Our Last Echoes

by Kate Alice Marshall

  “Liam and her?” Lily said when she was gone. She scrunched up her nose. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Don’t ask me, I’m new here,” I said. “I’m going to change my clothes really quick and I’ll meet you at the car.”

  “Better not be late again. We won’t get lucky twice,” she told me. I gave her a mock-salute, forcing every bit of false cheer into it, and she headed down the hall.

  I quickly gathered up the documents and stuffed them between the mattress and the box spring. As hiding places went, it was a bit cliché, but it would do in a pinch.

  I bolted to my own room to quickly change. I didn’t have time to shower, and my skin felt gritty, but there was nothing for it. At least I could pull on fresh clothes. I also hadn’t slept, unless you counted being unconscious for a couple hours, and my body was starting to catch up with that fact. Today was going to be brutal.

  I skidded into the kitchen to discover Lily ready to go, boots on and travel mug in hand, but Kenny was still snoring on the couch.

  “Uh—are we going to be late?” I asked tentatively. Fifteen minutes to the hour of doom.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Lily said. She walked to the foot of the couch, took a deep breath, and shouted, “KENNETH!”

  Kenny bolted upright, somehow managed to catch his phone, and started yanking on his boots.

  “Thirty seconds,” Lily told him, and headed for the door. She gestured for me to follow her. By the time we reached the porch, Kenny was right behind us, even if he was hopping on one foot while he tugged the other boot on.

  I was glad it wasn’t a long ride up the hill to the LARC, because the whole time my leg was bouncing, and I chewed on my lip. Lily and Kenny were so normal. They had no idea what was going on, and that felt more alien than the place in the mist.

  We caught up to Liam and Abby, who were sitting in the Jeep, talking. I wondered if Abby was catching him up on what we’d seen, and then realized that of course she was—I was the one who kept secrets. Liam caught my eye and waved. I could tell just by that glance that he felt the same sense of dislocation I did.

  I got out of the car quickly, thinking I would go walk with Abby and Liam, but they split off as soon as they were inside the door, heading for Dr. Kapoor’s office while the rest of us were meant to go gather, as was customary, in the break room. It would have been weird to try to follow, but I chewed my lip until it hurt, wishing we could stick together.

  Dr. Hardcastle was already in the break room. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck last night—not too far off from the truth—but he looked immaculate. You’d never know he’d been up in the middle of the night.

  “Good morning, everyone,” he said cheerfully. He had a very particular brand of male authority: polished, a kind of folksiness that only underscored that he was the one in charge. “Dr. Kapoor will be here in a moment, but I wanted to take the opportunity to catch up. Everyone was so busy yesterday, I feel like we hardly saw each other. Sophie.”

  I jerked, my cheeks flushing as he turned his gaze on me. “Sophia,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I go by Sophia,” I told him.

  “Right,” he said. I searched his face for some hint that it hadn’t just been a mistake. I went by Sophie when I was here as a child—did he know? But if he did, he didn’t let it slip in his expression. “You’ve been doing good work. I admit I’ve been very curious about you.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  He smiled. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself? Since I didn’t have the advantage of a long correspondence to get to know you, the way Vanya did.”

  All the careful lies I’d practiced about Sophia Hayes, lover of birds and northern climes, fled. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  Why did he affect me this way? “No,” I stammered. “It’s just—”

  “Everyone here? Good,” Dr. Kapoor said, striding in. Dr. Hardcastle half turned with a frown.

  “Ms. Hayes was just going to tell us a bit about herself,” he said.

  “Another time,” she said briskly. “The water’s going to be foul midmorning, so we shouldn’t dawdle on the crossing. Ms. Clark and Mr. Lee will be on Belaya Skala, Ms. Hayes in the specimen room. Dr. Hardcastle and I will be handling some administrative matters here.”

