Echoes (US Edition)

by Laura Tisdall

‘Nice to meet you too, Gilbert,’ he says softly, shaking Warden’s still outstretched hand. Unexpected disappointment seeps through Mallory. Roger doesn’t even ask where she’s been, just holds the door open for them. She probably looks terrible, too. She’s dirty and tired and her eyes are caked in makeup, but he doesn’t even ask, though she sees him taking it all in, sees how it hits him. And she knows what he’ll be thinking, too – thinking how Jeanie always used to wear makeup and Mallory never does, so why is she now? And she’s still wearing Jeanie’s jacket, and she looks so much like her anyway and it must be hurting him… But he doesn’t say any of that, does he? And something about that stings. She yanks her keys out the door and walks past him into the living room, anger flaring in place of her surprise.

  What was the damn point in him staying up then?

  Warden follows her, Roger shutting the door behind them. He should have asked and, in her tiredness, it makes Mallory suddenly so mad that she turns and glares at him so hard he seems to shrink back.

  ‘My room’s upstairs,’ she tells Warden, making it very clear that he should go.

  ‘Okay… right,’ he says, glancing from Mallory to her father, clearly not understanding what’s going on. She hears him cross the room, suitcase clunking into the coffee table. ‘Goodnight, sir,’ he adds, feet creaking on the stairs. She waits a moment longer.

  I’m sixteen, she thinks at Roger, still wanting him to act, and not, at the same time. But she waits, daring him on, grasping… Sixteen years old and there’s a boy you’ve never met going up to my room…

  But the spark is gone, only ever a shadow of someone she remembered when she saw it and that she latched onto because of all the stressful and unnerving things that have happened that evening. That person isn’t there any more. She knows that. She knows it and she shouldn’t have… Roger drops his gaze to the floor and it hurts in a way she shouldn’t let it be able to by now.

  ‘Goodnight,’ he says. ‘Glad you’re home safe.’

  ‘Goodnight, Roger.’ She heads for the stairs. She’s just tired and him waiting up has set her off kilter, set her thinking things there’s no point thinking. She can feel him watching her again as she hurries after Warden.

  Let him think what he thinks, she tells herself. And let him feel real bad about it.

  Warden is waiting on the landing, clearly unsure which door to open.

  ‘Here,’ Mallory says, unlocking her bedroom and turning on the light. He follows her inside and a slight apprehension stirs as she watches him take it all in; the bookshelf that lines almost the entire back wall, the single bed with the blue spread she’s had since she was thirteen, and the pink children’s flowery wallpaper that Jeanie picked and she’s had for even longer. She watches him seeing for the first time the things that make up the place she feels most at home – and she feels self-conscious, like a deep part of her has been exposed and she didn’t quite mean it to be.

  It’s just a room.

  She rubs her eyes. It’s tiredness, she thinks for the millionth time. That’s all any of these strange, wound up feelings are.

  Warden’s gaze flicks to the wooden desk where her laptop usually sits, its position marked out by the power cable still resting there. He half smiles and, for some reason, she feels embarrassed.

  ‘We should start the video files downloading,’ she says, stopping any comment on what his judgement might be, ‘set them on a slow bleed overnight like you said before. You know, so there are no sudden data surges they could notice their end.’

  ‘Sure,’ he nods, ‘yeah.’ He looks taken aback by her abruptness, but he reaches for his satchel. ‘Is it all right if I…?’ He indicates her bed, the only other place in the room he could sit. She taps out the pattern once on her leg and tells him it’s okay. He perches on the very edge, like he sort of realizes he’s in a personal space for her and it’s something she might not be fully at ease with.

  ‘I need to check on the Forum,’ she adds. They load up their laptops, Mallory retrieving hers from her backpack. The welcome message pops up on her screen and her eyes flick automatically to the bottom right corner – no Asker online, no Scarlet. They’re doing something about that, though, she tells herself. Warden is, right now. She can hear him typing away. There have been no notifications sent to her, but she sets about double checking all the login data for the past evening anyway – and finds nothing odd. Afterwards, she scans through the message boards, quieter today. Everything has been quieter the last few days, what with no new hacks.

