The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  “How inconsiderate of it . . .”

  “Shut up,” she snapped. She planted her hands on her hips. “What do you want?”

  I took a deep breath and gripped the edge of the stool between my legs. “Mars . . . I need your help.”

  “Oh really?” She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing my face. “With what? Something dangerous?” She waved a hand, shutting down any response I might’ve given her before it could even form in my mind. “Who am I kidding; it’s you, so of course it’s dangerous.” She let her head fall back and groaned. “Oh my God, I’m so tired of this lab. I feel like a hamster running around on one of those stupid little wheels, going nowhere but not getting the hint. I need some adventure.” She looked at me. “I’m in.”

  I straightened a little, surprised at how easy it had been to get her help. “Really? Just like that?”

  Mari cocked her hip. “What? You think that just ’cause I spend all my time these days in a lab coat and sensible shoes means I can’t cut loose and get a little wild?” She shimmied her shoulders. “Like there’s no more room for spontaneity in my life?”

  “Um . . .” I leaned back on the stool, pretty sure she wasn’t actually looking for an answer from me and that anything I said would just annoy her.

  “Because there is. There’s room—right here, right now.”

  “OK . . .”

  She rubbed her hands together. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “Well, Mars . . .” I stood and leaned in to whisper into her ear. I couldn’t risk this reaching the other sensitive Nejeret ears in the room. “I need you to kill me,” I whispered, “just for a little while.”

  When I pulled away, her jade eyes were glittering like gemstones. “I knew it would be dangerous!” She clapped her hands together and hopped on the balls of her feet, making a faint squealing noise. “I have just the thing.”

  We gatewayed from Mari’s room into the unrelenting darkness of the tunnel just outside the secret-ish bunker she and her mom kept beneath Pike Place Market, in a forgotten portion of underground Seattle. Thanks to the anti-At Mari had laced through the walls surrounding the bunker, it was impossible for me to draw a gateway that led directly inside. At least the gateway was quick to create, since I could only include the barest details of the dark tunnel.

  Only after I felt the surge of otherworldly energy flowing through my sheut and into the drawing on the wall of Mari’s bedroom did I regret using my powers. Paranoia settled in, and I swore I could feel that all-too-familiar shift in my ba as the At and anti-At grew thicker and longer, feeding off that universal energy and rooting my connection to Isfet more deeply into my soul. Was it all in my head? Were gateways now off-limits now, too?

  From one moment to the next, Mari and I went from the perfectly comfortable room temperature of the Bainbridge house to chilly, damp, slightly stale air. Mari already had her phone out, and she turned on its built-in flashlight a millisecond after arriving in the tunnel. She headed straight for the huge old bank vault door and stuck her phone into her mouth as she got to work on the lock.

  I hugged myself, rubbing my arms as I waited for her a few steps back. The cold felt more intense than before. Or maybe it was the dread pooling in my belly that chilled me to the bone. I wasn’t looking forward to dying again. I especially wasn’t excited about the prospect of running into Isfet. But I had so many questions, and my mom was the only person—the only soul—I trusted who might have the answers.

  Something inside the vault door clanged, reverberating throughout the tunnel, and Mari spun the handle, pulling the door open with a grunt. “Come on in,” she said, waving me through with her free hand. “Light switch is on the right.”

  I crossed the curved threshold, fingers searching the edge of the wall to the right of the door. When I found the switch, I flipped it up. There was a sizzle of old wiring coming to life, followed by blinding light from overhead. I shielded my eyes while they readjusted from the darkness to the excessively bright light. “Maybe spring for some lower-wattage bulbs, Mars,” I murmured. “This is brutal.”

  She laughed. “It’s just that first one,” she said, pointing to the blue-tinged light directly overhead. “UV—I installed it right before the concert. I wasn’t sure what the humans’ reaction would be to the big revelation, and I wanted to make sure my mom and I wouldn’t get a vitamin D deficiency if all hell broke loose and we had to hunker down here for longer than a week or two.”

