Echoes

by Marissa Lete

  Her eyes widen. “Dave, you don’t really believe her, do you?”

  He glares at her with dark eyes. “You always get what you want. And you never care about anything that’s in your way.”

  “Dave—”

  “Don’t!” he roars, silencing her. “Don’t lie to me. Who are these people?” he demands, shaking the photo at her.

  “No one. It’s just a trick. They’re no one,” Alice says calmly, though I think I can see her hand trembling. She moves toward him, arms stretched out, but then Dave shoves her backward. She stumbles onto the ground, and then Dave raises a gun. Cocks it with his thumb.

  Alice freezes. I do, too.

  “Tell me. Now,” he says.

  Alice just shakes her head, speechless.

  Dave reaches into his pocket with his free hand and slides out a wallet. Then he pulls something out of it. A photo. “Why did I find a photo with the same exact people inside my wallet the other day? Did you forget to cover up that evidence, too?”

  We’ve caught her. Alice, the cocky, terrifying woman who created this mess, has finally had her crimes catch up to her. And now she’s laying on the floor, unable to find a good excuse. She glares at us, but there’s nothing else she can do.

  Dave closes his eyes, breathing hard. Then, opening them, he pulls the trigger.

  I watch in horror as Alice’s body jolts from the shock of the bullet going straight into her chest. Her eyes roll backward, and a moment later her head hits the ground.

  Two beats pass.

  Three.

  Four.

  Dave lowers the gun. I try not to look at Alice’s lifeless body on the ground.

  Dave doesn’t look, either. He crosses the room to me and grabs my cuffed hands. He unlocks them, freeing me. “Go,” he says. He slides something out of his pocket, his head hanging down. He hands it to me. It’s his identification card. “They’re downstairs. I’m not sure which rooms. There will be guards to stop you,” he tells me.

  I search for words to say—some way to express my gratitude—but there aren’t any. I nod, then cross the room, picking my gun up from the ground. I make sure it’s loaded and that the safety is off. Then I leave the room.

  Down the hall, I find the staircase Maverick and I had escaped from last time. At the bottom, I peek through the window, spotting a heavily armed guard across the hall. I close my eyes, realizing that the only way to get past him involves shooting this gun. It’s not a choice I want to have to make.

  Alice’s words echo through my mind. Sometimes our choices affect other people. People we love. Then, later: Sometimes our choices can’t be reversed.

  Taking a deep breath, I add my own words to the train. Sometimes we make choices because we love people.

  I fling the door open, holding the gun with both hands. pointed directly at the guard. When I round the corner, a guard is standing there, his gun aimed and ready. I don’t hesitate, I just pull the trigger, watching him grip his shoulder, leaning back in pain.

  A little further down, there’s another guard, but he doesn’t have his gun pointed at me. Instead, his hands are in the air, his eyes filled with fear.

  “Don’t shoot. Please,” he calls to me. I don’t lower my gun, walking briskly towards him. “He’s in that room,” he points at a door. “Your parents are in room seventeen. Please just let me go.”

  “Give me your weapons,” I reply. He responds immediately, pulling a handgun off his belt, then sliding the strap of a larger, scarier gun off his back. They drop to the floor. He puts his hands back up.

  “Go. Now.” I nod my head toward the door to the staircase across the hall. I follow his movements with the barrel of my gun as he walks slowly towards the door, opens it, then starts moving up the stairs. As soon as the door closes, he starts to run, taking them two at a time. When I’m sure he’s gone, I walk over to the door he told me Maverick was in.

  I hold Dave’s ID card up to the gray box next to the door and the light flashes green. I grab the handle and rip it open.

  Inside, Maverick is standing against the other wall. He peers at me, bright yellow eyes blinking behind a mask of fear.

  I take three breaths in and out, trying to steady myself. He’s okay. He’s okay.

  Then, finally, I step forward, ready to close the distance between us, to lose myself in his embrace, to feel all of the feelings I’d been too afraid to let myself feel before.

