Echoes

by Marissa Lete

  When I finally calm down, I look over at the clock on the stove. It’s almost two in the morning. When had Alice left the note? She’d written eight hours. What if it had already been eight hours? What if we’re too late?

  “We need to go. Right now,” I tell Maverick.

  “She’ll be expecting us.”

  “I don’t care. My parents could die,” I reply.

  Maverick just looks at me, his yellow eyes filled with pain. I realize that he understands completely. Both of his parents are gone. Maybe not because of Alice, but still.

  “I’m sorry, I—” I start to say suddenly, but Maverick puts his finger to my lips.

  “I get it. Let’s go get them.”

  ✽✽✽✽✽

  We roll to a stop in the small clearing in the woods that Maverick had parked in the last time we were here. We get out and Maverick opens the trunk. He pulls out the handgun that he’d taught me how to use earlier and puts it in my hands.

  “Do not be afraid to use this. Especially on Alice,” he tells me firmly. Then he pulls out another, similar one for himself.

  The plan is to sneak in from a direction Alice won’t expect so we can find my parents and get them out. She might have all of the entrances blocked off, but we have to try our best not to get caught anyway. If she finds us, I don’t know what she will do.

  There’s a back door on the building, and we walk through the woods toward it. When we get there, surprisingly, it’s unlocked. Inside, it’s dark. Maverick’s hand finds mine, and we move through the hallways, deeper into the massive, terrible building. Eventually, we reach a door, and we look out through a small window into the main hallway. Bright fluorescent lights shine down on the bare, white linoleum floors. It’s empty.

  We silently go through the door, then start down the hallway. After about ten steps, the sound of static fills my ears, then Alice’s voice rings loud through the building. Maverick and I freeze.

  “I’m so glad you could make it. Just in the nick of time, too.”

  Maverick’s eyes flick around the hallway, and both of us spot the camera at the same time. We rush over to it, and Maverick jumps, ripping it off the wall. It falls to the ground and shatters.

  Alice is still talking over the intercom calmly. “I’m so grateful for your help, actually. I’ve never been able to study the parents of an anomaly before, and I’ve discovered some useful information about the causes of these strange occurrences.”

  Maverick drags me down the hallway and we enter a side room. He smashes the camera in here, too, before we get into its view.

  “I didn’t know that you were an anomaly at first, my dear Laura.” Chills run through my body at the sound of my name. “But when we took your blood, we realized that it wasn’t that of a normal person.”

  “She knows we’re here. I don’t know where all the cameras are. I don’t think we’ll be able to find your parents and slip past her,” Maverick whispers to me, urgent.

  I pull the gun off my hip, clutching it between my fingers angrily. “Then we’ll just have to find her.”

  Maverick reaches out, touches the side of my face with one hand. He rubs his thumb over my cheekbone, giving me a worried look. “Okay,” he tells me, “I think I know where her office is.”

  As we exit the room, she keeps talking over the speakers. “For a long time, we’ve been hitting a wall with our research. But you, Laura, are special. You’ve helped us tremendously, and because of you, we’ve finally had some breakthroughs.”

  Maverick reaches a solid white metal door. He holds his gun in both hands. “At the first sight of her, we shoot. Are you ready?”

  I nod, feeling a drop of sweat drip down my back. I’m ready to face Alice, yes. Ready to kill her? No.

  Maverick pushes the door open. We rush inside, guns pointed forward. The lights are off except for a small lamp that shines across the desk onto a rolling chair with its back turned to us. We step toward it, guns trained.

  “Guns? Now, that’s not very nice,” Alice’s haunting voice rings through the room.

  Maverick tenses, then fires his gun at the chair. At the same time, a black figure leaps through the shadows, crashing into him, and they both tumble onto the ground. I take a step back and a hand comes out of nowhere, knocking into my arm. My gun tumbles across the floor as hands grip my arms, then pull them together, handcuffing them behind my back.