  Mari passed me, setting her oversized designer tote bag on the diner-esque kitchen table. “The storage rooms are stocked with enough food and supplies for six months,” she said. “Mom thought it was overkill, you know, since she can just pop in and out to get supplies whenever, but . . .” She shrugged. “You know me—I like to be prepared.”

  “Huh,” I said, frowning as I nodded to myself. Of course Mari had thought ahead, planning for the worst; she’d always been a planner, whereas I’d always been a doer. Usually without much forethought.

  “What would you have done?” she asked.

  “Hmmm . . . ?”

  “In the hell-breaking-loose scenario . . .” She reached into her bag, pulling out a small, brushed-steel medicine case and setting it on the table beside her bag, then reaching back inside to dig around some more.

  “Oh.” I turned around and reached through the circular vault doorway to pull the heavy steel and iron door shut. It made a deep gonging sound. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “Shocker.”

  I side-eyed Mari as I spun the handle to lock the door. “I wouldn’t run,” I told her. “And I wouldn’t hide.”

  Mari snorted a laugh, pulling a few more medical-looking things out of her bag and setting them on the table. “Oh, okay . . .”

  I crossed the entryway to the table, planting myself behind the chair nearest Mari and gripping the top rail with one hand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Mari inhaled and exhaled, then stopped rummaging and looked at me. “Running, hiding—isn’t that what you’ve been doing?” She raised one shoulder, then let it fall. “Don’t get me wrong—I totally get it. You died. You’re now literally the most famous person alive. Your whole world has been flipped upside down. Nobody expects you to bounce right back from that. But we also didn’t expect you to just give up.”

  I gawked. “Give up? I’m not giving up, I’m—” The words lodged in my throat.

  “What?” She faced me, placing a hand on her hip. “What are you doing, Kat? What are we doing? Why do you need me to induce your death? What good will you dying—even just for a little bit—do?” She inhaled and exhaled quickly, on a roll. “What happened to you?”

  “I—”

  “Because if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that part of you is hoping that once I kill you, I won’t be able to bring you back.”

  I closed my mouth, struck utterly dumb.

  Because I was afraid that maybe, just maybe, she was right. I hadn’t been lying this morning when I told Nik I wished he’d let me die. I set my jaw and shook my head. That didn’t mean I had a death wish now.

  “So,” Mari said, eyebrows raised expectantly. “What’s this really about? I’ll do it—I told you I would, and I’m not planning on going back on my word—but I need to know this isn’t just some sick form of assisted suicide. I need to know that there’s more to it.”

  I licked my lips, eyes searching hers. “Fair enough,” I finally said and swallowed roughly, settling on sharing a slightly amended version of the truth. “When I died, I went to Duat . . . and when I was there, I ran into my mom. Or my mom’s soul, I suppose.”

  Mari’s lips parted in surprise, eyes opening wide. “Your mom?” she mouthed.

  I nodded. “And she—she knew things. But the only way for me to talk to her more is to get back into Duat. And the only way for me to do that is to die.” I paused, just for a second. “This is about getting answers, Mars. That’s it, I swear.”

  She blinked, cocking her
head to the side, studying my face. “Answers about what’s going on at the school?”

  I nodded, taking a deep breath and holding it. I wanted information about the school, but also about so much more. Not that she needed to know about any of that.

  “Alright,” Mari said, attention lingering on me for a moment longer before returning to her bag. “Good enough for me.”

  I exhaled slowly, immensely relieved.

  “Go grab a half-dozen bags of ice from one of the freezers in the storage room,” she said, nodding to the steel door on the other side of the kitchen. In the few times I’d been in the bunker, I’d never seen either Mari or Mei use that door.

  I crossed the kitchen and opened the door, once again searching the interior wall for a light switch. When I found it and the bulbs hanging overhead illuminated the space, I whistled. “Damn . . .” Six months of food, water, and supplies for two people was a lot.

