Echoes (Echoes Book 1)

by Therin Knite

  Brennian killed all of these people just to harm the one.

  “This is the worst echo disaster Columbia has had in six years,” says Dynara, staring at a man who tipped over sideways after something sheared off both his frozen legs.

  My throat constricts, but I force myself to reply, “Not good for PR, huh?”

  “That’s the kicker, isn’t it? EDPA doesn’t have a PR department. The whole point of ‘top secret’ is that no one’s supposed to know about it.” She weaves carefully around the people statues still standing. Some were running—fleeing—like the dancers and suffered the consequences, but others failed to see the threat. They were chatting, laughing, drinking, eating. Upper-class normality at a moment in time, paused for all the world to see. “Stuff like this happens every now and then. Not on this scale though. This is the closest Washington has ever come to tragedy.”

  “You don’t consider this a tragedy?”

  “No. It’s awful, but a tragedy is…something else.” She crosses the dance floor and gestures toward an exit that leads to the main hallway, a stairwell and elevator placed side by side. “We need to find the dragon master and end this.”

  “How do you know he’s still in the building? He could have escaped through a back door.”

  She halts at the edge of the dance floor and gives me a disappointed glance. “Details, Adem. Details. I know this is gruesome, but don’t start blocking out the obvious, even if you lose your breakfast on occasion.” She nods to the head patron’s stage, where a Regina statue should be sitting but isn’t. Brennian has destroyed her world in one of the worst ways imaginable, but her humiliation isn’t over yet. He’s going to draw it out some more before he ends her life.

  “The VIP lounges on the top floor,” I say. “Brennian usually rents one out whenever he goes to establishments like this because he doesn’t like too much company. He’s selective in whom he allows to be in his presence. It’s part of his neat and meticulous style. That’s where they’ll be, him and Regina, having a friendly discussion before he offs her in whatever minimally gory way he can think of. No reason to soil himself, even in a dream.” My boot sideswipes a section of some poor man’s arm. It comes away wet. The nightmare ice garden is beginning to melt. Acid burns the back of my throat. “Let’s go.”

  As we approach the stairwell door, the elevator dings. Dynara adjusts the grip on her gun, and I unstrap my own from its holster, but when the doors roll open, an empty box greets us. Sweet, melodic music coats the air, and the ballad sends a dozen chills scuttling down my spine. My comrade steps closer to the elevator, eyes focused on its door. I get the feeling she’s seen dream elevator rides end in not-so-pleasant ways before.

  “He’s inviting us to a battle,” she says. “Arrogant.”

  “No more arrogant than you or me.”

  “Yes, but neither of us is an indiscriminate killer.”

  “But at least one of us is a killer? Is that what you’re implying?”

  She steps into the elevator car with one quick motion, and I follow her inside after a considerable delay. The Director wouldn’t go for a messy finish—not for a rival. Therefore, death by elevator is unlikely, but once the doors close us off from the hallway and we begin to ascend six stories, a heavy dose of anxiety is injected into my bloodstream. Brennian’s betrayal has rattled me, and my physiological responses are all over the place.

  The Director is not my friend. He never was. It was all a lie.

  I know this. I accept this. So why can’t I get myself together? Why do I keep overreacting to everything? Dead bodies don’t make me flinch. Insidious plans don’t leave me gasping in horror. Whitford Brennian is another criminal, and I should be able to treat him like one.

  “You don’t respond the same way when the bad guy is someone you know, Adem.” Dynara watches me from the corner of her eye, dissecting my discomfort. “Especially when it’s someone you trusted. A breach of trust destabilizes your emotions more than anything else, even death. It doesn’t matter how much you rationalize the situation. It won’t get any easier, not until you have so many other things on your mind that you can no longer focus on the pain.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Swanson, for that thorough mind reading.”

  “Swanson? Your twelfth therapist?”

  I throw her a look I hope shouts, Stop prying into my life, you asshole! “Why am I not surprised you know about Ms. Swanson?”