  Maverick is in a similar situation. He struggles on the ground with his attacker, but soon a second figure appears out of the shadows. Both of them are covered in black clothing from head to toe. So that he can’t use his ability on them. They grip his arms, handcuff him. The commotion dies down, both of us trapped now. The chair in front of us has a bullet hole in the middle of it.

  The bullet must have missed her, though, because Alice spins around in it, smiling. Then the lights flash on, revealing three more men lined along the left wall. There’s no way we were ever going to escape this, even with our guns.

  “As I was saying before, I just want to thank you for coming,” Alice nods to us. She waves a hand in the air, a graceful flick of her wrist. “You can take him away now.”

  I watch in horror as the guards yank Maverick to his feet, then turn him away from me toward the door. His head whips around. “Laura! No!” he yells.

  “Maverick!” I scream back, struggling. Then another guard comes over to help hold me down.

  “Don’t touch her!” Maverick yells, and then the doors slam shut behind him. I turn my gaze on Alice, a fire of hate burning inside me.

  “What do you want from me?” I spit.

  Alice taps her perfectly manicured fingers on the desk. “That’s what I want to talk about.” She gestures to a chair in front of her desk, and the guards release their hold on me. I jerk away roughly. “Have a seat.”

  Chapter 32

  I sit. Not because Alice told me to, but because there are four men in the room that are bigger and stronger than me, and I suspect that even if I resisted, they’d have gotten me into the chair anyway.

  “I’m so glad you’ve decided to join me today,” she smiles, her eyes squinting up. She looks both old and young at the same time, with heavy blue eyes that don’t miss a thing. She’s terrifyingly beautiful.

  “What have you done with my parents?”

  She sits up straight in her chair, plucking a hair off the top of her gray pantsuit. “Don’t worry. They’re safe.”

  “Where?” I demand, leaning closer. I can’t slap my hands down on the desk like I want to, but I try to give Alice the same experience with a murderous gaze.

  “They’re being held downstairs,” she replies, unfazed.

  I didn’t expect her to answer so easily, so I pause, watching her movements carefully. She’s impossible to read.

  “But your parents aren’t what’s important right now. Right now I want to talk to you.”

  “What could you possibly want to talk to me about?”

  “I want your help,” she says simply, like it’s the obvious answer to the question. Then she stands up and walks a few paces along the wall behind her. She turns back to me, a hand on her hip. “Let me explain,” she says.

  I glance around the room at the men standing at attention. My chances of escape are slim. Probably impossible.

  “I’m sorry. Are they making you uncomfortable?” Alice asks, oddly genuine.

  I search her eyes, trying to figure out what she’s thinking.

  “Why don’t you guys let us have some privacy, okay?” Alice says to the guards. She waves her hand at them, “Go on.”

  They don’t need any more persuasion. Immediately, they all jump into action, exiting the room swiftly. I watch them go, taking in my gun still laying on the floor behind me. We’re alone now. It was dumb of her to make her only defense leave. I might not be able to take down any of them, but Alice can’t be much stronger than myself. Maybe this is my chance.

  Once the door is closed, Alice sits back down in her chair,
folding her hands over the desk. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, so I’ll just start from the beginning. I’ll give you my side of the story.” She pauses, looking me up and down. Then she tilts her head to the side. “Have you ever imagined living a life where you didn’t have to hear the noise of the past?”

  I clench my jaw. “How do you know about that?”

  Alice shakes her head, the corner of her mouth tilting up. “Oh, honey. I know about a lot of things.” Then her expression goes serious. “Like how your parents were convinced you were ill your whole life. Like how you can’t help but hear the sounds from the past, no matter where you are or what time it is. Like how you’ve never been able to live a normal life because of it.”

  I just stare at her, trying to hide the fact that her words are affecting me.

  “You see, Laura, you’re not the only one. There are hundreds of people just like you.”

  My curiosity gets the best of me and I blurt a question. “Who hear echoes of the past?”

