Epitaphs (Echoes Book 2)

by Knite, Therin

  “Don’t do that.”

  Her smile doesn’t waver. “Why not? Does it make you uncomfortable when people try to flip the table and decode you?” She leans closer, twirling that one black curl that hangs in front of her eye. The grin etched into her skin deepens at one corner, morphing into another mildly malicious smirk. “I heard you had therapists growing up. That why you don’t like my kind of people?”

  I decide to throw her a bone, the opposite of my usual approach, in the hopes it’ll quench her thirst to vex me. “That’s exactly why. I hate people like you because they incessantly try to get inside my head. And I find that invasive. I spent my childhood tossed around from foster to foster, stuffed in children’s homes, and given basically no privacy because I was, in essence, public property until I turned sixteen and earned my emancipation. My mind was the only place of refuge I had, and those goddamn therapists kept trying to break in there, too.” I wipe my mouth with a napkin. “How’s that for a sob story? That good enough to keep your psychiatric juices flowing for the day?”

  She blinks, slow and deliberate, and her smile falters for a fraction of a second as she processes some inane revelation about my mental state. A second later, she reaches across the table to pat the back of my hand. “That’ll do me good, yeah.” But she doesn’t move from her seat.

  “Is there something else you want?” I slip my Ocom into my pocket and close the top of my disposable salad bowl. “Because I have another class starting in five minutes, and I don’t want to be late.”

  “Actually, I wanted to ask you about the train.”

  “The train?”

  “Yeah. We use the same train station to get home. Down on Grover Lane? Did you know that? Dynara told me when we were chatting this morning.”

  Dynara, you traitorous bitch. “No, I, uh, didn’t know that.”

  “Well, I was thinking since we go the same way, maybe we could walk together sometime. Be a little less lonely on the road home. Get to know each other a bit better? We haven’t really had the chance to talk much. I want to learn all I can about you, Adem, seeing as we’ll be working real close for the foreseeable future.” The knowing smirk of triumph widens—because whether I say yes or no, she’ll chase me down and walk beside me anyway—and I restrain myself from throwing my water cup at her head.

  I thought my IBI coworkers were frustrating, bust most of them have nothing on the average EDPA agent. The agency is filled to the brim with the best and brightest, many of them top dogs from other organizations who’ve transferred over for one reason or another: personal tragedies, better benefits, more advancement potential, or the sheer excitement of battling dreams.

  Chai Bennett is no exception to that rule. At thirty, she was head of psychiatry at the top mental hospital in Houston. An unheard-of achievement for someone so young.

  She’s thirty-eight now and hasn’t lost her touch.

  “Fine,” I say. “We can walk together.”

  “And talk?” she asks.

  “Don’t push it.”

  * * *

  A ten-foot-tall volcano sets Fleming’s ass on fire.

  (Yes. This is an actual thing that happens.)

  My last class before two PM is the so-called “Echo Simulator,” which is a misnomer. It’s not a simulator at all but a real echo created to help newbie makers practice. My instructor, Lucy Granger, forms the echo by taking a nap, and my seven classmates and I are dropped off in her dream via the Neural Nexus. “Plugging in,” as they call it, involves sitting in a dentist-like chair and having a set of electrodes that resemble clamps jam into your temples. Then the Nexus coordinator flips a switch, and a surge of electricity strikes your brain.

  It feels like falling backward off a cliff, a spark of primal fear hammering your heart. You’re disconnected from your body, and your mind floats away into a dense nothingness, until a clawed force grabs you and drags you into the designated echo. You land hard on your feet in a shiny new dream body, and then the fun begins.

  The practice echo is no more than a transparent grounding with some basic safety features. Literally, it’s a clear plate of willpower suspended over endless echo dimensional space with a simple, chain-link fence erected around the edges—(to make sure no one falls off the end of the dream and gets stuck floating in dead space for eternity). All echoes begin with a transparent grounding. You build them up from there.