  I couldn’t stop the muffled squawk of protest that came out of my mouth. Dr. Kapoor gave me a measured look. “Yes, Ms. Hayes? Do you object to your task?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. “I came here to learn, not declutter. I barely got to watch you work yesterday. And no offense to Liam, but I didn’t come here to hang out with him either.”

  “She came hundreds of miles and, by God, she wants to count some birds,” Lily said, obviously amused. “She can tag along with Kenny and me. We’ll make sure she doesn’t count a bunch of pebbles as chicks and bump our babies off the endangered species list.”

  Dr. Kapoor hadn’t spoken. Her steady gaze made the hair on the back of my neck prickle. Just strict? Or is there another reason you make me uneasy?

  “Very well,” she said. “Get your gear together, Ms. Hayes.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I’d expected to get chewed out, but then it occurred to me that letting me onto Belaya Skala might not be an act of consideration and charity, given what lurked there.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me. Moriarty got out last night, and I need to check on his well-being,” she said, and turned away. I felt a stab of guilt. After Moriarty had helped me, I hadn’t checked on him to see if he got back all right. I didn’t know how he’d gotten into that place at all, let alone returned.

  “Let’s head out. We’re playing catch-up from yesterday,” Lily said. She and Kenny started bustling about to gather up supplies. Dr. Hardcastle gave us an officious nod before wandering off to parts unknown.

  We walked down to the beach together. Lily and Kenny kept up a sort of slow-motion conversation about nothing in particular. We’d just secured the last of the gear when Liam and Abby appeared, jogging across the beach.

  “Wait up,” Liam called. Lily straightened, a frown ghosting across her features. She was the hard target here, I knew. Kenny would go with whatever we said.

  “What’s up?” she asked, addressing Liam but looking at Abby with a jaundiced eye.

  “Abby and I are going to tag along,” Liam said. “I checked it out with Dr. Kapoor, she said it’s all right.” He wasn’t nearly as good a liar as I was. His throat kind of wobbled when he spoke, and he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Abby clearly had the same opinion of his skills, but she was working gamely to keep it off her face.

  “Uh. Really?” Lily asked. “Why exactly?”

  “Because . . .” Liam flushed a little. “I invited her. She wanted to see the island again, and I promised I’d show her. Like . . .”

  “A date?” Lily said.

  Abby, to her credit, looked only briefly bemused before carefully constructing an expression of faint embarrassment, complete with a little shy smile. “Shy” suited her about as well as lying suited Liam, but most people, I knew, see what they expect to.

  “I thought that you and—” Kenny started, his thumb starting to point in my direction, but Lily stepped on his foot.

  “Are you sure you have permission?” she asked.

  I laughed. “I’ve been here for two days and I know no one in their right mind would piss off Dr. Kapoor for the chance to show a girl some birds and rocks,” I said. “And Liam’s no rebel.”

  Here’s the funny thing about lying: the substance of the lie often doesn’t matter nearly as much as the conviction. So ignore the fact that Liam Kapoor was out here in the first place for breaking rules—breaking laws, in fact. I sounded sure, and more than that I made it sound like anyone who disagreed was
n’t in on it. And people will do just about anything to make you think they’re “in,” because being “out” scares the crap out of us.

  “Fine,” Lily said. “Just don’t flirt in front of me. I’m entirely too cynical for teenage love.”

  “Aren’t you, like, twenty-three?” Kenny asked.

  “Yes, but I tested out of my teenage years and went straight to middle age,” Lily replied.

  I reminded myself that this did not make me jealous or upset at all, and got into the boat, busying myself in the front so I didn’t have to watch Liam help Abby in. They sat together on the back bench as we skidded across the water and past the jagged bridge of rock toward the headland. The tide was low, baring masses of barnacles like tumors on the rocks. At low tide you might be able to inch your way along the base of the rocks to Belaya Skala, but one slip and those barnacles would slice you to ribbons before you plunged into the cold, rough water. Kenny kept the boat well clear of them.