  ‘It’s all set,’ Warden says. ‘Downloading all the footage from the last five days. Should be done mid-morning.’

  ‘And it’s still secure?’ Mallory asks, glancing back.

  ‘Still secure.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. It may shock you, but I do know what I’m doing, Echo.’ There’s a half smile on his face again.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, any other reply drying up. She looks back at the message boards. He does know and she knows that. She knows. She starts scanning, reading through everything new. There are a couple of threads she should post in, a couple of arguments she should sort out, and Case_X is still kicking up a fuss in the thread about The Asker…

  Are you all right? The question pops up in a chat box from Warden. She stares at it, the room silent apart from the soft whirr of their laptops. She stays facing the screen, a kind of unexpected release in just seeing the words there.

  I’m not sure, she answers, writing it out instead of saying it. Then, Are you? She hears him typing before the words appear.

  I think so. It’s been a strange day, though, I’ll admit.

  Do you regret it? she asks, everything easier to say in that little box. More clicks against the keys.

  No, he answers, not yet, anyway. I reserve final judgement until I know whether you’re going to destroy me or not, though. Her lips tease upwards.

  Still pending. She pushes enter and hears him laugh.

  So, he writes, this is where you were, all that time we spent talking, this little room. I like it, though I always pictured you with an AC/DC poster on the wall, not sure why. Who picked out the wallpaper?

  You don’t think I did then?

  You don’t exactly strike me as the pink flowers type. I may be wrong.

  She hesitates, then, My mom chose it, she says, when we first moved in. She taps the pattern once more.

  Four, three, four, two.

  Warden begins typing a response, then he deletes it. Then he types something else.

  Where is she? The question flashes up. Mallory’s hands flex stiffly in front of her. She could shut it down, shoot down the question. That’s her normal response.

  Four, three, four, two.

  Four, three, four, two.

  She could… but she doesn’t. Like before, some part of her wants to tell him.

  She left us, Mallory types, focusing only on the screen, just the screen, not on him being there really – and not on what any of the words really mean, four years ago.

  Don’t ask for more, she thinks, unsure she could cope with relating it all just now, the memory of it already needling at her from that. Don’t ask for more.

  Oh, he replies simply. I’m sorry. That really sucks.

  Mallory swallows, grateful. He’s leaving the door open, for her to take it further or not. Maybe at some point she will with him, eventually. Not tonight.

  What about you? she writes, diverting away. What’s it like where you log on normally?

  My room, you mean?

  I guess so.

  A little bigger than this, he answers, at the back of our house – it’s only single story. The walls are green. Like his satchel. It’s his favorite color; she recalls that from somewhere. The bed’s against the left wall when you come in and my desk is at the far end, beneath a double window. It looks out onto a fence, but the light coming in is still nice. That’s where I sit and talk to you. And hack into some of the world’s most secu
re systems, of course.

  Most secure? Mallory raises an eyebrow, the hint of a smile returning.

  Definitely, he replies. Didn’t anyone tell you, I’m the best? She actually laughs then. Okay, says Warden, that was a little harsh. FYI, I just rolled my eyes at you. Mallory hears the creak of the stairs outside; Roger going to bed. Hey, writes Warden, sorry if I made things weird with your dad.

  It wasn’t you, she answers.

  My mom would have gone mental if I’d brought a girl home this late.

  Mallory doesn’t quite know quite what to respond to that… and he can obviously hear her not responding, not typing.

  Not that that sort of thing really happens, he adds quickly, and I didn’t mean it was anything like that with us, just that it might have looked like it to your dad. Then, Sorry. I said that all wrong. A pause. You know what I mean, right?

  Yeah, I know what you mean.

  She hears him let out a breath, and she does smile then. She listens to the silence after, to the ongoing whirr of their computers – to his, already beginning to download footage that could tell them where they might find The Asker, where he might have gone. She listens, and she’s glad he is there.

  Thank you for coming tonight, she writes.

  Hey, I got to go to a nightclub, he responds. Thanks for letting me.

