Epitaphs (Echoes Book 2)

by Knite, Therin

  “In other words, you waste about six hours a day, every day, twiddling your thumbs and answering inane questions. Personally, I think your time could be better spent, and while I think you’re far from ready in the fitness realm to tackle cases like DuPont’s, I’m drafting you in anyway because I’m tired of watching your brain sit on the sidelines.”

  She adjusts the pins in her tight, braided bun and motions at the gym door. “Now get out of my sight. Your bloody nose is pissing me off.”

  I rise on unsteady legs, blinking as my vision wavers, and stagger off toward the exit. To get there, I have to pass my classmates, who grin and chuckle and mutter numerous jokes at my expense. I ignore them, the same way I ignored their kind during my single year of high school education. I made it through a hundred and twenty days as a prepubescent boy in the twelfth grade of a public school.

  If a bunch of dick-wad EDPA jocks think they can rattle me, they have another thing coming.

  As I’m hauling one of the heavy doors open, I hear Dynara exhale, and I feel, rather than see, her deadly index finger lock onto another sparring target. “You,” she says. “You’re next.”

  A skinny guy with a tiger-striped mohawk—who I think goes by the name of “Wicked Z”—blanches and begins to mutter desperate prayers. He shuffles to the mat stained with my blood, quaking from hair spikes to bare tan feet, and the last I see of him is a streak of black and orange as he runs in terror from Dynara’s opening charge.

  Another fun day at the EDPA Academy!

  * * *

  The EDPA training center is a full four floors in the upper third of the office, dedicated solely to beating newbies into shape and stuffing mountains’ worth of top-secret information into innocent minds. Once outside the main training gym, the searing flush of embarrassment drains from my limbs, and I slow to an easy amble down the quiet corridor. Most of my peers are in their mid-morning classes at this time, working diligently to learn the ropes before the end-of-year certification exams.

  I frequently lament how similar EDPA training is to the IBI Academy, with general and specialty subjects, academic and combat classes. This time last year I was there—I was in Jericho—deep in training to qualify for the CSI division. Now I’m doing it all over again for a slightly different occupation. Rinse and repeat.

  Not that I have much of a choice in the matter. I spent most of my young life aiming for the IBI because I thought my mother had been murdered by a man who got away. Turns out my six-year-old self was the true culprit all along.

  I killed her with a make-believe monster in my closet. A dream I brought to life.

  So the change of workplace was necessary. To make up for my mother’s death, I have to eschew the “regular” killers and focus instead on the ones that hunt with echoes.

  Like DuPont’s.

  I reach the elevator and take it down to the main infirmary, where a busy scene greets me. There was a rash of level two echoes overnight, all of them accidents created by unaware makers, and several Night teams suffered minor casualties while tracking down the makers in their dreams, preventing breaches. Breaks, sprains, low-degree burns, mild concussions, etc. Nothing like the bloody chaos that befell Day Team Four in the sandstorm dream.

  Intentional echoes, the ones made for a purpose—those are the dangerous ones.

  Surgeons and doctors rush by me as I hobble into the ward, and I seat myself in the non-emergency waiting area. To my surprise, a nurse appears not three minutes later and ushers me into an examination space. She scans me with a medical wand attached to her Ocom and shakes her head as an X-ray image of my broken nose appears on the tablet screen.

  “Again, Agent Adamend?” Yep. The entire infirmary crew knows about my nose woes.

  “Unfortunately.”

  The dark-skinned woman pats my shoulder. “No worries. Dr. Headley will be here in a few minutes to fix you up again.”

  A woman shrieks from a surgery theater down the hall, and the nurse, whose nametag reads Phyllis, cringes.

  “Is that Monica Wallis from Day Team Four?” I ask.

  She hesitates, chewing her lip, then relents. “I’m probably not supposed to tell you this, so don’t go running your mouth. But Agent Wallis is messed up. And I don’t mean physically. When she first woke up early this morning and realized her legs were gone…Gods Almighty, the way she screamed.