  Since it tends to be more difficult for a maker to create and control dream content in another maker’s dream, the simulator is an excellent developmental tool. It mimics the typical field environment for an EDPA maker: one where you’re constantly battling an enemy maker’s will. But because this is essentially Dream-Making 101, Granger doesn’t create anything other than the grounding (and fence). Our goal as students in this introductory course is to master a fundamental level of control over our powers and become adept at manipulating dreams that are not our own.

  (The more complex simulations come later, in the aptly named “Echo Battle Class.”)

  Granger always begins our lessons with a series of warm-up tests. First, you have to create a perfect sphere of water and suspend it above your head. If you screw up, you get doused. Then, you have to turn that water to ice, demonstrating your skill at transforming your own dream creations into different states. Finally, you have to mentally split the ice sphere into eight even spikes and telekinetically sling them, one at a time, into the fence five hundred feet away.

  Today, I complete these tasks in twenty-six seconds. Down from a time of a minute and five my first lesson. Granger waves me off to the sideline of the practice field as soon as I’m done, and I watch her move through the lineup to coach some of my struggling peers.

  The ability gap is obvious.

  The Class Four Command Controllers have grown skilled at the repeated exercises in the past few weeks, their natural echo-making prowess propelling them beyond the Class Threes, who require more instruction. The Class Twos barely have any talent at all; they will never be assigned as the lead maker for any case, even if they pass this weed-out class. Twos and below can only ever be support.

  Currently, I’m the only Class Five Command Controller in the Washington office (and one of only thirty-nine in the world). A rare commodity, according to Dynara, whose own echo powers are practically worthless. She’s a Class Five Non-Command Controller, which means she is incapable of limiting the effect her thoughts have on her content manipulation. In a dream, without a Somnexolene inhibitor stifling her abilities, Dynara is chaos incarnate. An apocalypse-grade powerhouse whose every errant thought and feeling explodes into existence. I’m her exact opposite when it comes to echo-making.

  According to Granger, I am harmony.

  Once the last Two manages to throw his ice shards at the fence (several them falling short of the target), Granger moves on to a new, exciting exercise: create a miniature version of an element of nature. “Ten minutes,” she says, “and make it pretty.”

  I recreate Niagara Falls. I reclaim the ice from my broken sphere, melt it again with a mental push—Heat!—and assemble it into a flowing stream. Beneath it, I will the underlying rock structure into existence, carving the shapes into the air, solidifying them into stone made of nothing but ideas. I finish in three minutes, a four-foot tall replica of the Falls gurgling like a novelty store fountain. When I glance at Granger, I find her staring back (along with half the class), impressed. She gives me a thumbs up, and I move to deconstruct the waterfall before it floods the grounding into a slip-and-slide.

  That’s when the volcano sets Fleming’s ass on fire.

  One of the Threes, a blue-haired woman named Tally Wings, forces into existence what I assume is supposed to be a replica of Mount St. Helens. But a Four standing near her (Christophe, the resident jackass), mocks her pitiful attempt, which looks more like a Kindergarten sculpture of a mountain than an actual mountain. His criticism is spot on, but he has no tact whatsoever in its delivery, and Tally is so pissed off by his impe
rtinent assholery that her fury transfers into her dream creation.

  It erupts. Fire and ash stream up into the endless darkness, and molten, flaming rocks hurtle out toward the other students. I swat the incoming debris out of my path instinctively, using basic telekinesis, but most of my peers lack that level of natural control. Christophe dives out of the way of a massive, red-hot chunk of lava, wrapping himself in a bubble-like shield he’s been practicing. Loraine Jennings, another Four, extends Granger’s transparent grounding upward, creating a see-through wall that protects most of the classmates behind her.

  Fleming, a Two, is the one unlucky bastard who can’t protect himself and who doesn’t receive any aid from others until it’s too late. A blazing orange chunk sweeps by his backside as he flees in terror, and the next thing I know, his ass is lit up like a bonfire. Screaming, he stops, drops, and rolls.

  Granger darts toward him, redirecting the water from my Falls model with a flick of her wrist. She dumps it over Fleming’s thrashing form, the flames settling with a puff of gray smoke. While she’s busy, I turn my attention to the still-erupting volcano, and with an image of the Alps in mind, I freeze the fiery mountain solid. Its flying innards freeze as well, becoming nearly harmless ice projectiles that bounce off the shields erected by the Fours.