  Mari had it all arranged on four rows of industrial shelving units that stretched to the back of the room, maybe fifteen or twenty feet. The entire length of the wall on the left was taken up by chest freezers, humming away gently.

  “Jesus, Mars, how’d you get this all down here?” Before she could answer, I said, “Never mind.” Mei, of course. She could teleport. Duh.

  I walked into the room and opened the first freezer, but it was filled with neat little paper-wrapped packages of meat—beef tenderloins, rib eye steaks, and racks of lamb among the items on the top. The next one appeared to be filled entirely with seafood, the next ice cream and other frozen treats. Mari certainly hadn’t been planning on slumming it down here, that was for sure.

  The fourth and final freezer contained neatly stacked bags of ice. I grabbed two and carried them back into the kitchen. “What am I doing with these?” I asked Mari.

  “Bathtub,” she said, picking up the metal case and carrying it into the lone bedroom. “This way.”

  I followed her.

  Like the rest of the place, the bathroom was very 1950s, with a canary-yellow tub, a matching sink and toilet, and white linoleum decorated with delicate buttercups in a grid pattern.

  I made two more trips to the storeroom and back while Mari set up her little kill-Kat station on the bathroom counter—three syringes and three corresponding glass medicine bottles containing some liquid or another, as well as a digital thermometer. Two of the syringes had long-ass needles. I eyed them suspiciously as I dumped the bags of ice into the tub.

  Mari reached down to turn on the bathtub’s faucet, twisting only the knob for cold water, then turned away from the tub and shrugged out of her lab coat. She folded it neatly and set it on the counter on the other side of the sink.

  “What now?” I asked, staring at the arctic tub and shivering in anticipation.

  Mari leaned her butt against the counter, fingers gripping the edge on either side of her hips. “Strip down to your bra and undies and hop in. We have to get your core temperature down to protect your tissues and organs while you’re out.”

  “I was really afraid you were going to say that,” I said, still eyeing the water. I stripped down in under a minute and stood by the tub, staring at the bobbing ice chunks. This was going to suck major balls. I lifted my foot. “Three . . . two . . .”

  I stepped into the tub and sank into the ice water before I could talk myself out of it. “Holy shit,” I squeaked, teeth already chattering. “Holy . . . fucking . . . shit . . .”

  “That bad?”

  I gritted my teeth, holding the edge of the tub in a death grip. “Worse.”

  Mari moved closer to the tub, lowering herself to perch on the edge. She nudged my hand free and gently submerged it in the icy water. “I need as much of you under water as possible.”

  “You swear th—this isn’t just to—to torture me?” I sank deeper into the water, until only my face and kneecaps were exposed to the air.

  “No, dork. This is to keep you safe and decrease the chance that you’ll need much of a regenerative sleep afterward,” she said, raising her right hand. “Promise.”

  Mari stood and retrieved the thermometer from the counter, sticking it into my mouth when she returned. When it beeped, she reclaimed it, read the temp, and said, “A couple more minutes.”

  “And then?”

  Again, she stood, this time picking up the less-terrifying-looking syringe and one of the glass medicine bottles. She stuck the needle in through the rubber portion of the cap, withdrew some of the viscous liquid, and set the bottle back down. “Then I inject you with this, inducing cardiac arrest.” She tilted the syringe so it was needle side up and squirted out a minute amount of the lethal liquid. “It’s going to hurt,” she said as she approached the tub. “But it’ll be quick, and the ice should numb some of the pain.”

  “Oh,” I said, breaths halting. “S—sounds super f—fun.”

  Mari snorted. “Oh yeah, it’s a great time. All the cool kids are doing it these days.”

  I tried to laugh, but with the way my lungs kept seizing up, it sounded more like a cry.

  “Once you’re out, you’ll have ten minutes before I dose you with epinephrine.” She stuck the thermometer back into my mouth. “Any longer, and the risk that I won’t be able to resuscitate you will increase drastically.” The thermometer beeped, and she checked the reading. “Almost there.”

