Echoes (Echoes Book 1)

by Therin Knite

  “Is that what you call an epiphany?” I ask.

  “Sometimes,” he says.

  Lana, who’s busy packing up her equipment for the night, chuckles and throws in, “Lance likes to add the word ‘orgasm’ to everything.”

  “Why?” I smirk at Lance. “Has the amount of cream in your coffee clogged your brain?”

  A blond eyebrow rises over the rim of his glasses. “Dy didn’t tell you that, did she?”

  “No, she had five coffees. All of them were telling in some fashion, and you seem to be someone who likes to blunt the coffee-ness of coffee.”

  “Is that a metaphor for something dark and depressing?” He pushes the glasses farther up the bridge of his nose.

  “Is it?” The answer is yes, and we both know it. He’s a few years older than me, but we’ve seen the same level of life shit at this point. The dampened horror of losing a loved one is prevalent in his eyes (though amused), his posture (though carefree), and the item of remembrance (probably a ring) he has on a necklace hidden under his shirt.

  “You know already, so why bother to answer?”

  “And how do you know I know?”

  “Oh, gods almighty,” Lana mumbles. She grabs her orange pea coat and heads for the door. “I’m getting the hell out of dodge before you boys descend into some quasi-philosophical riddle war.” On the threshold, she hesitates. “I’m sure you know this already, Adem, but don’t overuse your arm for the next week or so. Unless you want to end up in another doctor’s surgery room. I don’t like repeat customers. So if you screw up my work, I’ll kick you to the curb.” With that, she disappears into the maze of EDPA halls.

  “You have that same look Dynara gets when she analyzes me,” Lance says. “That’s how I know you know.” He shuffles over to a counter bolted to the wall next to the syringe cabinet and grabs the short stool underneath it. All it takes is a light tug to send it rolling my way. It bounces off the edge of my surgery bed and rebounds a few feet before coming to a stop. Lance seats himself on it with no adjustment like he knew exactly where it was going to go.

  He didn’t.

  “It’s as if you’re looking right through me,” he continues, “like I’m nothing but words and images stockpiled into a physical shape.” His head is cocked to the right, curiosity alight in his gaze. Dynara is his gold standard. A second coming was not expected.

  “You make me sound cold.”

  “You are cold. Geniuses are always cold. Geniuses with childhood traumas even more so.”

  “You’ve met a lot of certified geniuses, then?”

  “Only Dy. But she’s the one who told me that.” He leans across the chasm between us and offers me a hand. “Is your name really Adem Adamend?”

  I situate my Ocom in my lap and give him a solid shake with the arm not currently in a sling. “Is your name really something equally stupid?”

  “Well, we were born in the same generation. Era of the infamous alliterative naming fad.” His hand is reclaimed so he can chew on the end of his thumb while he sizes me up (damaged, arrogant, physically weak, and rather good looking), determines whether or not he wants to befriend me (yes, he does), and figures out whether or not I’m trustworthy (maybe). He’s not one of the smartest people in the world, but he’s pretty damn intelligent regardless.

  “Yes, my name is really Adem Adamend.”

  “Nice to meet you, fellow member of the unfortunate name club. I’m Lance Lovecraft.” His attention turns to my Ocom. “Have you solved the case already? Dy bet me fifty bucks you’d figure it out before lunchtime today.”

  “Lunchtime is, what, ten hours away? Ask me again at breakfast. I have a hunch about a lead right now, but I need to investigate a bit more before I can reach any definite conclusions.” I need to figure out how much of my interaction with heterochromia lady last night was coincidence and how much was the result of her involvement with Manson. All I know for sure at this point is that she killed her partner of ten years in self-defense, and Manson cleared her of any wrongdoing in the aftermath. But I have a talent for reading between the lines, and there are a few words that indicate a far more convoluted story. Such as infidelity.

  In order to convert my speculation into applicable theory, though, my course of action—

  A wide yawn escapes from my chest.

  Lance snickers. “You tired?”

