Echo 8

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  Ross was strong enough to fight. She just had to give him a reason.

  Levering herself up from the chair, she broke the kiss. She walked to the bed and Mac followed, pushing her back and covering her body with his.

  * * *

  Jake listened to his guards argue about what would happen if they fired one of the pistols they were waving around like idiots. Would the bullet punch a hole in the boat? Would it ricochet? How many times?

  Jake shut them out and focused on his hand.

  He always cut the energy transfers off before he was sated. He hated seeing how they drained her. Hated the dark depressions under her eyes, and watching her stumble as she walked. Besides that it hurt his heart—and parts farther south—being so close to her and not being able to touch her.

  He still hadn’t recovered from the long, hungry stretch the night before. The transfers since then had been brief. Was he starting to be able to see through his hand? How much was enough? he wondered, eyeing the idiots with the guns.

  Listening now to their ridiculous argument, he realized it might be enough for them to believe the bullet would pass through him.

  “Hey, dumbass!” he called, rising to his feet.

  * * *

  Mac made a hungry sound as his lips pressed against her throat. His hand slid down and began fumbling with her skirt.

  Tess, stop this! Now!

  Ross!

  His voice came urgently, an angry echo across her consciousness.

  Hurt him, Tess. Make him STOP.

  I need you, Ross.

  As Mac spread her legs with his knees, she sank back into the memory of Ross in her bed. Mac reached down between their bodies, pulling at his own clothing.

  “Ross,” she murmured, blocking out the sound of silky laughter in her ear.

  He pushed into her with a groan that slowly built in his throat to a shout. His eyes snapped open and bored into hers. Two tears slid down his face in quick succession.

  His head sank against her neck. “I don’t know how long I can fight him,” he rasped. “You have to get out of here.”

  “Ross!” cried Tess, relief cresting like a tidal wave. He tried pulling out of her, but she held his face in her hands. “I’m not leaving without you. We’ll fight him together.”

  He drew in a breath, shuddering like it hurt. “He’s strong, Tess.”

  “He had the advantage of surprise before. But we know him now. I know him, and I know you’re stronger.”

  Ross pushed his hands against hers, threading their fingers together as their gazes locked. “I won’t let him touch you again.”

  Her mother once said the same thing. Mac’s voice sliced between them and ricocheted around in her brain. Then she died and left her with him.

  Ross froze and made a choking sound in his throat. “Oh Jesus.”

  Something primal and wounded keened from Tess’s deepest hiding place. She closed her ears against the sounds of it stirring, clawing its way out. She clutched Ross against her.

  * * *

  Jake lifted the gun, angling it down, and blew a hole next to the doorjamb before kicking it open.

  He burst into the room and saw them there—saw Ross’s twin draped over Tess’s body—and bile rose in his throat.

  He snarled, blind with rage, and launched himself at the bed. Tess gave a cry of surprise as his hands closed around Mac’s throat. She unwound one hand from Mac and clutched Jake’s wrist.

  A blinding light flashed, and Jake’s stomach lurched as he felt himself suddenly falling.

  DISLOCATED

  * * *

  In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

  —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  * * *

  TESS PLUNGED through empty space, light enfolding her, knowing any moment she’d be spit out onto some inhospitable patch of ground. When the landing came, it knocked the breath out of her, and her head cracked against something solid—something that groaned.

  As she fought to right herself she discovered she was part of a multiheaded beast clawing and scrambling over slick ground. She came nose to nose with Jake, and his arms snaked around her as he pulled her free from the tangle of bodies.

  Tess sucked in a breath as she felt—not pain, but a warm rush of pleasurable sensation. She closed her hands over Jake’s arms, focusing on the massaging flow of energy.

  “Oh shit,” muttered Jake as she pressed him to the ground underneath her.

  Random images fired through her brain—images of her, of Ross, of the woman they’d met in Ballard, a little boy with Jake’s eyes.

  Jake’s memories! Tess jolted awake. She was draining his energy.

  She shoved him away—or she thought she did. Her body refused to comply with the order that would break the flow of warm, liquid sensation.

  She dug her heels into the mucky ground, groaning as she levered away, focusing all her strength on retracting her fingers.

  “Relax, Jake,” she choked out.

  He replied through clenched teeth, “You relax while your skin is boiling off.”

  But he took a shuddering breath, and the muscles in his arms softened. Tess’s fingers released, and she tore away from him, chest heaving from the effort.

  She spun around in the mud, following the scuffling sounds to Ross and Mac.

  Like a monster out of classical mythology, the two men inhabited one body from the waist down, but from the waist up they had separated. As they pummeled and clawed each other, Tess’s gaze followed the two sets of arms until she locked onto the dragon tattoo. When Ross got his fingers around Mac’s throat, she darted in and grabbed Mac’s shoulder.

  He gave a yelp of pain, and a shock ran through Tess, breaking her grip. Mac scrambled backward, and the fused forms peeled apart. He clambered away from them and up the hillside on all fours.

  “The asshole’s running,” called Jake, struggling to rise.

  “Good,” muttered Tess, sinking beside Ross.

  His lip was bleeding, but he was alive and whole. He spat on the ground and surveyed their surroundings. “Where are we?”