  When the last of the debris settles, Tally Wings stands there with her hands over her mouth, whispering swears, as everyone else stares at Fleming’s charred posterior.

  Granger shouts to no one in sight, “Emergency abort, now!”

  And a voice descends from the sky in response, speaking through the communication construct embedded in the Nexus programming: “Affirmative.”

  Our class coordinator, located at the real-world Nexus terminal, activates the shutdown sequence, and I’m yanked out of Granger’s dream at a sight-blurring speed. My mind slams back into my real body, the electrodes still buzzing against my skull. When I open my eyes, the supercomputer core suspended above the Nexus floor greets my gaze. I observe the glowing blue shell of the core for several slow seconds as the coordinator calls medical and my classmates reorient themselves in reality.

  Then I sigh, sit up, and search for Fleming.

  He’s writhing on the floor next to his chair, a horrific third degree burn visible through his scorched shorts.

  The door to the Nexus chamber slides open with a booming clank, but the person standing at the threshold is not the medical aid I was expecting. It’s Lance Lovecraft, who obviously had no clue he was about to witness the graphic scene before him. He slides his active workstation glasses down the bridge of his nose, mouth dropping open. Then he meets my eyes, points at Fleming, and says, “You didn’t do that, did you?”

  Chapter Eight

  We step into the elevator, and Lance Lovecraft says, “Adem, you are the exact opposite of a male power fantasy.”

  We’re heading to the “secret” garage for my two o’clock rendezvous with Dynara—now our two o’clock, according to Lance, who claims he’ll be tagging along—and the quip is his first move in this funny little game we play. I call it the shame game, and the rules are thus: 1) You must insult the opposing player as often as possible, 2) You must withstand the opposing player’s insults with a straight face, and 3) Your insults must escalate above all those previously used.

  Lance devised this game a few weeks ago as a method of “bonding,” each of us pushing the other in various directions of irritation to figure out which ways can be described as “wrong to rub.” Since I have the social skills of an armadillo, and Lance prefers online RPGs to people, I agreed with his assessment that the best way for us to become “buddies” would be to verbally bitch slap one another until we’re blue in the face.

  Yesterday, we were both too sickened by the remnants of poor Agent Geller to play. But Lance appears to have recovered his constitution today, and I’m still riled up from my long, emotionally trying night…

  Hence, I already have a retort prepared to soothe his well-placed burn about my now swollen nose: “I’d prefer my skinny ass to your playboy alter ego any day, Lovecraft.”

  His blue eyes blink, suspicious, behind his workstation glasses. “My what now?”

  “You know, your sexy superhero identity? Lance, Master of the Love Craft? Named Mr. July in the Coordinators’ Secret Hot Bod Calendar, stored on the Nexus 5 backup server in an encrypted file. Created by Sallie Jensen and Tom Sneed. A little birdie showed it to me for fifty bucks. And let me say, those abs? Dreamy, Lance. Dreamy. I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of copying your calendar pic, and I was thinking about uploading it to the EDPA water cooler forum so that all my trainee peers could take a gander. I guarantee you a few of them would drool over your light blond happy tr—”

  “Whoa there, Satan!” His expression sours. “This is a game of one-on-one insults, not public humiliation.”

  “Not according to the rules, Lovecraft.” I slip my Ocom out of my pocket and open the folder where I saved the picture. “Oh, and did I mention the caption on your picture was the greatest thing I’ve ever read? Hey, baby, let me show you—”

  “Okay, stop! You win! I surrender.” He waves his hands as if he wants to snatch my Ocom but can’t bring himself to cross into my personal space. Good decision. I like my personal space.

  “Aw, you’re no fun, Lance.” I close the folder. “I was looking forward to having a great discussion about your underwear choice for that photo.”

  He plants his face in his hands. “By the old gods. That’s the last time I do favors for skin-starved techies with extra cash.”

  “Is that why you did it?”