  “I mean, it’s understandable, the horror of losing limbs, but she’s had four panic attacks since five AM. We can’t get her to calm down. Both Dr. Headleys explained to her multiple times that she’d be receiving temp synthetics, that they’d already ordered her organic replacements, that it’ll be okay. In a few months’ time, she’ll be walking again on her own two legs. Literally. Legs grown from her DNA. Exact replicas of the ones she had before. But, even then, Wallis won’t stop crying, won’t stop screaming. That poor woman.”

  “What are they doing to her now? Installing the synthetic neural ports?” You have to be awake and coherent for that type of surgery. It’s not pleasant.

  “Yeah. She consented to the synthetics, right off the bat, but she’s still an emotional wreck.”

  “You got her set up for psych?”

  “Of course.” Phyllis tucks her Ocom into her shirt pocket. “Agent Bennett’s already been here and gone. Wallis will get the care she needs, physical and mental. But I do wonder if she won’t retire, in the end. That woman’s been through a lot in her days here. I’m afraid this may be the straw that breaks her back for good.”

  Another weak scream bounces off the walls.

  The nurse sighs. “Mind’s not something we can fix with nano-machines, you know? Such a pity.” Her head dips in a solemn nod, and she exits my examination area, closing the thin blue curtain behind her.

  I sit at the table for six minutes more, cloth still pressed to my ruined nose. Then, when I’m knee-deep in thought about the fate of Donovan and his team, a white-coat-wearing doctor storms past the curtain. The person is moving so quickly I miss glimpsing their face before they reach the medicine cabinet on the opposite wall, and I hold my tongue, too uncertain to address them. Because, from behind, Cyril looks exactly like her opposite-sex twin, Cyrus, and since they’re both Dr. Headley, mix-ups between the two are extremely common.

  I’m still unclear on why EDPA hired two doctors to replace the one traitorous Lana Carter. The last time I asked Dynara, she muttered something indistinct about “two-for-one pricing” and “the whole package.”

  The doctor turns around with an auto-syringe in hand, and as soon as I catch sight of her feminine facial features, I smile and greet her. “Hey, Cyril. How’s it hanging?”

  “The usual. Dreams coming to life, killing people. Fools doing fool things. Wimps wasting expensive medicine for their paper cuts.” Her Eastern European accent rolls heavily over her consonants. “And you! You with your nose breaking.” She programs the nano-machines inside the syringe using her Ocom and waltzes over to me. “When will you learn, boy? Defend yourself in combat! Don’t let your opponent whoop your ass a thousand times in a row.”

  “If only it was that easy.” I lie back on the examination bed and bare my neck.

  Cyril shakes her head, dark bangs falling into her eyes. She examines my face for a few seconds and then sets the syringe on the side table next to my bed. “Crooked,” she murmurs. And before I can stop her, she snatches the bloodied cloth, tosses it into a nearby bin, and grabs my broken nose with her bony hand. Her other hand grips my head, and as a shrill cry of panic breaks through my teeth, she wrenches my nose to the side. The misaligned segment snaps back into place.

  I let out a croaking moan and tear up, pain radiating inside my skull.

  “There,” she says, “now it’s straight.” She reclaims the auto-syringe and stabs my neck with it. A sharp sting followed by a flood of warmth marks the introduction of med-three nano-machines into my bloodstream. Cyril clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Heals faster when it’s straight. Give it t
hree hours or so. No pressure on it. No sports. No sparring.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Also, take these as needed.” She digs a small, sealed package of sedatives out of her coat pocket. “In case your nose is sore tonight when you try to sleep.”

  “You got it, Doc.” I stuff the packet into my own pocket, intending to add it to the growing collection in my nightstand at home.

  Cyril discards the auto-syringe into an unsanitary items box attached to the wall and discharges me from the infirmary via her tablet app. “It’s lunchtime, right? Go eat. You’re too skinny.” With a shoulder smack and a hand wave, she dismisses me from her care, and I head across the infirmary hall for the double-door exit.