  Warden, she writes, after a moment, what if we can’t find him? What if he’s really gone? What if she never talks to him again, and the Forum goes after – because it will without him – and they all just… She feels suddenly cold. What does this mean, her and Warden, without that to keep them together? She doesn’t want to lose it either. She feels it then, sharply. She doesn’t…

  We will, Warden replies.

  You don’t know that.

  Well, he writes, he’s got you looking for him. I would never bet against you.

  Mallory shakes her head, worry bubbling beneath the surface, and turns to him in the chair, almost like she needs to see him then. He looks up from his laptop and holds her gaze. He nods, his face firm, believing.

  ‘We’ll find him, Echo,’ he says.

  Worlds Collide

  Mallory wakes to the sound of muffled shouting. Then she hears footsteps running up the stairs. It takes her a moment to fully register, by which time someone is already banging on her door.

  ‘Mallory!’ It’s Jed. ‘Mallory, there’s a guy in the living room!’

  ‘I told you,’ says someone behind him, voice all panicky, ‘I’m her friend.’ It’s Warden.

  Shit.

  After they’d logged off, she’d got him a pillow and blanket from the closet and he’d slept downstairs on the couch.

  ‘It’s okay, Jed,’ she says, stumbling out of bed, still half asleep and tripping over her own damn duvet as she goes. She unlocks the door and light spills in, stinging her dark-adjusted eyes. ‘It’s okay. This is…’ She steps out onto the landing to find Warden looking equally bleary-eyed in Iron Man pajamas. ‘…Gilbert,’ she finishes. ‘This is Gilbert. He is a friend of mine and needed a place to crash. I didn’t want to wake you last night to say.’

  Jed stands beside her, eyeing Warden like he’s still not sure of him.

  ‘He’s the friend you went to help?’ he asks – the friend Mallory had been worried enough about meeting to give Jed a tracker… She hesitates.

  ‘Yes,’ she answers. She doesn’t want to open a bigger can of worms. ‘It’s okay, Jed,’ she repeats. ‘It’s all fine now.’ Her nerves flicker, though, even as she says it; the footage must be nearly downloaded. Jed nods, but he’s still frowning. ‘Go get showered,’ she tells him. ‘I’ll start breakfast.’ It’s pancakes on Saturdays, with blueberries and little pieces of banana mixed into the batter because he likes both.

  ‘Okay,’ he says finally. ‘I’ll be down quick to help with the chopping.’

  With perfect timing, Roger emerges from his room just as Jed leaves, rubbing his eyes and mumbling something about having heard shouting. He sees Mallory, then, standing alone with Warden in the doorway of her bedroom, and seems to spark right awake.

  ‘Morning,’ he manages.

  ‘Morning, Roger.’

  ‘…Hello again, sir.’

  ‘Come on,’ Mallory tells Warden, and heads downstairs.

  ***

  ‘Where are you from?’ Jed asks, black curls now dampened and sticking up from a poorly-executed towel dry.

  ‘California,’ Warden replies. He’s dressed now too, a mustard yellow sweater vest clashing violently with a short-sleeved navy shirt, buttoned right to the top. In contrast to Jed, his sandy blonde hair is combed into a neat side parting. ‘Sun City, to be precise.’

  ‘Why’s your accent all weird then?’

  ‘Jed,’ Mallory says. He only looks a little chagrined.

  ‘I lived in England till I was twelve,’ Warden answers. ‘My mom’s from there. Then we moved to California. Been there ever since.’

  The four of them are sitting having breakfast together; Mallory, her dad, her brother – who seems hell bent on some kind of inquisition – and the boy she’s only ever spoken to online until she met him last night to hack into a nightclub. The two very separate aspects of her life are suddenly intermingling around their little, plastic-topped kitchen table. Mallory’s not sure she’s ever felt so disconcerted.

  ‘So why were you in New York?’ Jed says.

  Warden falters.

  ‘He was visiting a school,’ Mallory says. ‘Cornell Tech. Gilbert’s a senior, like me, trying to decide where to apply for next year. The hotel he was staying at lost his booking and had no rooms left. I was the only person he knew nearby.’ It sounds kind of weak, even to Mallory. The frown reappears on Jed’s forehead and she sees his jaw tighten. Roger seems to be finding the pancakes of infinite interest.

