Echo Boy

by Matt Haig

  Just disappear.

  Those words should have sounded scary, but they didn’t. In fact, dissolving into thin air seemed about the best idea imaginable. Daniel was gone now, to wherever he had been sold. I would never see him again. The one person left on this planet who cared about me, and technically he wasn’t even a person. So I was only really half calling Iago’s bluff when I walked towards him and said:

  ‘Go on then, do it. Pull the trigger.’

  ‘It’s not a trigger.’

  ‘Button, whatever, you pathetic little gun-geek. Pull it. Pull it, push it, turn it, twist it, whatever you have to do. Play soldiers. I’m the enemy in one of your sad little games. We’re on that muddy field in the First World War – do you even know that was a real war? Do it. Kill me. I am nothing already. I am here. A big empty nothing. Now, make a dream come true. What’s the matter with you?’

  He was angry. His lips thinned; he looked like a miniature version of his dad, and pressure seemed to build inside him. Like an apple exposed to intense heat, he looked ready to burst. ‘Shut up, Audrey!’

  I stepped closer. ‘Why don’t you make me?’

  ‘Shut up or I will . . . I will make you, you stupid dumb hippy freak.’

  ‘Stupid dumb hippy freak? Is that the best you can do? Wow, you’re really hardcore.’

  ‘I’ve killed people before!’

  ‘So what’s stopping you this time? Is it because I’m a girl? I’m a feminist. I demand an equal right to have my electrons turned into positrons. Come on, Iago, don’t wimp out.’

  His face was red with either despair or rage or a bit of both. ‘I’m not wimping out – I’m going to do it . . . I’m going to do it . . .’

  ‘Good. But know this: your dad is a murd—’

  Then someone else:

  ‘Enough!’

  Iago jumped at the sound of the voice, and turned to see his dad, standing solemn-faced in his black suit in the doorway.

  7

  ‘Dad!’ cried Iago.

  I only had a split-second, I knew that. And it was very risky. But while Iago’s face was turned towards Uncle Alex, I went for it. I went to grab the weapon from Iago’s hand, knowing that it could go off and kill me at any second.

  ‘Watch her!’ boomed Uncle Alex. ‘She’s going for the posi—’

  Too late. I had it. And I pointed it not at Iago, but straight at his father. The source of everything. But still, as I looked at the face that was so like my dad’s, it was hard to know anything for sure.

  ‘Now, don’t be a silly girl,’ he said, his smooth voice returning to its normal volume.

  ‘You killed my parents.’

  ‘You know that isn’t true, Audrey. You were there in the house on the day it happened. You have seen the footage. You know it was an Echo. Josephine, or whatever she was called.’

  ‘Alissa. You know she was called Alissa. Why did you just pretend to forget her name?’

  ‘I loved my brother. Why would I want to kill him?’

  ‘The book. All his work. The journalism. You hated him. You thought he was trying to attack you.’

  ‘He was trying to attack me!’ he blurted. ‘He was jealous of me.’

  ‘No. It’s the other way round. You were jealous of him.’

  Uncle Alex laughed then. ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Because he had principles. He had a life. He had a loving family. I don’t know – was it because he went to Oxford and you got kicked out of school?’

  He couldn’t contain his anger then. ‘You don’t know anything.’

  ‘Well, tell me, tell me, tell me . . .’

  He tried to calm the mood, and smiled the fakest of all his fake smiles. ‘Audrey, whatever paranoia you are experiencing right now, I want you to know that it is a symptom and nothing else.’

  ‘You sent an Echo into this room to kill me.’

  He raised his eyebrows as if I was a strange new product he wasn’t sure of. ‘You obviously have post-traumatic shock disorder – depression is a part of that, and so is paranoia and delusion. You really shouldn’t have taken the neuropads off. You were not ready . . . Now please, you know you won’t use that gun.’

  ‘I was delusional all right. I was delusional that day in Cloudville thinking you were my hero, my great protector. You only wanted me alive for the press conference. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s not true, Audrey. I promise you. I wouldn’t have risked my life for a bit of PR. What do you think I am?’