  “Nothing I know should surprise you, Adem, because I know everything.”

  “Oh, right. You’re one of the old gods reborn into the form of a short-statured human female. I forgot.”

  Ding.

  “Since we have a bad guy to catch, I’m going to forget you said that. For now.”

  The elevator doors retract again, revealing three hallways that branch off in three cardinal directions, all painted white, all lined with identical white doors. There’s no indication of which way to go next, and there are roughly seventy-five rooms Brennian could be hiding in. Brennian’s ploy is obvious to us both as we step out of our ride and onto a level of the club I know only from a run-in with a hit man: he wants us to split up.

  “I get the feeling he’s only interested in seeing one of us.” Dynara scans all three hallways before returning her attention to me. “So, what do you want to do?”

  “I’ll take the bait. He’s loosened the laws of the dream too much. He can change anything he wants whenever he wants and the dream won’t collapse. Which means I can change what I want and the dream won’t collapse. I’m not sure we’re an even match, but better me than you. Echo maker versus echo maker.”

  “I am an echo maker,” she says. “Just not a command controller.”

  “I don’t know what that terminology means yet, but I’m assuming you can’t alter the dream.”

  “Correct, but don’t think that means I can’t kick his ass.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. You can kick anyone’s ass, I’m sure. But I’m searching for an excuse that’ll let me do it instead under the guise of logic.”

  She jerks to the right on the pads of her feet and waves me off. “You got it, Agent Adamend. I’ll go this way. I need to get a lengthy update from Lance anyway.” With her thumb, she directs me to the middle hallway. I don’t know how she knows it’s the correct path (and that pisses me off to no end), but I set my sights on those twenty doors regardless and start marching on a warpath toward the man who dared to break my trust.

  When I reach the first door, I almost turn the knob and push like a normal person. My fingers curl inward before they touch the polished metal, though, and it occurs to me how foolhardy it is to expect there to be nothing but a basic room behind the thin wooden barricade. In theory, Brennian can construct anything within the VIP rooms—raging wild animals, a goddamned black hole, a gun set to go off the moment the door opens—and there’s no guarantee he won’t accept a clever booby trap as a neat way to off someone.

  So I step a few feet away from the door and rev up my magic echo maker powers again. Open, I mouth, flicking my wrist in the door’s general direction. With a little too much force. It blows right off its hinges and flies back into the darkened VIP room, crashing against the far wall a second later. Whoops. Nothing emerges from the darkness with killer intent, however, and I continue on to the rooms farther down the hall. One after the other, I force each door open, achieving a balance of mental desire and telekinetic strength when I hit the seventh.

  The last door on the left (number nineteen) gives me reason to pause. Not a tangible reason. A strange, intuitive feeling in my gut makes me hesitate, and on impulse, I grab the knob and open the door the old-fashioned way. It doesn’t creak on its hinges, and it doesn’t fade into a wall of darkness beyond its threshold. The lights in this room are on.

  Brennian and Regina are inside.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Adem,” says Director Brennian, “please come in.” He downs a shot of something burnt orange and launches the glass at the back wall
. Instead of shattering on impact, it goes into the wall, which ripples like the surface of an irritated lake. The moment I clear the door with my painfully slow advance into his lair, it slams shut behind me and melds with the wall, a thin black outline the sole reminder there was ever an exit to this hellhole in the first place. “I didn’t expect you to be here. When I saw you outside, I thought you’d escaped from the airfield and ended up at Club Valkyrie in real life. No such luck, it seems. How did you manage it? I was told you can’t cross when sedated.”

  Apparently it’s unheard of, but you know me, always the special kid. “None of your business. I reveal secrets to trustworthy people.” I step inside the lowered circle cut into the middle of the floor. Two couches rest on either side of a long glass table. Regina Williams sits in the middle of the sofa nearest me, staring pointedly at the floor as tears stream down her cheeks.

  “That hurts, Adem,” says Brennian.

  “You hurt me.”

  “So you’re resorting to vengeance? I thought you were above that.”