  Alice smiles again, though it’s more of a sneer. “No, actually. In fact, you’re the only one with that specific ability. Which is why you’re special.” She puts her hands flat on the table. “But there are hundreds out there similar to you. Anomalies. People who are different, with unique abilities.”

  I picture the filing cabinet in Alice’s office, filled with names and descriptions of those anomalies.

  “Each of these abilities creates a problem, a danger to society. My work involves researching them. Looking for ways to stop them.”

  “So you lock them up here like lab rats so you can study them?” I snarl.

  Alice laughs, a light, terrible sound that makes me cringe. “Sometimes, yes. Sometimes we just let them go from this world.”

  I remember the words on the pages I’d read. Contained. Unresolved. And the third one: controlled. Did that mean she’d killed them?

  “The point of it all is that my work is imperative to the survival of humanity as we know it.”

  “Why would it be?”

  “These abilities, some of them are dangerous. Some of them hurt people. You probably already know this, but Maverick is capable of erasing memories.” She glances at me as she says the words, judging my reaction. I think I see a hint of surprise when I don’t respond. “When he was younger, he accidentally erased someone’s memories, causing permanent damage to his life and to his family.” I know this, too. I remember Maverick’s devastated expression when he told me. “It’s not just him,” she continues, “It’s all of them. All of the anomalies have the power to impact lives, to hurt people. They have to be stopped before they use their abilities against others.”

  I think about her words for a long moment. Sure, Maverick’s ability had hurt people accidentally. But he learned to control it eventually, and now the times he’d hurt others weren’t exactly done willingly. But what if someone else had Maverick’s ability? Someone like Alice? That could end pretty badly.

  But some of the files in the cabinet hadn’t seemed that bad. I picture one of them in my mind: someone who could move small objects without touching them. That doesn’t sound dangerous.

  “Not all of them,” I finally tell Alice.

  “That, my dear Laura, is where you’re wrong.”

  “The echoes don’t hurt anybody,” I fire back.

  She folds her arms across her chest. “Ah, but can you really say that your parents are unscathed by your peculiar tendency to hear the… echoes, did you call them?”

  I don’t respond.

  “Certainly it was devastating to them when they discovered that their only daughter was never going to be normal.” She narrows her eyes. “And are you, yourself, not hurt by the realization that you have to live with this burden, forever?”

  I think about her words. I’d spent seventeen years dealing with the echoes, trying to live a normal life despite them. Sure, I’d never felt completely normal, but I dealt with it. I even made friends this year. And then there are all those months I’d spent dating Maverick that I don’t remember. Surely I’d felt somewhat normal then. Right?

  “It doesn’t bother me,” I tell her.

  “Oh, so that’s why I found seven years of patient records on you, and your difficulty in living with the situation.”

  “That’s not fair. No one believed it was real,” I say.

  “But you can tell me, now, that you’re honestly fine with accepting the echoes as part of your life, forever?”

  It’s a tough question because part of me does think it would be nice to not hear them. Part of me wants it to be possible. But then I think about what the echoes have brought me. Fun memories of conversations long forgotten. Things to look back on, like mini time capsules only I can hear. And then there’s Maverick. What would have happened if I couldn’t hear the echoes? Would Maverick and I have ever ended up knowing each other again?

  I decide, then, that I’m fine with the echoes. They’re a part of me now, I can truly accept that. “Yes,” I say firmly. Finally.

  Alice gives me a long, thoughtful look. “So if I had some way to block the echoes, you can honestly say you wouldn’t take it?”

  “Do you?” I ask instantly. Instinctually.

  She smiles again. “That’s actually what I want your help with.”

  I blink at her. “How could I help you?”

  “You could stay here. Help us run tests. To learn more about the anomalies and how they work.”

  “Something tells me that you’re going to keep me here whether I agree to it or not.”

  Alice nods. “Sure, but it’s always better to have someone here willingly. That way, you can describe to us how you’re feeling instead of us trying to guess.”

