The Echo Room

by Parker Peevyhouse

  “The solar storm was all over the news,” Garrick went on. “They said it’d be the biggest one in decades. And I remembered what you’d told me that day in Scatter Labs. All I had to do was get close to this place and wait for the light show to start. I guess I should thank you.”

  I’m not so sure about that, Rett thought, as visions of a bloodless corpse flashed through his head. “You shouldn’t have come here, Garrick. It’s dangerous—”

  “I know about the bugs,” Garrick cut in, his hand shaking so that the flare gun trembled. “I worked for Scatter for years collecting meteorites. I lived in this depot.” He gestured with the gun at the wall over the supply room. Rett remembered what he’d found scratched on the wall: G. W. was here.

  G. W.

  Garrick Ward.

  “Can’t say I’m glad to be back,” Garrick said. “I’ll take what I came for and get out of here. In the meantime, I know how to drown any bugs that might wander in. Oh yeah, and I’ve got this.” He twitched the gun upward and then aimed it at Rett’s chest again.

  Rett tried to remember to breathe. The flare gun was like a black hole sucking all his attention. He forced himself to think, to look around.

  He realized Garrick held a nylon backpack in his other hand, identical to the one Bryn clutched. Rett made a guess about what it held. “You can have whatever you want from this place. Just leave a GPS unit for me and Bryn.”

  Garrick lurched forward, and Rett pressed himself back against the wall. “I’m not giving up anything,” Garrick growled. “Scatter owes me. They ruined my life when they hired me to collect those rocks for them. They said it’d be better than enlisting, said the army wouldn’t take me anyway with my hand like it is.” He held the gun up to show his crooked fingers curled around the guard. “It never did heal quite right. I have you to thank for that.”

  Rett swallowed. Get him to think about something else. “Scatter ruined your life?”

  “I got so sick working out in this wasteland I almost died. Scatter paid me just enough to get treatment. But in the meantime, my sister—” Garrick tightened his grip on the pack. “Everything in this place belongs to me. Got that?” He shook with agitation.

  Rett eyed the pack in Garrick’s hand. The GPS units are in there. They must be. “Please, Garrick. My mom’s sick. If I don’t get back to her, she’ll—”

  “She’ll what? Die?” Garrick’s gaze turned cold. “And then you’ll be no different from the rest of us who grew up in Walling. Shame.”

  Rett felt sick. He needed those devices. And Garrick was going to do everything he could to make sure Rett didn’t get them.

  I could start over, try this again. Reach back in time, find that cool, calm place under the stars …

  But Garrick would still have the backpack with him in the power supply. If Rett couldn’t get it from him now, he wouldn’t be able to get it from him on another attempt.

  He started to shake. I can’t do this. “One GPS unit from your pack. What do you want for one GPS?”

  “I want my life back,” Garrick spat. “I want to forget about the things I saw when I was working in this hellscape. I want my sister to…” He dropped his gaze for a moment and Rett almost lunged for the pack, but then Garrick broke free of whatever emotion had seized him. “You think you have anything I want?”

  Think. The rock in the power supply, the dark round one veined with silver—“There’s a meteorite here, I can show you where it is.”

  “You mean this one?” Garrick dropped the pack to dig a rock out of his pocket. “I found it myself, thanks.”

  Rett eyed the pack.

  “It’s got some of that alloy,” Garrick went on. “Not enough to be worth much.”

  “How about water?” Bryn said from where she stood in the lounge area. “I’ve got eight pouches of it in this pack. You’re gonna need it since there’s no rainwater to come through the trap.”

  Rett looked up at the last word. Bryn shot him a meaningful look. We’ve got to trap him so we can get out of here, Rett thought. I know that. But how?

  Garrick pulled at the strap of his hydration backpack. “Nice try. Got my own.”

  Rett’s chest might burst with his heart racing the way it was. “What do you want, then?”

  Garrick didn’t take his gaze off Bryn, but when he next spoke it was clear he spoke to Rett. “I want you to tell Bryn how you got this assignment.”