  But I stop, because Maverick flinches, backing into the corner of the room.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, putting my hands out to show him that I’m no threat.

  He blinks at me, and his next three words send me spiraling into a never-ending circle of cold, unstoppable horror.

  “Who are you?”

  Chapter 34

  I stand there, trembling.

  Alice has taken Maverick’s memories away.

  Alice has taken Maverick’s memories away.

  Alice. Has. Taken. Maverick’s. Memories. Away.

  My world crashes around me, burning flames and walls caving in on my heart.

  Alice must have figured out how to replicate his ability. And now she’s used it against him. Against me.

  Suddenly, and angrily, I wish that I had been the one holding the gun that had killed her.

  Squashing my rage, I turn my attention to Maverick, the terrified boy who has no idea who I am.

  “My name is Laura,” I tell him shakily. “I’m here to help you.”

  He blinks at me, doesn’t respond.

  “Do you know your name?” I ask him. I need to know what he knows. How much Alice has taken from him.

  He looks confused, but answers. “Maverick.”

  I sigh in relief. “Do you know where you are?”

  His blinks. “Alice’s laboratory.”

  “You remember Alice?”

  He nods but still looks wary. “She’s been forcing me to work for her.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “I don’t know. One second I was at my house, and now I’m here. I think I was drugged.”

  A little worse than drugged. “And where is your house?”

  “Spruce Lane. Up the mountain. Why are you asking me this?”

  He knows where his house is. He knows who he is. Does he know about everything else? “Alice kidnapped you to test her new invention. She found a way to replicate your ability.”

  I watch him, judging his reaction. He understands. Then his eyes widen. “You mean—”

  “She used it on you. She made you forget things.”

  “What things?” he asks, concern drawing lines across his forehead.

  “Me,” I tell him. “You don’t remember me at all, do you?” I ask.

  He stares at me for a long moment. Then he just shakes his head.

  I take a deep breath. Alice could have erased his entire memory, made him forget about her, causing him to be easily compliant to all of her demands. But instead, she seems to have only erased me from his mind. It’s a targeted, specific attack.

  She must have had someone with Maverick’s ability down here, ready to use it at a moment’s notice. Is that what she meant when she said that there would be consequences? Did my decision not to help her cause this to happen? Cause her to make Maverick forget about me?

  “Alright,” I finally say, burying my growing guilt deep down. “Here’s what you need to know: you used to know me. I’m on your side. I’ll explain the rest later, but right now, I need to find my parents. And then we need to get out of here.”

  He nods. Steps toward me hesitantly.

  “Follow me.”

  We race down the hallway and I scan the numbers on the doors, counting down until I get to seventeen. Shakily, I hold Dave’s card up to the detector, watching as the light turns green. I’m terrified to find out what she’s done to my parents.

  When I open the door, I spot them. Mom hunched over, tears streaked across her face. Dad next to her, his hand on her back. They look up at the sound
of us.

  I wait. They should smile now. They should cross the room and pull me into a hug. Tell me they’re so glad to see me, glad I’m safe. But they don’t. They just sit there, blinking in fear.

  Alice has taken their memories away, too.

  The room swirls around me, and I realize I can’t do this. I can’t take this. I have to get out. But when I turn around, Maverick is standing there, watching me, waiting for me to do something. Mom and Dad give me the same look.

  I can’t do this, but I have to.

  So I open my mouth. “Kara and Jeff. My name is Laura. I’m here to help you,” I tell them.

  Mom looks at me, hope in her eyes. “Where are we?”

  I try to come up with an explanation, but it’s a little trickier with my parents. Maverick had known about the anomalies, Alice, and his own power. When I told him that his memories had been erased, he understood because he knew what he was capable of. But my parents know nothing, not about me, not about Alice, not about any of it.

  “It doesn’t matter, what matters is that we get out,” I tell her. Then I look between the three of them. “I need you all to follow me closely and do exactly what I say, okay?”