  ‘I’m getting a clearer idea every second.’

  Tears glazed his eyes. ‘Audrey, I am not a bad man. I am just someone who wants to make the world a better place.’

  ‘A better place.’

  I shifted my arm and aimed straight at the immersion pod in the corner of the room. I pressed my finger down hard on the aerogel button and the pod was instantly gone. Then I did the same thing with the bed and the chair I had been sitting on a short while before. A second later I was aiming the positron directly towards the Matisse painting. The one that had cost Uncle Alex billions of dollars. That was the first time he actually started to panic. He scratched his smooth stubbleless cheek.

  ‘Audrey, don’t be stupid. You would be destroying a timeless work of art loved by millions of people. I’ve already lost a Picasso. You wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘It should be in a public gallery,’ I said, ‘where those millions of people can see it.’

  ‘Just calm down, Audrey . . . Think . . .’

  Of course, I was never going to actually destroy a brilliant work of art. I was my mum’s daughter, after all. But I kept the gun aiming at it for a little while longer because it was a good way of getting Uncle to talk.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘If you do that, you will destroy the whole wall as well, and this house is old. It needs that wall for the ceiling not to fall on our heads.’

  At one point Iago stepped forward (what did he think he was going to do?), but he was quickly reprimanded by his father: ‘Stay back, Iago! You fool! Against the wall! And what were you doing with the gun? I’ve told you a million times . . .’

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ he said sulkily. ‘Audrey said there was a protestor in the room.’

  I felt a sudden twist of guilt in my gut. Yes, Iago was a violent little runt, but he was also a ten-year-old boy. Being a violent little runt kind of went with the territory.

  But Uncle Alex’s attention was already turned back towards me.

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘You locked me in here.’

  ‘For your safety . . . since those terrorists stormed the house.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You killed my parents. And you would have killed me sooner if you hadn’t wanted to use me as your little wounded show-pony to score points against Sempura.’

  ‘Alissa wasn’t even a Castle product. She was made by Sempura, from a Sempura prototype designed by a Sempura-funded designer . . .’

  ‘Rosella Márquez?’

  ‘I really don’t know why you keep going on about this Rosella.’

  So I told him. Given what has happened since, I realize this was a mistake, but at the time I just wanted answers. I needed the truth. ‘I know she made Daniel. And Alissa mentioned her too, at the media conference. And the moment I said her name, the conference stopped. You stopped it.’

  ‘Audrey, yes, Rosella Márquez is the name of the person who designed Daniel, but you really are joining dots that shouldn’t be joined. Do you realize that most Echo designers are from Spain or South America, and that most are women? Do you realize that Rosella is one of the most popular Spanish names?’ He glanced behind me, out of the window.

  ‘Daniel told me he knew Alissa.’

  ‘Daniel would have told you anything. He was clearly manipulating you, using you . . .’

  ‘Why would he have done that?’

  ‘He was malfunctioning.’

  ‘I thought Castle Echos didn’t malfunction. That’s what you told me.’

  I
needed to know. Without truth, no one can ever be free.

  ‘They don’t normally malfunction, Audrey. And I am deeply horrified that this one has, but the designer . . .’

  ‘Rosella Márquez.’

  ‘Yes, all right, Rosella Márquez, if her name is that important to you. She went too far. She worked too hard on him. She lost a child when she was young, and ever since then she has been trying to get over this fact by creating Echos that are as lifelike as possible. But on this one she obviously crossed a line.’

  Uncle Alex’s eyes kept flicking back to the window behind me. I looked round and saw the familiar black semicircle of a police car coming to a halt and hovering just above the magrail. A police robot was aiming something at me. Not a positron, but a laser gun that I was pretty sure could be equally fatal.

  Uncle Alex smiled, and sounded very much like his young son when he said: ‘The game’s over, Audrey.’

  I started to run as a laser was fired. It scorched the carpet where I had been standing only a moment before and left a perfectly circular hole, about a centimetre wide, in the window.