  ‘How did you know him?’ Jed goes on. That one stumps her. How could she know someone from California, who’s seventeen and never lived anywhere else besides England?

  Thanks for that little detail…

  ‘Online gaming,’ Warden answers. ‘World of Warcraft.’

  Jed is silent a moment, then, ‘You shouldn’t meet people you’ve met online,’ he says quietly. Roger’s fork stops halfway to his mouth. ‘We had a whole seminar on it at school. There was this kid in Missouri who had his insides – ’

  ‘Okay, we get it,’ Mallory says. He looks back at her.

  ‘Is that why you gave me the – ’

  ‘I’ve known Gilbert a long time,’ she interrupts, giving Jed a look that in no uncertain terms means he should zip it about what he was just about to say. He does, but his forehead creases further.

  ‘Cornell Tech,’ Roger says, unexpectedly cutting in. ‘You into computers then, like Mallory?’ he asks Warden.

  ‘Yes, sir, very much,’ Warden replies, seizing on the change of topic. ‘My first choice is MIT; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their electronic engineering department is one of the best in the world. It’s like a hub of all the things I’m interested in.’ His mouth opens and closes like he’s fishing for more things to say before Jed can start questioning him again. ‘Mallory should apply too.’

  Her eyes snap to him.

  What in the hell?

  ‘Someone as clever as her,’ he adds, ‘I’m sure she’d get in.’

  She glares, fingers flexing.

  ‘Is that one of the ones you’re thinking of, Mal?’ Roger asks.

  ‘Maybe.’ She swallows, her own jaw clenching a little. Roger just nods, though, and goes back to his pancakes, that one burst of interest thankfully all he can muster this morning. She tries not to think about last night and the feelings it brought up.

  After breakfast, Mallory calls the store. Heidi answers and Mallory tells her she’s ill and won’t be able to make her shift later. It grates to do it, knowing Mrs Balinski still won’t have forgotten her recent tardiness, but some things can’t wait. Heidi is the model of sympathy, offering to smooth things over with her m
om, and Mallory feels bad for lying to her, but there’s no other choice, not today.

  While the files finish downloading, Mallory and Warden recheck the Children of Daedalus message boards, but it’s like she’d told him yesterday; nothing connecting them to the disappearances and a whole lot of stuff that seems to be shouting out that this group is not who they are looking for. There are a few oblique references to membership initiations and marks, though – references that make a lot more sense now they know what they’re referring to – and they find a couple of other outside sources more blatantly corroborating that the delta tattoo, drawn like that on the left hand, is definitely CoD. Mallory hunts around for restricted areas or hidden links that might be on their site, but if anything’s there, she can’t find it. Warden has no other suggestions, so it’s a dead lead for now.

  The files finish downloading at five past nine and he copies half over to Mallory’s laptop so they can split the searching between them. He cuts off the live link to the bug, but says he can re-establish it whenever, if they need it again. He’s still certain no one’s found the leak. There are hours and hours of footage to go through, from numerous different cameras hidden all around Labyrinth. It’s daunting, but they start with the recordings closest to the time of The Asker’s log off on Monday night.

  ‘So what are we looking for exactly?’ Warden asks, perched on the end of her bed again. ‘A guy using a phone or laptop, then stopping or being stopped at exactly eight fifty-one? There’s just a lot of people, now it comes to it…’ Mallory knows what he means. Even looking through the first couple of videos, it feels like she’s already seen more than two hundred faces, several using smartphones. ‘And what if he was in the bathroom then, like we were,’ Warden adds, ‘or in another camera blind spot?’

  ‘Then,’ Mallory replies, ‘we’ll have to look at who had moved out of shot at that time. No one can have entered the club without being seen and, with the Daedalus connection, that must have been where he was. The reason he logged off is in this footage, we just need to find it. We’ll follow every single person if we have to. Just take it slow. Slow the videos down if you need to, just don’t miss anything.’