  They all nod in unison.

  I start down the hallway, then move up the stairs. We walk in a line: me, Maverick, Mom, then Dad. My gun is in my hands, ready to fire at any moment. I just want to get us out of here. I’ll figure out what to do about the rest of this place later. I just need my parents and Maverick to be safe.

  When we get upstairs, no one is around. As if everyone decided to run after Alice got shot. Eventually, we have to pass by her office to get to the main doors. I glance inside to see if Dave is still in there.

  What I see spikes my adrenaline, and I veer into the room.

  Dave is laying on the ground, gasping for air. Alice’s body is gone. I rush to Dave, waves of shock coursing through me. He’s clutching his chest, blood soaking through his shirt.

  “Dave? Where’s Alice? What happened to you?” I ask, landing on my knees next to him.

  His eyes are wide, staring up but not seeing anything.

  I pat his face. “Dave. Please. Are you there?”

  Finally, he fixes his gaze on me. “Laura—” he chokes out.

  “What happened to you? Where’s Alice?” I ask, desperate.

  He struggles to breathe. “She’s alive,” he says, barely above a whisper. “I didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know what? How is she alive?” I shake him, trying to keep him with me.

  “She’s one of you,” he manages. “She’s an anomaly.”

  A flash of the file I’d pulled from her cabinet appears in my mind. Alice Wight, Anomaly ID#: 1. “What is her ability?” I ask, afraid I might already know the answer.

  “She… she…” Dave starts. He coughs up blood.

  And then I watch the life drain from his eyes.

  Behind us, laughter fills the air. I whip around, spotting Alice standing in the doorway. There’s a hole and dried blood on her shirt where she had been shot. But she seems perfectly fine, displaying no signs of pain.

  “What are you?” I demand.

  She just laughs, almost hysterical. I raise my gun at her, but her laughter only grows louder. “You thought you got the best of me. You thought you won with that little stunt you pulled on Dave, didn’t you?”

  She’s not afraid, not even when I cock the gun. She just shakes her head, staring at me with a combination of malice and pity.

  “Sweet thing. How does it feel to not be the only one with missing memories?” she taunts. Maverick and my parents are to my left, but I don’t look at them. I keep my gaze solely on Alice.

  I grip the gun tighter around my hands, finger curling around the trigger.

  “It’s too bad things had to end up this way. But I tried to give you the choice.”

  “Shut up!” I yell.

  Alice isn’t fazed. She just grins. “This is all your fault, Laura.” Then she starts to move, reaching for the door to the room.

  In that moment, I hear Grace’s voice, accusing me of the same exact thing. She blamed me for getting her in trouble, for ruining her happy little bubble she’d created with Andy. But that wasn’t my fault. If she had made better choices, perhaps none of those things would have happened. And now Alice is blaming me for Maverick and my parents' loss of memories. But I didn’t do anything. Alice was the one who decided to pull the stunt, and it’s not my fault that me not helping her made her angry enough to do it. Sure, Alice is just trying to get in my head, but both she and Grace have successfully made me feel guilty about something that is entirely out of my hands.

  And I’m sick of it.

  I pull the trigger.

  My shot hits Alice in the arm and she staggers back. Blood stains her skin, and her face tightens in pain. Then, almost instantaneously, it relaxes. I stare at her arm as the bleeding stops, the bullet hole shrinks, then closes up. In seconds.

  I gasp as Alice wipes the fresh blood off on her shirt. Her skin is smooth. Unscathed.

  Her lips curl into a snarl, and suddenly I understand.

  Alice can heal. That’s her ability. Alice, the woman claiming that anomalies are dangerous, is an anomaly herself. And not only that, but her ability is the least dangerous of all. In fact, it’s probably the most useful, if she can come back from a bullet wound that fast.

  Maybe she’s right about all anomalies being dangerous; even a harmless ability can be dangerous on the wrong person.