  “And sit here while you kidnap people and hold them hostage, or just kill them? While you study them and destroy their lives? You say that you want to block these abilities to keep people out of danger, but you’ve been sitting here using Maverick’s ability for your own personal gain!” I explode.

  Alice slaps her hands down on the table, eyes cold and full of anger. “I’ve been using his ability for the greater good!”

  I shake my head at her. “You’re a hypocrite. And you know it.”

  Alice leans back in her chair, pinching the bridge of her nose like she’s got a headache. “So I guess you’re not going to help me, then?”

  I fix my gaze on her, putting as much rage as I can into my next three words. “No. Absolutely not.”

  Chapter 33

  Alice doesn’t waste any time trying to convince me otherwise. She lifts a phone from her desk, then presses a button on the keypad. When she speaks into it, the sound permeates the entire building. “We’ve got a Code 2. Please move into phase three.”

  “What was that for? What did you just do?” I ask, my eyes widening.

  “You won’t help me, so there will be consequences.”

  “What do you mean?” I stand from the chair, leaning close to Alice’s desk, knocking the desk lamp over in the process.

  “Sometimes our choices affect other people. People we love,” she sneers.

  My panic grows. What was she going to do? Kill my parents? Hurt Maverick? Because I wouldn’t help her, even though she was going to force me to anyway? I whip around, spotting the gun on the ground and rushing toward it. I’m not sure how it will help me while my hands are cuffed behind my back, but I do it anyway.

  Before I get there, the door swings open and Dave walks into the room. I fall to my knees in front of the gun, but Dave kicks it out of my reach. He grabs my arm, forcing me to stand up.

  “Take her downstairs,” Alice waves a hand to him, an expression of defeat caked onto her face.

  “Wait. No! Stop!” I yell, struggling to break free from Dave’s grip. “What did you do?”

  Alice just looks at her nails and sighs. Dave starts dragging me towards the door. I can’t go. I can’t let her hurt my family. Maverick.

  “I’ll do it, I’ll help you!” I screa
m, desperate.

  She meets my eyes, a cold emptiness in them. “Sometimes our choices can’t be reversed,” she says.

  “Please!” I screech. I feel hot tears burning behind my eyes. Alice waves us away, and Dave pulls me closer to the door. “Wait! Dave!” I yell, a thought coming to my mind. “She’s been lying to you!”

  Dave pauses, only for a tiny moment, but it’s enough for me to continue my assault of words.

  “You had a wife. A son. Alice took them away from you,” I tell him, breathless.

  He freezes, his grip on my arm loosening. He glances past me at Alice.

  Alice has a good poker face, though. “Come on, Dave. Are you seriously listening to her?”

  Dave’s gaze hardens, but before he can start pulling me to the door again, I slip away from him, backing up. Behind me, I feel for my pocket, reaching in and pulling out the photograph I’d taken from Alice’s office. I spin around, holding it in my cuffed hands out to him.

  I expect him to ignore it and continue dragging me out the door, but he plucks the photo from my fingers, turning it over in his hands. I watch his eyebrows burrow in confusion, then raise in shock. “Who are they?” he asks, holding the photo out to Alice.

  “Nobody!” she replies, but we all catch the hitch in her voice.

  “Where did you get this?” he asks me, serious.

  “She had it in a drawer in her office. I found it when we snuck in. Maverick said he erased their memories, and yours. Alice made him do it.” The words come out so fast I’m surprised he hears all of them.

  He closes his eyes for a second, clutching the photo in his hand. “My wife? My son?” His voice cracks.

  Alice moves around her desk, crosses the room, and grabs his arm. “Dave, I would never do something like that to you. I love you.”

  I raise my eyebrows. Love? Was Alice even capable of love? Was there something between her and Dave that I’d never picked up on? I’d thought he was just a bodyguard.

  Dave lets her hold his arm for a moment, but then he tears it away. Backs up. “Which is exactly why you would do this.”