  “Mordor,” grumbled Jake, warming his arms with his hands.

  Mud and charred sticks covered the rolling, open ground. Blackened skeletons of trees dotted a group of hills to the east, and to the south Tess could see some sort of structure, a dark scar against the hillside. It looked like castle ruins. The faintest smell of smoke tinged the air, and the sun was a dull white disk behind a hazy sky.

  “Jake’s Earth,” said Tess.

  “Are we sure?” asked Ross.

  He hadn’t looked at her yet, and now his tone left her cold. Not angry, exactly. Businesslike. Was he judging her for what had happened on the Kalakala? For what happened before the Kalakala? She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Well I’m sure,” said Jake. “She gave me a little taste of my own medicine as soon as we touched down.”

  Ross’s eyes flickered between them. “Are you saying we’re Echoes here?”

  “As if she wasn’t scary enough.” But Jake’s expression was soft, and the question implicit in his gaze was, Are you okay?

  She pressed her trembling lips together.

  Ross’s gaze swept again over the blighted landscape. “This doesn’t look like Seattle. Or even what might be left of Seattle.”

  “No,” she agreed, wiping her muddy hands down her skirt. “When it happened I was consciously thinking ‘not Seattle.’ I couldn’t go through that again.”

  Ross’s gaze swung around to rest on her face. “Do you mean you controlled the dislocation?”

  “I didn’t start it, but I knew it was about to happen.” She thought back to the moment Jake had burst in. “I had the same pulling feeling in my stomach.”

  “Why do you think we all dislocated together?”

  She had been touching them both, but she and Ross had been in very much the same position the f
irst time she dislocated.

  “If I’m right about the fight-or-flight response,” she said, “I’d say it’s because I was running from something different this time. Because I was afraid for all of us.”

  Ross glanced away, nodding, and she knew he’d filled in the blanks. Her heart sank a little, craving the tiniest gesture of warmth from him. But his shields had been activated, and it occurred to her this could be the reason he had yet to dislocate on his own; his defense mechanisms were different from hers. He powered down instead of up when he felt threatened.

  “Maybe this place is connected with you,” said Ross. “Someplace else you’ve lived, or visited.”

  Her eyes moved to the ruin at the base of the hill. If it was a place she knew, she’d never recognize it now. She hugged her knees to her chest. The frigid air had leeched all the heat from her body, making it progressively harder to think.

  “Do you think there could be survivors?” asked Jake.

  “It’s possible.” Her words passed through chattering teeth this time, and Ross took off his jacket and moved closer, draping it over her shoulders.

  Her heart warmed at the gesture, and the almost-touch. “Thank you.” She cleared her throat and continued. “Anyone close enough to see the asteroid would have been incinerated. And worldwide there would have been lethally high temperatures and raging fires. But the impact was predicted, so people would have taken shelter. Survivors would have faced an impact winter caused by debris in the air. Plunging temperatures, and a severe shortage of food and water.”

  “Holy shit,” muttered Jake. “I missed all the fun.”

  “Do you think you can you get us back?” asked Ross.

  She considered a moment, watching her breath vaporize in the air. “The fact I’m controlling it at all, plus the fact that I made it back before, suggest that I can. But so far it’s happened more like a reflex.” She threaded her fingers together, breathing into her hands to warm them. “I don’t know. I’m so cold.”

  Ross stood up. “We need to find shelter. Let’s take a closer look at that ruin.”

  He reached for Tess’s hand and pulled her to her feet.

  “Did you see where Mac went?” Tess asked Jake.

  “He disappeared over the hill. One of us should have ended that fucker.”

  “Maybe we’ll get another chance,” muttered Ross.

  Tess followed him down the hillside, with Jake bringing up the rear. The ground was the consistency of wet clay, and she kept skidding into Ross. At one point Jake lost his footing and slid the rest of the way down.

  When a burst of oaths rising from the bottom of the hill assured Tess he wasn’t critically injured, she laid a hand on Ross’s arm and spoke in a low voice.

  “I was wrong to leave like that. I know I put us all in danger. Garcia’s scheme scared the hell out of me, and I couldn’t see another way out.”

  He took a couple of careful steps down the hillside. Without glancing back he said, “I know, Doctor.”

  She’d thought she hadn’t wanted anything in return for the apology. Now she realized she was wrong.

  Together they caught up to Jake. “Sorry, Jake,” she said, kneeling beside him. “The transfer’s made you weak.”

  He smiled at her. “You’re welcome to anything of mine that you need, Doc. What I told you back on that death ship, I meant.”

  “We should keep going,” said Ross.

  They made progress over the more level ground, and were almost to the ruin when something crunched under Tess’s foot. She bent down and poked at an orange-and-white crab shell.

  “So we’re close to the ocean,” said Jake, sniffing at the air.

  “Not necessarily.” She rolled a broken pincer between her fingers. “The asteroid impact would have generated massive tsunamis.”

  She dropped the pincer and picked up a bit of charred wood. “That would also explain why these weren’t burned all the way—they were underwater when the fires started. What are these, anyway? See how they’re all crooked and close to the same size?”