  “No one is above vengeance. And it seems men who call themselves dignified aren’t above slaughtering innocents.”

  Regina whimpers.

  “Are you talking about the idiots on the dance floor?”

  “You no longer have the right to judge anyone, so shut it before I decide to pass permanent judgment on you. This has gone on long enough. If you hurt one more person—one—then I will end you personally.”

  He scrutinizes me, eyes lingering on the gun that rests against my thigh. I’m not a quick draw or a great shot, but I’m close enough to shoot him dead regardless. “You can alter my dream that easily, huh? It didn’t even take an ounce of effort, did it, to transform my little pet, to make those clothes appear, to teleport yourself a good ten miles? I was right about you. You’re extraordinary.”

  Out of nowhere materializes a gun identical to mine—Brennian snatches it out of midair and aims it at Regina’s head. Every muscle in my body constricts, and a strangled NO sticks to the back of my throat as I watch his finger tighten on the trigger. I’m nowhere near fast enough to get there in time, and just before the sound of gunfire beats against my eardrums, I stretch my hand toward her prone figure, praying. Miss.

  Instead of burying itself inside her brain, the bullet grazes her forehead before deflecting with a sharp ring into the far water-wall. There was nothing visible between her and the round, but there she sits, mostly intact. A stream of blood runs down her hyper-modded face, and she reaches up to touch it. At first, she’s so stunned, she stares at the stain on her fingers without comprehension. Then she breaks down into a fit of hysterical sobbing.

  Brennian stares at me in awe. “How did you do that so quickly? How is it so natural for you? It’s like your echo-making powers are an extension of yourself, something innate as opposed to something manufactured. Incredible.” He sits the gun on the table, shaking his head. “Gods, how you’ve been wasting your talents at the IBI. They’ve been using you like cheap labor to do things so far beneath you. They should be executed just for the sheer level of insult. Disgraceful.”

  “You helped me, Director,” I reply, “get into the IBI.”

  “I know. It’s only fair to blame myself. I wanted you in a place where I could watch you easily. He asked me to keep an eye on you.”

  “Who is he?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “For some reason, I seriously doubt that, considering EDPA is prepping to storm the airfield as we speak.”

  A wry smile crosses his lips. “There’s such a thing as a contingency plan.”

  “If you find yourself needing a contingency plan, then you have not properly devised your initial plan, according to the IBI Handbook.”

  “Senseless propaganda.” He snorts. “It’s always been an organization of self-important, self-righteous fools.”

  “Oh, well don’t you fit right in, then?”

  He rises from the couch, knees cracking, and sighs. “As do you.”

  “I have a reason to work for the IBI.”

  “To search for the person who killed your mother?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Even if this, even if you ruin my career, some way or another I’ll stay in the IBI. Because it does what I need it to do. It hunts down killers who break into homes and slaughter innocents. This is the most spectacular thing I’ve seen in my life, these echoes, but they mean nothing to me in the grand scheme of things. I will find my mother’s killer, even if I have to take down a hundred men like you first.”

  Sorrow pours into Brennian’s eyes. True sorrow. He wets his lips, runs a hand through his thinning hair, and stares me down with an expression that reads: What I’m about to say will destroy you, but it needs to be said. And in the seconds before he speaks, I come to understand the good Director. The smiles and laughs and compliments over desserts in tiny cafés were not manufactured. His goodwill toward me was never exaggerated. Everything he’s ever done for me, everything he’s ever claimed to want for me, has reflected his genuine feelings. Whitford Brennian is a liar and a killer. Whitford Brennian also considers himself my friend.

  “Adem…by the old gods. I can barely say this.”

  “Say what?”

  “Your mother wasn’t murdered, Adem,” he replies. “You are your mother’s killer.”

  * * *

  Mom says there are no monsters under my bed or hiding in my closet, but at six, my imagination runs rampant, and I don’t believe her. Even after she’s kissed me good night and promised I can open presents extra early in the morning, I bundle myself up in thick covers and peek at the closet door every few minutes. The house is dark and warm and inviting, but a coldness creeps up my neck and keeps me shivering for hours. It’s going to get me tonight. I know it.