  ‘Get out of my way,’ I said to Uncle Alex.

  ‘Audrey, you do realize you can’t escape, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m going to find Daniel.’

  ‘Audrey, you can’t. He isn’t Daniel any more. He can’t even find himself after what we’ve done to him.’

  This time I said it like I meant it. ‘Get out of my way or I swear I will kill you!’

  He got out of the way, but I sensed he was right. It was very unlikely that I could escape the grounds, even with a gun in my hand. And if I did, well, what then? Uncle would surely disable all the leviboards, so I wouldn’t be able to reach the car. And besides, that was out the front of the house, and I was heading towards the back. Away from the police.

  8

  I knew I wasn’t Daniel.

  I knew that if I jumped from an upstairs window, it would probably be the last thing I ever did. So I had to go downstairs. And I ran fast down the marble staircase as I heard Uncle Alex behind me.

  ‘Echos! All Echos! Stop Audrey! Stop her! Don’t let her leave the house!’

  I had terminated an Echo before, but now, somehow, it felt different. When I shot the old man with the white beard as he ran out of the kitchen towards me, it felt more like murder. He disappeared, like a nightmare after sleep, and I ran through the space he had just been inhabiting, through the vast, now empty kitchen, with its transparent cupboards and glowing self-clean crockery.

  There was a steak sizzling in the frying pan. Synthetic tiger meat, no doubt, as that was Uncle Alex’s favourite. I kept running, and reached the conservatory as I heard other Echos behind me. I turned, and blasted two into non-existence as one of the intelligent potted plants in the conservatory leaned in towards me.

  ‘Open,’ I said to the conservatory door, but it didn’t respond. So I fired at it and made it disappear.

  Then I was out in the expansive sprawl of the garden, running across the multi-coloured grass Daniel had carried me over. Once past the bushes, I knew what was coming. And this time the four Echo hounds all appeared at once and chased me at double the speed I was able to run. I turned and transformed one into antimatter, then two more, before something whipped out at me and coiled tight around my right ankle, so that I fell forward onto the grass.

  I desperately tried to free my leg, but whatever it was held me tight. Before I had time to look, there was something else to deal with. The last of the Echo hounds leaped through the air and landed on top of me; it growled, its red eyes studying me to find a suitable place in which to sink its teeth.

  My own terrified face stared back at me, reflected and distorted in the Echo hound’s shining titanium chest plate. It started to sink down towards my face – it was going to bite my face! – as I fumbled with the positron. I managed to fire, and that last horrible machine-dog disappeared, but I had the problem of what was still coiling around my leg. It was squeezing hard now. Causing pain. Stopping blood flow. It was some kind of plant. My parents never kept intelligent plants. It was exactly the kind of messing-with-nature Dad couldn’t stand. And the trouble was, I couldn’t shoot at something on my leg without causing myself to dematerialize in the process.

  And of course, though I couldn’t see them yet, there would be more Echos approaching on the other side of the bushes. Maybe Uncle Alex had given them permission to kill me; maybe they had gone to the weapons room. Or maybe – more likely still – he had told them to stay back. After all, he knew that the deeper I headed into the garden, the more danger I faced. This garden was about one thing only. Security.

  I felt something delicately brush against the side of my cheek. Within a moment, whatever it was had coiled around my neck and was squeezing tight, just as it was with my leg.

  Unable to breathe, I concentrated hard.

  I had seen this plant before, in a holo-ad. It was a genetically modified giant blood iris, with long thin whip-like leaves. It was used for the purposes of home security. And there was the flower itself, leaning over me like a face. Purple petals, looking darker than normal in the fading light.

  I smelled something. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell; indeed, it was sweet. Words from that ad came back to me. Our plants use halothane. My panic intensified as I realized that the blood iris was emitting sleeping gas.

  Uncle Alex clearly didn’t want anyone who entered his garden to leave. Not conscious, anyway.

  I had four seconds. Maybe five. Then I would be out cold. There’s nothing like terror to help one focus, and I shot at the flower. The flower disappeared, but not the plant itself, so the leaf tightened around my leg and – of more immediate concern – my neck.