  “What?” Rett said. What’s he talking about?

  Garrick smirked. “Tell her why Scatter picked you.”

  “They picked me because … because they knew I was desperate, that I need the money. They knew I’d say yes, no matter what.” Bryn already knows that.

  Garrick slowly turned to regard Rett with cool indifference. “They picked you … because no one cares if you never come back.”

  Rett wiped sweat from his brow. “That’s not true.” My mom …

  “Then why have you been in Scatter Labs for the past six years?”

  “I haven’t.” Confusion clouded Rett’s brain. “Bryn and I left.”

  Garrick cocked his head. “You mean you jumped forward in time.”

  “I…” Rett braced himself against the wall, suddenly dizzy. I was in Scatter Labs with Bryn. Now I’m here in the depot. But what happened in between?

  “You jumped into some future point in your life,” Garrick said, “but that doesn’t mean that you didn’t live your life in Scatter Labs in the meantime. You might have hit the fast-forward button on your life, but you still lived it.”

  A flurry of images went through Rett’s brain: Bryn coming close to kiss him in the hallway of Scatter Labs. The black-clad security guards hurtling toward them. The door shutting on Rett’s room, where he sat alone in the dark.

  And now it all came flooding back to him.

  He’d lived in Scatter Labs for six years after that kiss. Spent his days hooked up to machines while Dr. Wells studied the interaction of his brain with his mechanism. Spent his nights thinking of Bryn and what he’d do to get her out of that place. They stole moments together in the garden, in the lab rooms; they shared looks in the hallways when security guards marched them past each other. She managed to teach him Morse code so they could use the light switches in their rooms to shine messages into the garden at night. They had a plan: get back to the wasteland, to that dark hollow beneath a sky of endless stars. And it had worked—

  Because here they were.

  Bryn had kissed Rett in that hallway six years ago, and they’d both left that moment and arrived at a moment beneath the stars.

  But Rett also remembered a life lived in between those moments, even if he’d skimmed over it.

  Rett clutched his stomach. The strange paradox of it all made him feel sick.

  “Remember now?” Garrick let out a small chuckle. “Is it coming back? Time travel isn’t quite what they sold it as, is it? You didn’t jump from one point to another—you rushed through your life, skimmed over it like a bird over water.” He stepped closer. The gun dangled from his loose fist, forgotten for the moment.

  Rett slid along the wall, away from Garrick. “I’ve been in Scatter Labs for six years?”

  “Yes. And then you left the Labs the same day I did. Dr. Wells drove you out here and dumped you. Got sick of trying to convince you to play the game her way and decided it’d be easier to get rid of you.”

  No, that’s not what I remember. Maybe that was the way it had happened before—maybe that’s how he and Bryn had ended up in the wasteland last time.

  But this time had been different.

  This time, Dr. Wells had started having second thoughts. She’d asked Rett again and again about the future he had visited—the spreading wasteland, the unchecked ruin. Scatter’s mission is to make the future better, she told Rett. We’re going to make things better. But guilt hung like a weight around her neck, bowing her frame, slowing her steps.

  Finally, late one night, she’d taken Rett and Bryn from their rooms, s
muggled them into her car. I wish I could give you the codes that would turn off your mechanisms forever, she’d told them as the car had hurtled down the interstate in the dark of early morning. But I don’t have access to them. There’s no way Scatter will just let me cut you free after you’ve proven you can visit the future.

  They’d reached the wasteland just in time for the solar storm. Rett could still hear the last urgent words she’d said to him before she’d left him and Bryn alone in the starry hollow: I can’t help you. There’s only one way left to do this. You’ll have to find it …

  Rett pushed himself away from the wall, though he still felt he might collapse. “It doesn’t matter,” he told Garrick. “When this is over, Bryn and I are going back to when this all started. We’ll leave Scatter Labs for good. Go back to living our own lives.”

  Rett looked to Bryn, but she wasn’t standing in the lounge anymore. She had circled behind Garrick, who had forgotten the pack he’d dropped on the floor.