  “What if—if the epineph—ephrine doesn’t w—work?” A tear leaked from the corner of my eye. The pain of the cold was just this side of unbearable, and I was no stranger to pain. I’d been stabbed—multiple times on multiple occasions—and I’d broken more bones than I could count. This fucking hurt.

  “Another shot of epinephrine, then it’s out of the tub and I get to electrocute you with the defibrillator.” She was joking around, but the attempt at humor couldn’t mask the concern in her eyes.

  “Ha,” I said, playing along. “Don’t s—sound so ex—excited.” It was better than the alternative—acknowledging that I might not make it through this. I’d gone through with dozens of plans before with less probability of survival. This one just sounded worse because of the whole dying part.

  Mari replaced the thermometer in my mouth, and this time when it beeped, she pressed her lips into a grim smile. “It’s time.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  One second, I was gasping for breath in that freezing bathtub, fingers clawing at my chest; the next, I was floating above my shuddering body, watching the icy water lap against the tub’s walls. Mari sat on the edge of the tub, leaning over my body and holding my wrist in her hand as she checked for a pulse.

  A moment later, she stood and walked to the counter, where she picked up her phone. I watched her set a timer for ten minutes, then lean back against the counter and cross her arms over her chest, eyes on me. Or, rather, on my body.

  “Good luck,” she murmured.

  I supposed I should’ve felt something—sadness or worry or anything beyond this mild curiosity. But I felt disconnected from the scene below, able to see it all, to observe, but not to react. Not to understand. I recognized this feeling from the last time I’d died. It was as though this odd sense of disorientation was standard with the whole death gig.

  Only when I had to squint to see Mari did I realize I’d been drifting away from her all along, away from my body, floating off toward the lands of the dead.

  There was a sound like the popping of a bubble, and suddenly I was in Duat, watching Mari through a shimmering translucent film. The most painful, discordant sound I’d ever heard bombarded me. I smacked my hands over my ears, not that it would do much good given my incorporeal state. I didn’t actually have ears to cover.

  The song of ma’at wasn’t doing so hot, it seemed. It was supposed to be resilient, and I’d figured it would’ve recovered from the damage caused by our human-to-Nejeret transformations. Apparently not.

  Unless . . . could something else be throwing off the universal balance? From what I recalled of Anapa’s lesson in universal truth, t
he song of ma’at changed for the worse when a permanent withdrawal was made from the ocean of soul-energy. But we hadn’t made any more Nejerets—not since I’d transformed little Bobby. Could someone else have figured out the procedure?

  I peered around, studying the soul-energy streaming past me, glittering and glowing in every shade of the rainbow. It was still vibrant and wondrous, but it looked somehow different than it had the last time I’d died, duller and thinner than before. Almost like the soul-energy was sick. But how could that be?

  The soul-energy was an absolute, like At and anti-At; the only thing that could cause permanent change to it was the creation of a new immortal soul, the ba of a Nejeret. From the looks of it, hundreds—maybe thousands—of Nejerets would need to have been created in the past few weeks. Even with the transformation procedure, such a thing would be all but impossible.

  The song of ma’at was so changed for the worse that I was surprised I’d yet to have a visit from Anapa, warning me that our universe was once again at risk of being cut off from the Netjer home universe like a festering limb being amputated. Unless we’d already been cut off, and the song of ma’at had changed so much because our universe was slowly dying.

  I frowned. I didn’t trust Anapa, exactly, but I didn’t not trust him, either. I didn’t think he would’ve sentenced us to death without at least giving us the chance to defend ourselves. He’d proved to be compassionate in the past, so why would that have changed all of a sudden?

  It had to be something else . . .

  I looked around, like the sickly soul-energy might have the answers.

  My eyes widened. Actually, it might. That was what I’d come here for in the first place, after all. With that thought, focus returned, banishing the disorientation of death. How much time had I wasted just floating along, wondering about the ailing state of the universe? I had more dire matters to deal with.