  On the way there, I pass the theater where Wallis is having her ruined legs implanted with the nodes that will allow her to walk using synthetics for the next few months. Her screams have been reduced to gurgling at this point, and between indecipherable ramblings, I catch breathy words: help, gods, please, no more, stop, I can’t take it, no-no-no, please-please-please-please-please. She’s temporarily dazed and confused at best. At worst, she’s in the middle of a complete mental breakdown from which she will never recover. Either way, in her head, she’s still trapped in a nightmare.

  Shuddering, I continue on.

  One more theater down is Lana’s old space, yellow EVIDENCE tape barring the doors. No one has been in there since the forensics team finished sweeping the room. Until the case is officially closed the theater is considered evidence in an ongoing investigation. And given our current “progress,” it’ll be ongoing for a while yet. Two months of searching for Lana’s connections to the so-called “big bad” behind Brennian and we have nothing. Nada. Zip.

  The man whose very existence caused a young woman to kill herself in fear remains at large. A man who is supposedly interested in me.

  I brush my fingers against the yellow tape and recall a violent memory burned into my mind: Lana’s bloody hand, shot to pieces by Murrough, her glassy eyes staring at the ceiling, the sickly orange poison she pumped into her veins clinging to her cheeks—

  “Agent Adamend?”

  I start and whirl around to find Phyllis standing behind me, offering a pack of antiseptic wipes. “Thought you might want to clean your nose up before you run off to face the world again.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  She smiles. “Not a problem. Hope the rest of your day goes better.”

  “And I hope the same for Agent Wallis.”

  She throws a sympathetic glance at the surgery theater doors. “Me, too, son. Me, too.”

  Chapter Seven

  Eating in the EDPA cafeteria is an enlightening experience. Largely because the place is free of meaningless, elitist cliques who believe your choice between chicken and turkey defines your worth as a human being. Where the IBI lunchroom splits itself into tables based on department, the agents of EDPA prefer to sit with their friends and acquaintances. Personal relationships trump job titles in the echo world. And since I have very few personal relationships at my new place of employ, a meal in the EDPA cafeteria gives me the opportunity to pick a quiet spot and engage in private pursuits.

  I choose a light salad for my lunch and munch on lettuce while I pick up where I left off in my research on Saturday. My nose aches every time I crunch a leaf, but I pretend to ignore the pain and let my suspicions carry my attention away. On my Ocom is a list of prominent social circles and their respective members; for the past several weeks, I’ve been on the hunt for the roster of those killed at Club Valkyrie when Brennian went bonkers trying to eliminate Regina Williams.

  Thing is, no one at EDPA will give me the roster. Dynara outright ignores me whenever I ask, Lance claims it’s “out of his hands,” and even Frederick, the go-to guy for your every question, always has something super-duper important crop up the second “Club Valkyrie” leaves my lips. Originally, I wanted the list simply for my mental record of events, to put names to the faces I saw in the ice garden of nightmares, where Brennian froze countless club goers into perverse human statues. But the info wall I keep hitting with my hypothetical EDPA comrades has stoked my curiosity to irritating levels. Why hide the names of the deceased from me? Why refuse me the details of the case that brought me into EDPA’s keep?

  So I’ve been snooping around lately. Searching through the public announcements of upper-class groups, expecting to find obituaries that fit the Valkyrie incident’s timeframe. But I’ve come up with nothing. Not a single obit has crossed my radar. According to the outside world, no one died in Club Valkyrie that day. Which presents a startling contrast to my own experience of events.

  EDPA is hiding something about the incident. And I expect that, like most things, the origin of that secret belongs with Dynara. There’s something about the Brennian case she doesn’t want me to know.

  Here I am, working for her, and she still won’t tell me squat. That is downright—

  A woman with a hot pink pixie cut skitters up to my table, tray in hand, and flashes me a bright, shy smile. She’s no one I’ve met before, but her hair strikes me as familiar, and she’s young enough to be a new recruit fresh out of college or an entry-level job at another federal agency. I may have seen her in the orientation opening ceremony six weeks ago, another face in the crowd of eighty-two new trainees well on their way to brief, violent careers in EDPA’s dangerous halls. “Agent Adamend?” she says.