  “Vines?” suggested Ross. “Maybe this was a vineyard.”

  “Ah, maybe so.” Tess remembered what he’d said earlier, about her possibly having a connection to this place. She looked at him. “My mother was born in the Willamette Valley—Oregon wine country.”

  Tess’s grandparents had owned a drafty century-old house on a hill overlooking a vineyard. She scanned the tree graveyard to the east, and her eyes followed the slope of the hill down to the ruin below. She felt a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the cold. The modern chateau had not been very authentic—seemed more so now that it was reduced to a ruin—but it had inspired many childhood fantasies.

  “How close are we to the coast?” asked Ross.

  “Maybe fifty miles. Before the flooding. It may be closer now.”

  Ross stared at the ground, hands squeezing his biceps, and Tess realized both she and Jake were waiting for him to tell them what to do. He was probably the only one with any survival training.

  “We should gather up a bunch of these sticks,” he said finally. “We need to build a fire.”

  “Do you think they’re dry enough?”

  “Let’s hope so. It feels like about forty degrees out here. It’ll be even colder when the sun goes down.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Jake. “You two go on to the shelter. I sure hope one of you was a Boy Scout, or we’re gonna have to make coats out of these sticks for them to do us any good.”

  Ross and Tess continued across the valley to the ruin. Like the chateau from Tess’s memory, it was constructed of smooth river stone and mortar. One wing of the sprawling structure had been flattened like it was made out of Legos. The roof was completely gone, as were the windows and doors. Rain-streaked soot coated everything.

  Except for about an eight-by-twelve section, the interior was naked and open to the elements. Wet ash and piles of rubble littered the floor.

  “It’ll keep the rain off, anyway.” Tess sighed.

  Her foot struck the edge of something hard, and she reached down and brushed ash from a slab of square steel with a handle—an oven door.

  She carried it to the small sheltered area and used one edge to plow away ash and debris, clearing a space for their fire.

  “Come here for a second,” called Ross.

  Tess dropped the door and followed the sound of his voice through an arched opening. He stood in the middle of another empty room, adjacent to the flattened wing, staring at a hole in the foundation.

  “Cellar?”

  She joined him, gazing down at a staircase that descended into blackness. “Must be.”

  He probed the first step with his foot. “Seems stable enough.”

  “You’re not thinking of going down there?”

  “There could be food and water down there. Maybe matches.”

  Tess squatted and dug around in the wet ash until she found a shard of broken tile. She tossed it down and forward, and they heard a quiet splash.

  “Sounds like your tidal wave theory was right, Doctor.”

  “I wonder how deep the water is.”

  “One way to find out.”

  He moved to step down, and Tess grabbed his pant leg. “Ross, don’t!”

  He’d made an excellent point about what might be down there, but the idea of him lowering into that wet, black hole made her want to crawl right out of her skin. And what if he got hurt?

  “Let’s see if we can get the fire started first, okay? Then at least we can get some light down there.”

  Ross looked at her, and for the first time since the dislocation, his expression softened.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “We need to look for tinder.”

  Realizing she was still gripping his jeans, she uncurled her fingers and slipped her hands into the pockets of his jacket. One hand closed over something cold and oblong. She pulled the object out and looked at it—a clip for his weapon, heavy with bullets.

  “
I was never a Boy Scout, but I’m thinking this doesn’t hurt.”

  Ross reached for the clip, his fingers brushing hers.

  “Now all we need is kindling,” he said, glancing around. “Everything is so wet.”

  As he moved away, she felt something in the other pocket. She drew it out.

  A delicate white gold and emerald bracelet—her mother’s bracelet. Tess never took it off.

  As she stared at it, long-dormant memories wormed bony fingers around her heart.

  A tug at her arm. A whiskey-moistened murmur.

  Drunken fingers fumbling to fasten the bracelet around her wrist.

  A kiss, so wrenching and wrong she was almost sick.

  Tess folded her arms over her knotting stomach. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  No time for this now.

  As she reached to return the bracelet to Ross’s pocket, her trembling fingers let it slip to the ground. She gave a gasp that was out of proportion to the small accident, and Ross came to see what was wrong.

  He stooped and picked it up. “I found this on the sidewalk outside Seattle Psi. Must have come off when you left.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, taking it from him.

  She dropped it back into his pocket, and her hands fluttered to her sides. She let her gaze fall away as he continued to study her.

  Please don’t ask me.

  “Jesus, it’s cold.” Jake was back.

  She turned and walked through the archway to the other room and found him dumping an armload of sticks on the floor.

  “Did you figure out how we’re going to turn this into heat?”

  “We need something dry to get it started,” said Tess. “Do you have anything in your pockets?”

  Jake stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets, shaking his head. He froze for a second, digging deeper. “Wait—how about this?”

  He drew out the fistful of twenties Tess had given him, and she couldn’t help laughing.

  “Perfect,” said Ross, joining them.

  “So much for ordering beer and pizza later.”

  Ross reached for the money, but drew back quickly. “Hang on to it for a minute.”

  Tess scrutinized his form as he gathered a load of sticks. He looked solid enough, but in the heavily filtered light it was hard to be sure.