  “When what’s all over?” Garrick’s sharp laughter echoed off the walls. “Scatter’s got no use for you anymore. They dumped you out here because they don’t want you. They’re done with you.”

  Rett inched back along the wall, drawing Garrick with him.

  “They’ve got a hundred other operatives now who can do what you can do,” Garrick said. “Scatter owns Walling Home now. They own all of the boarding facilities. Direct recruitment.”

  Rett wavered for a moment, caught in the thought that Scatter was now doing to hundreds of orphans the same thing they’d done to him.

  But he couldn’t think about that now.

  “We’re not here to do Scatter’s work.” Rett tensed, readying himself.

  Garrick smirked at him. “You don’t believe me. So tell me—what are you doing out here?”

  “We’ve got our own plans.”

  Rett launched himself at Garrick, sending him sprawling back into the lounge area. They fell together onto the metal floor. Rett scrambled to his feet, but Garrick landed a kick on Rett’s ankle. Rett just managed to grab the ladder mounted to the wall to keep himself from going down. He lashed a foot at Garrick and got only air as Garrick recoiled.

  The button, Rett thought wildly. He slammed his hand over it. The alarm screamed at Rett to get out before the wall closed, and he found himself tumbling forward, his bones jarring as he hit the metal floor again. Garrick scrambled to follow him, but Rett put his boot to Garrick’s chest and shoved him back.

  The wall sealed shut, with Garrick behind it.

  Rett lay on the floor a moment, panting, and then the shock of cold water sent him to his feet. Bryn grabbed his arm to help him up. In her other hand, she held the pack Garrick had left on the floor. Mineral-laced water poured past their boots to run out through the cracked-open front door.

  “We don’t have long,” Bryn shouted over the noise of the alarm. “Once the water stops, we’ll have maybe ten minutes before that wall opens and lets him out. We need to get the rest of the supplies.”

  “What else do we need?” Rett shouted.

  “More water, a compass.” Bryn’s face fell. “The shovel! It’s in the power supply room.”

  Rett turned to face the door that had shut them out of the back rooms.

  Bryn looked from the door to the wall closed over the lounge, which shuddered as if Garrick were pounding on it from the inside. “If we wait for the door to open…”

  “Then he’ll get out, too. And he still has the gun.”

  “What do we do?”

  Rett raked a hand over the back of his neck. “I don’t know.”

  “We need to charge the GPS units, too,” Bryn said, nodding at the backpack. “And there are only eight pouches of water in the other backpack. The water spigot’s locked away in the lounge, and anyway we can’t get more water from it until it rains.”

  This isn’t going to work, Rett thought.

  Bryn looked at him and he knew exactly what she was thinking: We have to start over.

  “No.” He shook his head as misery welled up inside him. “I can’t do this again. I can’t—” I can’t face the gun again. He’d barely been able to do it this time.

  Bryn slid her arms under his and pulled him close. The feel of her against him dampened his panic. He thought, Have we been missing each other for six years, locked away in separate rooms in Scatter Labs?

  Before we found ourselves in that starry hollow, had it been years since I held you?

  And when she let go, he thought, It’s always years, always ages. Time always slows when we’re apart.

  “Rett,” Bryn said, wonder in her voice. She strode to the front door and traced the logo of overlapping jagged lines on the metal and then the number three inside the circle. “This is Scatter 3—there are other depots.”

  A hazy image came to Rett’s mind, a poster of the three depots he’d seen in Scatter Labs.

  “There’s another depot along the river—I saw it on a map,” Bryn said. “And it’s closer to the spot where Scatter’s device is buried. We’ll go there, get some more supplies, and head out.”

  Rett tried to remember the map she was talking about. But he could only think about how it had felt to have her so close to him. How much he wanted to make sure they could do things right this time. I can’t spend another six years locked away from you.

  The lounge wall shuddered again, and Garrick’s muffled shouts followed.