  “You’re going to pay for that,” Alice spits at me. Then she turns, rips the door open.

  I fire my gun at her as she moves, but I miss. Not that the bullet would stop her anyway.

  She steps out of the room, smiles at me for the slightest of seconds, then bolts down the hallway. I race after her, trying my best to keep up, but she’s fast. She reaches the end of the hallway several seconds before I do, then exits through a set of double doors that lead outside. Through the glass I see her turn back towards me, placing her hand on an electronic box just outside the door.

  Then two giant metal doors come out of the wall in front of me, slowly sliding closed in front of the glass doors, trapping me in the building. Frantically, I quicken my pace, realizing that I might have just enough time to slide between the doors before they fully close. But just before I get to them, I look over my shoulder.

  My parents. Maverick. What will happen to them if I leave them in here? What will happen to me if I’m stuck alone outside with Alice?

  My steps slow, then come to a stop.

  Alice flicks a little wave at me through the small gap between the doors, and then the metal slabs slam together.

  We’re trapped.

  Chapter 35

  A second later, a fire alarm screams through the building. Little red lights spin above the doors, flashing white every couple of seconds.

  I look back at Maverick and my parents, who are jogging down the hallway towards me. “We need to find a way out. Now.”

  We race back down the hallway and I throw doors open, looking into side rooms. The first two don’t have windows. The third does, but a metal panel has dropped down, preventing us from going through it. Alice must have this place sealed, airtight.

  We keep going anyway, but by the time we get to the bend of the L-shaped building, we can smell the smoke. Up ahead of us, an orange glow flashes through a window on one of the doors.

  Fire. The building is on fire. And there’s no way out.

  Maverick’s hand touches my shoulder. “There are more people in the building. Downstairs. More anomalies,” he tells me.

  I remember all of the doors I’d passed by. He’s right. There are more. Alice’s lab rats. People she kidnapped and had Maverick cover up. We can’t leave them in here. That is, if we can even find a way to escape at all. “Let’s go get them,” I reply.

  So we spin around and hurdle down the stairs again. When we get to the bottom, I rush to the first door I see, hold Da
ve’s ID to it, then rip it open. The inside is empty. I go to the next door, finding it empty as well.

  The third time’s a charm. When I open the door, a thin, dark-haired girl is standing in front of me, like she’s been waiting for someone to show up. I recognize her. It’s the girl from the file I opened in Alice’s office—Veronica.

  “Who are you?” she asks, looking over me, then peeking at Maverick and my parents, who are standing by the door to the staircase. A wave of fear rushes into me, more than I’d felt before. I remember something else from her file: ability to manipulate emotions.

  I try to stifle it. “I’m Laura. I’m here to get you out of here.”

  The fear coursing through my veins dulls, being replaced by relief. “Okay,” she replies.

  “I need to get everyone out,” I tell her, turning away from the door. “You can wait over there with them,” I point at Maverick, Mom, and Dad. She nods, then crosses the hallway.

  I go to the next door and inside is another girl, at least a few years younger than myself. I give her the spiel, and then I move on to the next.

  Door after door, I release the prisoners. I recognize another one, the boy named Gabe from another of Alice’s files. I remember his ability, that he can hear my thoughts, but I have no idea what any of the other anomalies are capable of. I don’t know if they really are dangerous, or if each and every one is just another person trying to live a normal life.

  Behind one door, there’s a young boy in a room that’s completely padded in a white rubber-like material. I don’t know why, but I just tell him the same thing I’ve told the rest, and then move on.

  They’re all fairly young. The oldest looks like he could be at most twenty, and the youngest is a girl somewhere around ten. After opening the very last door, I head back to the group standing by the staircase. All in all, there are thirteen of them, a relatively small group.

  “The building is sealed off. We’re going to have to break down a door or something,” I announce to the group, loud enough that they can hear me over the fire alarms. They all look back and forth at each other, wide-eyed. “And it’s on fire, so cover your mouths. Let’s try to be quick.”