  “Well, I have spent the night getting shot at and running for my life.”

  “That’s not atypical for an EDPA shift. I’ve spent many of my nights getting shot at and running for my life. And I’m the tech guy.”

  “You were the one talking to Dynara in the dragon dream?”

  “The dragon dream? Oh, yeah. That was me. I was pissed at her. She took her com out, and then my data went on the fritz. Crosses screw up the Nexus system.”

  “Sorry. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to be there.”

  “I’m not blaming you. Newbie makers aren’t in control of their abilities. You need training.”

  “Yeah, about that…” I scroll through the list of redacted files, pretending I can see through the inadequate summaries and read the hidden truths underneath.

  “You’re not joining us?” He leans back and grips the cushion of the stool. His nails dig into the cracks in the leather.

  “I can’t. I have a reason to work for the IBI.”

  Lance eyes me, cautious. He knows something I don’t, and he’s not supposed to tell me about it. “So I’ve heard. Maybe I can change your mind though.” In a blur, he leaps from his seat, seizes me by the oversized freebie shirt Lana stuffed me into for some modesty, and hauls my exhausted ass off the table. My feet stumble as he drags me through the double doors and into a quiet EDPA corridor. “After all, according to Dy, I’m your escort for the night. I’m supposed to show you things.”

  “Show me what?”

  “How about the Neural Nexus?”

  Freeing myself from his grasp, I fall into step beside him. “Where do you keep that, the basement?”

  His warm laugh races down the empty hall. “It’s not one thing. There are eight Neural Nexus setups in the building, one on each of the belowground floors. And so, there are sixteen Nexus teams, eight day shifts and eight night shifts, that work on alternating days of the week. Dynara and I are part of the night shift team for Nexus One.”

  “How many others are on your team?”

  “Well, we have Murrough, whom you’ve met, however briefly. He doesn’t do echo field though. Then there’s Chai, but she’s on leave for the next several weeks.”

  “Injury?”

  “Honeymoon.”

  “Oh, so minor injury.”

  Lance pauses in front of the sole window cut into the long stretch of government standard gray wall paneling (and flooring and ceiling tiles). It’s an observation station for a technology testing lab, and inside, a massive machine covered with a heavy blue tarp awaits another round of potentially life-ending trial runs. My escort leans against the glass, arms crossed, nibbling his lip. The red-headed enigma standing across from him raises more questions than answers every time he speaks. “You have a good sense of humor.”

  “Yes?”

  “Dy said you were emotionally damaged.”

  “I am, but—”

  Shrill screaming rips through the quiet of the hallway. My heart goes into overdrive, but Lance doesn’t even flinch. Repeated exposure to apocalypse-grade warning alarms will gradually wear down the shock response.

  “That’s the level two alert,” he says. “Sorry. Twos tend to appear without going through level one, and a two can lead to a three, and, well, you understand where this is going.”

  “How many dreams do you have to deal with in a night?”

  “Twenty. Twenty-five maybe. There aren’t but so many echo makers in Columbia. And when we find a new one, we dose him with a Somnexolene inhibitor. Makes all the bad dreams go away. Of course, you have new makers coming into their powers all the time, so the excitement ne
ver ends.” We wind up back on our original heading once the alarm is silenced, and a myriad of identical halls with identical doors gives way to a multi-ton steel barricade with a passcode pad tacked onto one side.

  “So this is it?”

  “Yep. Better prepare yourself.”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  He punches in a well-memorized twenty-six digit code (I pretend not to remember), but when prompted for an Ocom ID check, he stops short. “Why do you like working at crime scenes so much?”

  My brain kicks into high gear to deconstruct the motivations behind his question, but all I find is genuine interest. Lance Lovecraft is not Dynara—he does not have forty-two faces to wear. “I want to learn what drives all types of criminals. I want to learn how they do what they do and why they do it. Each crime scene brings me a step closer to understanding what happened to my mother.”