  When we reached land, Liam held out a hand to help Abby out, but she hopped to the shore herself without even glancing at him.

  We stole a moment to ourselves while Lily and Kenny fiddled with the gear that was too expensive for the grubby hands of mere interns. “Okay. We’re here,” I said. “Now what?”

  Abby didn’t answer. She was looking out across the island, as if searching for something.

  “Abby?” I said. She jerked.

  “Sorry,” she said. She bit her lip. “The bunker. We need to see the bunker. On the video, Ashford . . .” She stopped. Took a sharp breath. Then pressed on. “Ashford said that the military brought something there to study it. Right? So maybe there are records down there.”

  “Or the Six-Wing is down there, getting ready to eat us,” Liam said.

  “That’s a risk we’re just going to have to take,” Abby replied, tone flat.

  “Hey, intern. Time to earn your keep,” Lily called. I turned reluctantly.

  “We’ll be fine. Just gathering intel,” Abby said.

  “Be careful,” I said. Because that look in her eye wasn’t a keen on self-preservation kind of look.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll look after mop top,” she said, and ruffled Liam’s hair. He ducked out of reach.

  “We’re going to go for a walk,” Liam said, covering his reaction with a wave.

  “Have fun canoodling,” Kenny called back.

  They headed up the hill together. Abby glanced back and gave me a wave that was one part charade and one part reassurance. She had this handled, that wave said.

  I wished I believed her. But I could see the hurt and uncertainty roiling behind her eyes, and I knew that however confident the Abby of yesterday had been, today was different.

  * * *

  Lily trusted me only marginally more than Dr. Kapoor did, but Kenny convinced her to let me man the massive binoculars. It was actually kind of fun, if I ignored the anxiety gnawing its way through my small intestine. The chicks liked to clump up into indistinct masses like wadded-up cotton balls. I had to check and double-check that I’d counted all the eyes, beaks, and black legs properly, and more than once I did almost count a pebble.

  “So is this all you do?” I ask. “Count birds?”

  “When they’re a little bit older, the parents get less testy and we start being able to go in to do some more direct observations, tag them, that sort of thing,” Kenny said.

  “Tag them?”

  “ID tags, mostly, but we’re currently trying to solve the mystery of their migration pattern,” Kenny said. “We’ve got these little GPS doohickeys we’ve been attaching for a couple years, but the failure rate’s pretty high.”

  “How high?”

  “One hundred percent,” Lily said blandly.

  “So you don’t know where they migrate to?” I asked, finding myself getting kind of into the question, despite my previous interest in birds being limited to avoiding getting pooped on.

  “Sort of?” Was Lily’s answer. “They’ve been observed down south—South America, Chile mostly, and South Africa. But only individually. Which could be because there aren’t many of them, or could be because they’re gathering somewhere else we haven’t found yet.”

  “And you do the bird calls with Hardcastle,” I said casually.

  “Yeah, though honestly, I’m not convinced of the value,” Lily replied. “It’s not a funded project, just his pet thing. Him and Kapoor. I’ve heard them play the tapes after hours sometimes.” She kept talking, but I was listening to something else entirely.

  Music. It wasn’t singing, not precisely. More like humming that might break into song at any moment. Almost words, but almost tuneless enough to dismiss as the hum of some machine.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  “Oh, the music?” Kenny asked. “Kinda freaky, but it’s just the wind in the rocks.”

  “That’s not wind,” I said. “Wind whistles. It doesn’t hum.”

  “Careful,” Lily warned. “This far out from civilization, it’s really easy to scare yourself. People have had nervous breakdowns working at the LARC, and it’s not entirely Dr. Kapoor that causes them. This guy Rivers, he—”

  “Can you try Liam on the radio?” I asked, worry squirming through me. I shouldn’t have let them go off without me.

  Lily hesitated. “Look, if there is something going on between you and Liam and Abby, I don’t want to get into the middle of it.”

  “It’s not that. I swear,” I said. “I’m just worried about them. Please.”

