle Alex was standing there, looking worried. ‘He didn’t have time to hurt you.’

  ‘I don’t think he was going—’

  He wasn’t listening. ‘Chester,’ he said to the large Echo with the dreadlocks as he pointed at Daniel. ‘Take that into the house.’

  That. Why did it hurt me to hear him talking about Daniel like that? Echos don’t warrant sympathy. They’re just machines.

  But still, when Chester scooped him off the ground and carried him into the house, I felt worried.

  ‘What are you going to do to him? Is he going to die?’

  My question seemed to puzzle Uncle Alex. Maybe not the words, but the way I said them.

  ‘Audrey,’ he said gently, ‘this is my fault. An Echo never wins at chess if they are told not to win at chess.’ Yes. Uncle’s voice was gentle. But there was something new about the way he was looking at me. His eyes were harsh. ‘We are going to make sure he never puts your life in danger again.’

  ‘He didn’t put me in danger. He . . . he saved my life.’

  Uncle Alex came close to me. ‘What
did he say to you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  Madara must have done an instant voice-reading because she said: ‘It is a lie, Master.’

  Uncle Alex looked at Madara with an affection he couldn’t hide from me. She was his favourite Echo, I could see that. But even so, he managed to say to her: ‘Hush, Madara. She is young and she is human. She is allowed to lie. Indeed, it is expected.’

  ‘He said some stuff, but it didn’t make sense,’ I explained. ‘That is what I meant.’

  Uncle Alex gave a small nod. ‘Some stuff.’

  The Echo hounds skulked back across the grass and returned to their underground homes, the grass-covered doors closing and restoring the lawn to normal. I looked over towards the house.

  ‘You are in shock. We all are, obviously, after what has just happened. Those protestors tried to kill me. They are animals. Monsters. Too scared to come out from behind their masks. They tried to kill Iago too. He is fine, though. In fact, he dealt with a lot of them himself. He is a sharp shooter. Whoever said that war games were bad for kids, eh? They might have just saved his life!’ Uncle laughed a little. The laugh quickly died. ‘Candressa wasn’t so lucky, though.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘One of them shot her. In her arm. It won’t be fatal. She’s in surgery.’

  ‘In hospital?’

  ‘No. There’s a medical room in the basement. Two Echos are fixing her right now.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘There’s been a lot of damage. I’ve lost a lot of money just in terms of the art they’ve destroyed. Picassos! They’ve destroyed Picassos! Clocks and furniture can repair themselves, but a painting can’t. And all because of those terrorists. Terrorists fuelled by all that ridiculous anti-progress propaganda.’

  ‘You mean, like Dad used to write?’

  He sighed and looked at me for a while, maybe wondering if he should be polite. But eventually he came out and said it: ‘Yes, exactly like that. Listen, I know you think I must have hated your dad. But I didn’t. He was a stubborn man. I offered him money once. A lot of money. He turned it down. He didn’t start off radical; he became it. The more successful I became, the more principles he developed. It was classic sibling rivalry. Nothing more, nothing less. Now come on, I can’t stand around out here all day. I’ve got to talk to the police. And assess the damage.’