  Lance winces. He answers the passcode pad’s prompt by waving his Ocom in front of it, and fifteen separate locks on the door disengage. A mountain of steel soars upward with a thunderous clank, revealing a cavernous, pitch black chamber behind it.

  “Nexus One,” he says, “activate.”

  * * *

  “Such is the glory of the gods!” Lance stretches his arms in Y formation, jazz hands cranked up to eleven. Behind his exaltation is the technological altar upon which numerous federal agents regularly ready themselves for a heroic sacrifice. Five reclining chairs skirt the edge of a lowered circular basin that shines with the light of a hundred thousand luminescent wires submerged in two inches of water. Suspended above the setup is the dome of a super computer core, its blue glow diluting the brightness of the ceiling lights.

  My escort maneuvers around the Neural Nexus and proceeds to showcase a complex multi-screen workstation in the corner opposite the chair setup. “This is where I work. I’m the team coordinator.”

  I run a finger down the well-worn armrest of the chair nearest to the door, tracing the indentation a lithe arm. “Is this one Dynara’s?”

  “Sure is. She always insists on the same connector. Claims it feels different than the others. I suspect it has more to do with the fact she’s stubborn and prone to meaningless habits.” Lance rounds the corner of his high-tech desk and flops onto a standard rolling chair.

  The connector’s head cushion is bordered by a semi-circular metal band that looks suspiciously similar to a clamp. “So you, what, sit down and plug in?”

  “Basically.”

  “And how does it let you connect to someone’s echo?”

  “In simplest terms, it removes your consciousness from your body and situates it on the border of our dimension and the one in which the echoes exist, thus causing a copy of your body to appear inside said dimension. Then the Nexus takes that copy and directs it to the selected echo.” He plucks his glasses off and rubs one eye with the back of his hand. “I’d try to explain it to you in more detail, but I don’t understand all the science behind it myself. I have some fundamental grasp, but this is genius-level stuff. I can’t even begin to comprehend the sheer amount of brain power that went into designing this thing. Years and years. Thousands and thousands of hours. They rewrote at least three entire scientific disciplines during the development of the first Nexus prototype.”

  “When was that?” My foot skims along the surface of the shallow pool, distorting the view of the lit wires into a mosaic of flickering ripples.

  “About thirty-five years ago now, the prototype. The first approved model was a few years later.”

  “Approved as in safe?”

  “Approved as in working, most of the time.”

  “I’m guessing more than one death has been caused by this thing?” I take a few steps back and crane my neck to stare at the humming computer core.

  “Oh, yes. You think Ocom software updates have glitches? You haven’t seen a glitch until you’ve seen people’s minds end up in the wrong bodies.”

  “That happens?”

  “Happened. Long before I was around. Version one-point-two of the Nexus. We’re required to study its history during coordinator training.” He raps his glasses on the central workstation screen. “Not all of it is marvelous.”

  “So they’ve fixed that…error, then?”

  “Dy fixed it.”

  “She’s that old?”

  The glasses slip out of his fingers, tip over the back of the screen, bounce off the edge of the desk, and suicide dive right into an empty trashcan. “Oh, she hasn’t told you.”

  “Not her exact age. Only that she’s older than she looks.”

  “Understatement of the year,” he mutters. His thumb flicks the tab on the underside of his chair, and it sinks down far enough for him to lean under the desk and reclaim his bionic attachment.

  I wander closer to his station, surveying the constant information stream. There’s so much data on a single screen that by the time I capture one word it’s already been replaced by a hundred more. “So, are you going to tell me how old she is or leave me in aching suspense?”

  His eyes sparkle with the desire to torment my unending curiosity, but he decides to throw me a bone (after ogling the heavy gauze pads sticking out from underneath my loose-hanging shirt). “Fifty-two.”

  I try to equate five decades with the rounded high school sophomore face that acts as the foundation of Dynara’s neat pile of thick, white hair, but I can’t make the puzzle pieces fit together. They’re not pieces of the same puzzle. Hell, they’re not even the same species. One is a hovercopter engine, and the other is a slice of pizza. “I…uh…how?”