  He shrugs. “They said they were going to keep it private. It was supposed to be an in-joke with the other coordinators. Not a free-for-all ogling fest for newbies like you.”

  “Well, hope this shaming session has taught you a lesson. Never bear your sexy abs, glistening with sweat, and stare with a come hither bedroom expression—“

  “Gods, Adem. Stop.” He drags the op on for eight seconds. “I get it. You crushed me.”

  The elevator doors open with a whish, stirring the tepid air. Lance steps out into the dimly lit garage, head lung low in mortification, and as he pulls away from me, I catch a distinct mutter: “Today, you crushed me. But tomorrow, I will have your baby pictures projected onto all the screens in the office.”

  Hah! Joke’s on him. All my baby pictures are stored on a non-networked drive in my nightstand at home.

  Mental note: Do not let Lance Lovecraft into my bedroom.

  I follow his trudging form across the lot, weaving around stone columns and parked SUVs, toward the loading bay on the far side. When I turn the last corner, a row of three idling cars comes into view. Dynara is leaning against the hood of the front vehicle, typing a message on her Ocom. Murrough is braced against the nearby wall, staring up at a leaky crack in a ceiling that hasn’t seen maintenance in more than a decade. May and her strike team are busy loading equipment—guns, armored vests, and the like—into the trunk of the last car in the lineup. Like she thinks DuPont’s family will be wielding rifles and rocket launchers.

  Huh. Maybe they will. I don’t know many Dakotans. Perhaps they’re a trigger-happy bunch.

  Or perhaps they’re being watched by others who are. Wouldn’t be the first time a criminal stalked a victim’s family.

  Lance and I reach the cars at the same time Chai emerges from a rear entry door to the garage, carrying a tray with three drinks on it. She passes a green tea to Dynara, a black coffee to Murrough, and keeps some sort of pink-orange smoothie concoction for herself. Then she tosses the empty cardboard tray into a trashcan and glances at Lance and me, the two of us now loitering beside the middle car. “Aw, sorry boys,” she says. “You missed the refreshment run.”

  I roll my eyes and pop the backseat door open. “Fine with me. As you know, I had lunch not too long ago.”

  Chai laughs.

  Lance slips by me and climbs into the car. “Good f
or you. I’m starving. Think we can make a pit stop at that new burger joint on Arthur Avenue?”

  “Don’t bet your life on it,” Dynara replies. Then she, Murrough, and Chai disappear into the first car together.

  Two of the agents from May’s strike team join Lance and me in our vehicle. We buckle up, close the doors, breathe in that old car smell, tinged with sweat from a dozen different agents, and wait. But not for long. The cars all start at the same moment, set on an automatic timer by some admin organizer in the foxhole, and a minute later, we’re zooming out of the garage, onto the roads beneath another overcast November day.

  Since DuPont’s townhouse is a good thirty-minute drive from the office, I remove a bundle of papers from my inner coat pocket and unfold them. Briggs’ high-profile double-hit.

  With little time left last night before I crashed after my activities, I quickly skimmed through the case files and jotted down all the relevant notes I could manage. My handwriting, poor to begin with, grows sloppier as it tracks down the pages, and the last couple of paragraphs are no better than random squiggles.

  Lance eyes the crinkled pages from his window seat opposite mine. “You into poetry now?”

  “Nope. Freelance work.”

  “Oh? Anything I’d be interested in?”

  I flick my eyes toward the strike team men, who act like they’re not listening—faces turned to peer at the landmarks blurring by—but definitely are. It’s what they’re trained to do: Stand straight. Look sharp. Listen well. Shoot true. Attack when the time is right.

  A mantra for special operations forces around the world.

  “Not really,” I say to Lance. “Some dull research. A request from an old friend of mine.”

  “Ah.” Lance hides his grin with the back of his hand. He knows what I mean, and likely who I mean, but he’s not going to give me away because he also knows that the strike team men will blab to May who will blab to Dynara who will knock me upside the head for letting outside work distract me during a level three murder investigation. “You’ll have to tell me about it over dinner sometime. Maybe I’ll find the topic more interesting than you think. I do love some good research, with the right thesis.”