  The pressure built inside my head. I felt blood pumping inside my skull, like a desperate bull barging at a door, as I searched through the crowded flowerbed for the plant’s main stem. Eventually I found it, and fired: what looked like a fast ripple of air reached the plant and made it non-existent, the leaves taking a second or so to disappear altogether.

  Once free, I got to my feet again and ran, choking, into the centre of the vast lawn, away from the numerous plants reaching out towards me. I had no idea how I was going to escape. I imagined that Uncle Alex was watching me from his pod or security room, as content as a cat over a mouse stuck in a trap.

  He wanted me dead. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the case now – even if he hadn’t last Wednesday, when he killed my parents.

  I knew too much.

  I had come into contact with the truth, and it was sending me towards hell.

  ‘Mum,’ I said, delirious with panic as I ran towards the large brick wall at the southernmost edge of the garden. ‘Dad . . . help me . . . What should I do?’

  There is no silence like the silence of the dead. And I knew that the futile question would go unanswered.

  I had only the most simple of plans. To shoot at the wall, and the plants in the deep flowerbed in front of it. With the aid of a weapon I would turn every obstacle that stood in my way into nothing until I was free.

  So I kept on, as focused as a straight line on a blank page. I made it out through the gap in the wall I had created, and kept running. Down the street.

  I was out of the house now. Echos couldn’t legally follow me – not on their own, as it was against the law in this country.

  But even as I was thinking that, I saw a police car slowing on the magrail above me.

  ‘Stop and put down your weapon immediately!’

  Not a chance.

  I fired at the car. It disappeared, but the rail it was on didn’t. I was starting to realize that the stuff about positrons was another lie. Antimatter weapons were the most intelligent in the known universe. They shot the thing they were aiming at. They could distinguish between things. In a sense, that made the weapon more intelligent than me, as lines were blurring pretty fast. But there I was, still firing. A large chunk of rail disappeared. I kept running,
turning as I heard a blast behind me – the sound of a police car not stopping in time, flying off and crashing through posts that had been holding up parts of the remaining rail.

  I watched in panic as the car rebounded off the last post and ricocheted towards the street.

  Towards me.

  With only a whisker of a second to spare, I fired the positron. The car disappeared.

  I looked at the weapon, wondering why it had been slow to fire, and saw some words glowing red along its curved aerogel surface. POWER DRAINED. SHUTTING DOWN. I threw the weapon aside and sped on, feeling as powerless and scared as an ant caught in the shadow of a descending foot. But I saw the words HAMPSTEAD STATION on a rusted old metal sign, peeking out of a bush ahead of me. In a matter of seconds I was at the train station.

  I had never been on a magtrain before. Too dangerous. Too many fatal accidents. Surely Uncle Alex would assume I’d be getting a taxi. Also – Sempura controlled most of the lines and owned most of the European network. So this was as safe an escape as I could find. Still, I knew that nothing was too hard to find if you were Alex Castle. I had to stay scared. Only by staying scared would I stand a chance.

  The station was deserted except for a couple of everglow addicts with glowing throats. I wanted to disappear among crowds, but no crowds were there.

  ‘Come on, come on, come on, come on,’ I said, pleading with the rail network and time itself.

  The line hummed. A train appeared, out of nowhere.

  I hopped on and kept my head down. It was packed with dangerous-looking people. You know, people with that glint of madness in their faces. I was one of them now. I had just destroyed two police cars and put a hole in a major London magrail. I was as dangerous as they came. I could hide quite well among this crowd of addicts and drifters. The train was going to Euro East, but I got off at Paris, a whole twenty-one minutes and seventeen seconds after I had got on (I counted). I was tense for the whole slow journey, as it felt like a lifetime. Then I followed the largest crowd of people to another train, heading for Barcelona 2. I’d wanted to make it as difficult as possible for Uncle Alex to follow me – and hopefully I was now off his radar – but I was going to end up where I was going to end up.