  Lance picks up his feet and drops them on a scuffed desk corner, crossing his arms. “You’re looking at it.”

  “The Nexus?”

  “An echo.”

  “An echo made Dynara young?”

  “Made her stay young.”

  “So she…”

  “She’s looked exactly the same for the last thirty-five years.” Lance wets his dry bottom lip as he loses himself in thought. “Which is longer than I’ve been alive. Dynara is sarcastic and hyper enough on a regular basis for me to pretend we’re somewhere on the same playing field, but reality comes crashing in all too often. Every time I see her interact with someone older, someone who looks older, I can see the age in her. Every time she starts reminiscing about her past, about herself, really. It’s like her eyes, well…”

  “Are windows to her soul?”

  “If you want to get poetic, I suppose.”

  “Nothing poetic about it. Eyes are telling.”

  “Like coffee, you mean.”

  “Exact—”

  A rumbling percussion rhythm blasts through Lance’s jacket pocket and booms off the Nexus chamber walls. He scrambles for his Ocom, nearly falling out of his chair as his feet slip off the desk. Once he has the damn thing in hand, he repeatedly slams his middle finger on the answer prompt. “Dynara? What the fuck? Did you change my ringtone again?”

  Dynara dismisses his complaint with a snort and says, “We have much bigger problems than your taste in music.” In the quiet expanse of the gargantuan room, her voice seems to descend from the heavens and surround me on all sides. “Guess who just showed up at Valkyrie?”

  Lance freezes for a moment. Then he shoots me a worried grimace. “The Director?”

  “Yep.”

  Oh.

  Oh, shit.

  Oh, motherfucking shit.

  If Brennian has been informed about the incident at Club Valkyrie, then by now, he must also know everything concerning my involvement in the Manson case. It’ll only be a matter of time before he tracks me down here, grabs me by my loose freebie shirt, and hauls me off to wherever he thinks he can hole me up until I’m forty-five. If I wasn’t royally screwed after my own Commander gunned me down at a crime scene, then I certainly am now.

  “Is Adem there with you?” Dynara asks.

  “Yeah, he’s right here. Doesn’t look so hot right now though. I think he’s panicking.” Lance
rounds his desk and heads toward me. “I’m guessing the IBI is going to come to collect him?”

  “Inevitably,” she says. “I had to tell them we have him. Brennian caught me in a legal trap. Got one of his judge buddies to keep the Valkyrie shootout under the IBI’s jurisdiction. We’re required to hand over all persons we know were involved. Including Adem.” Dynara’s voice is strained and exhausted. She’s been awake and active at least as long as I have, and unlike me, she hasn’t gotten any down time since our fight and flight from the IBI SWAT team. It seems she went straight back to the club after dropping me off for surgery.

  “At this point, you have two choices, Adem. I’m sure you know what they are.”

  My muscles grow tense at the address, but she’s correct. I’m aware of my options. “I can either turn myself over to the IBI for questioning, or I can run and hope they don’t catch me.”

  “What would be the point of the latter?” Lance looks up from his Ocom, a frown weighing on his lips. “They’ll catch you eventually no matter what. If you run, you’ll end up in more trouble than you are now.”

  “Yeah, but if I turn myself in, Brennian is going to make sure I don’t get within a district’s width of EDPA again. At the least. I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t relocate me or reassign me to a desk job. If he thinks my life is at risk, he’ll do whatever it takes to protect me. Even if that means damaging my career. That’s the downside of being a designated protégé.”

  “But…” Lance hesitates. “Isn’t it already too late? Won’t that happen anyway?”

  “Yeah, it will. But right now, I’m a free man. Right now, I can still work on the Manson case. I can still solve the Manson case. And now I think I know where to start.” I reexamine the extraordinary marvel that is the Neural Nexus one last time before I turn to face the door. “Dynara?”