  “Yes?”

  “Agent Adem Adamend?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That is such a neat name.”

  I drop the lettuce leaf I was biting and smile the bitterest smile my lips can form without chewing on orange pith. My name is not neat. It’s an alliterative tease and a relic from a baby name fad that fizzled out more than two decades ago. If my mother hadn’t named me to mimic her own preferred name (Ana Adamend, short for Tatiana), I would have changed it years ago, due to the ridiculous number of You’re so adamant, Adem Adamend! jokes people tend to toss at my face like rotten tomatoes.

  Gritting my teeth, I reply, “You think so?”

  “I sure do.” She shifts weight from one foot to the other, fidgety and restless. Though I can’t imagine why this woman would be intimidated by my mid-height, low-weight presence. I’m not towering, terrifying Murrough, that’s for sure. “And I think your brain is neat, too.”

  “My…brain?” That’s a new one.

  “Yeah, the guys in my coordinator basics class say you’ve memorized all the textbooks. For every EDPA specialty. And the history texts, too. And the documentation on emergency procedures for all job protocols.” She’s basically bouncing at this point. “Is it true? Because if it is, that is awesome. I have a thing for cool memory tricks—it’s kind of a hobby of mine, figuring out the best ways to memorize things—but I’ve never met somebody with a memory of that caliber. That’s incredible.” She pauses to take a breath and almost squeals in delight. “So, is it true?”

  The temptation to lie is strong, as I really don’t need a hyperactive sidekick hanging around and asking me to show off my mental acuity. (I get enough flack for doing that by my own will on my own time.) But I get the sense that this woman has heard more than enough about my “prowess” to know I’d be lying if I didn’t own up to at least some of the spokes on the rumor wheel, and I foresee her sitting at the table and badgering me for the next half an hour if I don’t appease her desire to know the truth. So I respond, “It’s true for writing. I can memorize pretty much anything if it’s written down.”

  No, I can memorize anything and everything, regardless of format.

  But pixie cut doesn’t need the extra fuel for her excitement.

  She stops fidgeting when I answer, and her cotton candy blue eyes grow round and wide. “Ah, I see. So you memorized all the words in the texts? But not the pictures or diagrams?”

  “Correct.”

  “That must be a pretty handy skill.”

  “It is, yes.”


  “And you’ve literally been through every textbook at EDPA already? In six weeks?”

  “Yep. All two hundred twenty-eight.”

  She opens her mouth to keep egging me on, but something in my phrasing stops her. She blinks at me and cocks her head to the side, confusion creeping into her expression. “Oh, but…”

  “But what?”

  “There are two hundred twenty-nine.”

  “Huh? No, the list of books I received had—”

  “Adem, there you are!” Chai Bennett slides into the bench on the opposite side of my table, and I quickly exit my research files before tearing my gaze from pixie cut. Chai beams another toothy beacon at me that speaks of the abominable psych session to come, and the urge to abandon my food and sprint for the door surges through my veins. But I hold myself in place, return her greeting smile, as she scans me for clues to unlocking my multitude of mental and emotional disorders.

  Pixie cut stares at Chai for a minute, trying to place her face, and when the realization hits her, she gasps, lips flapping like a fish, and scuttles away to a table of modders with similar haircuts and colors. Chai’s reputation precedes her by about the width of a continent, and no one (who doesn’t want their darkest secrets torn from their guts) stands in her presence uninvited for more than six-point-two seconds.

  “Morning, Chai.” I shove a large bite of salad into my mouth, mulling over pixie cut’s assertion on the books. I didn’t miss one. I ran through the list multiple times. The list Frederick sent me on my first day, links to all the ebook files included. A list Frederick must have gotten from someone somewhere at sometime that could potentially have been amended for some reason. Hm.

  “Morning,” Chai replies. “See Dynara nailed you again.”

  “Sure did.”

  “Is the lack of progress stressing you out?”