  As I finally begin to nod off around three AM, a creak jolts me back to alertness. My closet door is open. It wasn’t before. It sits at a ninety-degree angle, displaying the full contents of a cramped room with shelves that can’t possibly harbor a monster any taller than two feet. Yet, as my eyes frantically search for the culprit, I catch a glimpse of a black, slimy tail slinking around the doorway into the hall.

  I bury myself in the sheets, repeating Mom’s mantra over and over. It’s not real. It’s not real. They’re only in my dreams. They can’t hurt me. There’s no such thing as monsters. It’s not real.

  At some point, my consciousness drifts away, and the next thing I know, it’s morning. Sunlight streams through my bedroom window—the latest I’ve ever woken up for Christmas. Mom should have stopped by and shaken me awake hours ago, giggling and teasing me for being late to my favorite holiday. But she didn’t. And the sounds of her usual morning routine—breakfast followed by the nine o’clock news—are absent. Did she sleep in, too?

  I crawl out of bed, shedding the thick sheets I spent half the night in a cold sweat under, and waddle down the hallway, searching for any sign of Mom’s presence. “Mom?” I call out. “Mommy? Where are you?”

  She doesn’t reply, so I check her bedroom, only to find her covers made. Like she got up hours ago. Or never went to sleep at all. Backing up, my feet carry me faster than before, and I end up in the kitchen. But she’s not here, either, and there’s no hot breakfast waiting for me on the table for the first time since I can remember.

  “Mom?”

  My body pivots around to face the living room. Our digital tree is still on, blinking fifteen different colors. The presents are in the same places, unopened, untouched. Nobody broke in and stole our stuff like I’ve seen on the news. But something is different. The white and gold wrapping paper is stained with reddish brown splatters. They get bigger farther from the tree until they converge into a dark puddle in the middle of the living room carpet.

  I take three steps to the right so I can see the entire room.

  Mom is in front of the sofa.

  She’s in pieces.

  “Adem? Are you okay, son? Can you hear me?”

/>   The living room evaporates, and the worried face of Director Brennian is reacquainted with my sight. In the absence of my mind, he’s approached me, and he now stands too close for comfort with his arms outstretched as if he’s sure I’ll faint any moment. Regina Williams has curled into a tight fetal position on the couch, bawling her eyes out. Her life has been spared for now, thanks to my intrusion, thanks to my sudden mental lapse that’s got the Director on edge. Has he damaged his goods?

  “I can hear you just fine,” I say, steady. Too steady. The words leave my tongue without permission, and a flare of panic is squashed by a rush of rage. I’ve lost my cool many times in my semi-stoic history, but this has never happened. I have never lost control, but as I stare into Brennian’s fucking face, all I can think is destroy. “I heard every word you said.”

  “I know how this must make you feel.”

  “You’ve invalidated my entire life. Informed me I’ve been living a lie.”

  “No, Adem. You’ve done good, catching criminals, solving crimes.” He inches closer, intent on disabling me the first chance he gets. My inexplicably amazing echo powers have him frightened, and if he had a shred less pride, he would have booked it the moment he spotted me intruding on his death fest.

  “I am a criminal. I’m a killer.”

  “You were six. Hardly a hardened murderer. It’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s theirs, EDPA’s, for failing to stop you from creating a level three echo.”

  “Did you think that telling me this would allow you to win?”

  His advance stops. “Pardon?”

  “You’ve had this knowledge for a while, right? You could have told me at any time, but you were saving it as a trump card in case one of your plans got derailed. Am I wrong?” I step forward, and he retreats toward his sofa. The lovely hostess lifts her head to watch the tables turn, unsure of whom she should root for. She is well aware that Whitford has come to kill her, but part of her believes she deserves it for her dismal failure, while the other half is hoping for his demise.