  “We have to go. Before that wall unlocks.” Rett hitched the backpack’s strap over his shoulder. Garrick’s going to be angry. He might even come after us.

  He slipped the backpack off again.

  “What’re you doing?” Bryn asked.

  “I’m going to leave him some of the GPS units. I need to put them in a dry spot.” He couldn’t look at her when he said it. Garrick had held a gun on him not moments ago, but Rett needed to do this. “It’s my fault he came out here. It’s because I told him about the solar storm taking out Scatter’s security.” And I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. I don’t know if he’ll even make it out of here alive to sell these GPS units or do whatever he planned to do with the gear in this place.

  He went into the supply room and jerked open the pack to dump four of the six GPS units onto the dry counter.

  Bryn came in behind him, but she didn’t try to argue. “Let me plug one of these in,” she said, ripping a power cord out of a cabinet. “Just for a minute, just in case.”

  Rett started to say that they didn’t have time, but Bryn spoke first.

  “Your ankle’s hurt,” she said. “Stop trying to pretend it’s not. You need to wrap it.”

  The pain throbbing in Rett’s ankle finally claimed his attention. He’d hardly registered it when Garrick had kicked him, but now he realized his other leg bore all his weight.

  He grabbed a first-aid kit from the neat rows on the floor, which were now drenched with water, and sat on the cabinet top to pull off his boot. A minute later, he eased himself back down, ankle wrapped, mind shut to the fear that he wouldn’t be able to get far with his ankle throbbing the way it was.

  Bryn transferred the water pouches into the pack they’d taken from Garrick. Then she unplugged two GPS units and slid them in alongside the water. “Is your ankle going to be okay?”

  Rett ignored the question. “We need to get out of here.”

  They ducked into the main room, where water still poured over the floor. Rett followed the stream to the door.

  “Bryn?” Rett turned to see why she hadn’t followed him.

  “When he made you go outside last time, something bad happened,” Bryn said, plodding toward him. “Something that erased your memory.” She cupped her hand over his scar in a way that made his heart leap. “What if it happens again?”

  “I don’t understand. What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever they put in your head went haywire. I think it was because of the solar storm that caused the aurora.”

  Rett pu
t his hand over hers. “We were just outside a minute ago. I saw the aurora. Nothing bad happened.”

  Bryn shook her head, her face lined with confusion. She pulled her hand away. “But last time … I don’t know. We were scared, is that it? The man had just pointed a gun at you and we were scared.”

  “So the solar storm stressed the mechanism in our heads, and then we made it worse with adrenaline. Overloaded it.”

  “I guess. I don’t know.”

  “Well, we can’t stay here. We’ll go out one at a time. Okay?”

  Bryn nodded, her face blank but shoulders pulled in tight.

  Rett slipped out the front door. The rocks and dirt were blue in the predawn light, the towering buttes cold and distant. A poisoned sea, Rett thought, remembering what he’d told Dr. Wells.

  He touched his fingers to his scalp, where he thought he felt a tingle of electricity. “I’m okay,” he called back. “No brain trauma, promise.”

  Bryn slid out through the door and stood just outside it, poised for danger.

  “You okay?”

  She let out a breath and nodded. “Let’s go.” She led the way around to the back of the depot. Here the slope dropped away more steeply, and a wide swath of white water churned at the bottom, catching the brightening light.

  “We’ll follow the river north to the second depot,” Bryn said. “Scatter 2.”

  Rett settled the pack over his shoulders. “You said you saw the depot on a map?”

  Bryn froze midstep. Then just as suddenly, she picked up her pace again.

  “What is it?” Rett asked, struggling to keep up, hobbling on his sore ankle.

  “Nothing. Just … we need to go fast.”

  “Bryn, what’s wrong?”

  She didn’t answer. Rett caught her arm. Her face was a grim mask as she met his gaze. “Garrick said he came here to scavenge Scatter’s equipment.”

  “So?”

  “So now he knows where the device is buried. We locked him in the room with the map.”

  8:48 A.M.