  She stared hard at me, analyzing my face. The trouble with lying all the time is that when you’re telling the truth, you still have to fake it, because you’re so used to training your expression into something other than what you feel. Those are the moments that trip me up. But she grabbed the yellow plastic walkie-talkie from her belt.

  “Liam, this is Lily. Just checking in. Over.” Silence. She frowned. “Liam, stop making out and answer, over.”

  More silence.

  “They’re probably just dicking around,” she muttered. “Liam, answer the damn radio.”

  And then—a burst of sound. Static, a metallic rattle, and a swell of that not-quite-song, and then an electronic squeal and silence. We all stared at the radio.

  I started sprinting up the hill.

  “Wait! Where are you going?” Lily called.

  “I’m just going to go check on them. You stay here,” I hollered back, hoping she’d follow my advice. I glanced over my shoulder long enough to see the two of them looking at each other like they were trying to decide which would get them in more trouble if they abandoned it—the equipment or the intern. I didn’t wait for them to decide.

  But then Lily puffed uphill behind me. “Hold up,” she said.

  “You should go back to work. I’ll find them,” I said.

  “If something’s wrong, I should help,” Lily said. “I have first aid training, if anyone’s hurt.” The way she said it sounded more like if anyone’s done something stupid.

  There was no reasonable way to put her off. “They were going to the bunker,” I said.

  “The bunker? It’s welded shut,” she said. “To keep people from blundering in and getting tetanus or bubonic plague or something.” Her tone suggested that “people” absolutely included idiotic lovestruck teenagers. She sighed. “Let’s go, then.”

  I let her lead the way. She was in much better shape than me, with a runner’s quads and sure steps. The exertion made me pant, so out of breath my vision seemed to shimmer.

  “I thought you said it was welded shut,” I said as we came into view of the bunker. The door hung wide open. The music, I realized, had stopped abruptly as we came into view. The first staccato thrill of apprehension tapped its way down my spine.

  “There’s no way they went in there,” Lily said. “I swear it was welded shu
t.”

  “It’s not shut anymore,” I said. “And look.” There was a muddy footprint with a waffle tread on the concrete pad in front of the door.

  “Shit,” Lily said. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Liam! Abby!”

  The only reply was the dull plink of water in the dim interior.

  Lily swore again and grabbed her radio. “Kenny, they’re in the bunker. I’m going to go down there to check it out.” She looked at me. “The intern’s coming back your way.”

  “I’m coming with you,” I said. She took her thumb off the button. We squared up with glares and tight jaws. She was treating me like a child, but she was the one stumbling into things she didn’t understand. My anger was a hot coal and I clenched my hands tight around it, savoring the burn. “You’re not my boss and you’re not my parent. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

  “I outrank you or whatever,” Lily said. Twenty-three wasn’t much older than eighteen, though. We glared at each other, and Lily was the one who broke. “Update. Intern’s coming with me,” Lily said into the radio. “If you don’t hear from us in ten minutes, radio the LARC for some help. Over.” She cast me one last glare. “Stay close and stay behind me. If a wall collapsed on them or something, it might not be safe for us either.”

  I didn’t tell her that a collapsed wall was the least of our worries.

  She hadn’t seemed to notice that Kenny never replied. I let her take the lead. She unclipped a flashlight from her well-stocked belt as she did. All the LARC employees carried them, just in case the mist rolled in unexpectedly. It was easier to find each other when you had beacons on hand. I hadn’t brought mine, though. It was in one of the dry bags on the beach. Stupid.

  Lily swept the light over the interior cautiously. Concrete, and lots of it, covered in water stains and black mold. The passage led straight back with doors to either side. The end of the passage was heaped with junk. The door to the right was ajar but couldn’t be opened any further. Rusted hinges and a pile of detritus on the other side kept it too narrow for even a kid to squeeze through. The door on the left, though, was off its hinges, lying on the damp floor.