by Therin Knite
She steps into the elevator car with a quick motion, and I follow her inside after a considerable delay. The director wouldn’t go for a messy finish, so I know death by elevator is unlikely. But once the doors close us off from the hallway and we begin to ascend, a heavy dose of anxiety overwhelms my bloodstream. Brennian’s betrayal has rattled me, and my physiological responses are all over the place.
The director is not my friend. Never was. It was all an act.
I know this. I accept this. So why can’t I pull myself together? Why do I keep overreacting to everything? Dead bodies don’t make me flinch. Insidious plots don’t leave me gasping in horror. Whitford Brennian is just another criminal, and I should be able to treat him like one.
“You don’t respond the same way when the bad guy is someone you know.” Dynara watches me from the corner of her eye, dissecting my discomfort. “Especially when it’s someone you trusted. A breach of trust destabilizes your emotions more than anything else, even a death. It doesn’t matter how much you rationalize the situation. It won’t get any easier, not until you have so many other things on your mind that you can no longer focus on the pain.”
“Thank you, Ms. Swanson, for that thorough analysis.”
“Swanson? Your twelfth therapist?”
I throw her an irritated look. “Why am I not surprised you know about Ms. Swanson?”
“Because I know everything?”
“Oh, right. You’re one of the old gods reborn into the form of a short human female.”
Ding. The elevator stops.
“Since we have a criminal to catch, I’m going to forget you said that. For now.”
The elevator doors retract again, revealing an intersection of hallways that branch off in three directions. The walls are all painted white and lined with identical white doors. There’s no indication of which way to go next, and there are roughly sixty rooms Brennian could be hiding in. His ploy is obvious to us both as we step out of the elevator: he wants us to split up.
“I get the feeling he’s only interested in seeing one of us.” Dynara scans all the halls. “So, what do you want to do?”
“I’ll take the bait. He’s loosened the laws of the dream too much. He can change anything he wants without the dream collapsing, but I can too. I’m not sure we’re an even match, but better me than you. Echomaker versus echomaker.”
“I am an echomaker,” she says. “Just not a command controller.”
“I don’t know what that term means yet, but I’m assuming you can’t alter the dream.”
“Correct, but don’t think I can’t kick his ass.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. You can kick anyone’s ass, I’m sure. But I’m searching for an excuse that’ll let me do it instead under the guise of logic.”
She jerks to the right and waves me off. “You got it, Agent Adamend. I’ll go this way. I need to get a lengthy update from Lance anyway.” With her thumb, she directs me to the hallway straight across from the elevator. I don’t know how she knows it’s the correct path, but I set my sights on those twenty doors nonetheless and start marching on a warpath toward the man who dared to break my trust.
When I reach the first door, I almost turn the knob and push like a normal person. My fingers curl inward before they touch the polished metal though, and it occurs to me how foolhardy it is to expect there to be nothing but a regular room behind the door. In theory, Brennian can construct anything in the dream space where the VIP rooms should be, and there’s no guarantee he won’t accept a clever booby trap as a neat and tidy way to off someone.
So I step a few feet back from the door and rev up my echomaking powers again. I flick my wrist in the door’s general direction, mentally willing it to open. With a little too much force. It blows right off its hinges and flies into the darkened VIP room, crashing against the far wall with a resounding bang. Whoops.
Nothing emerges from the darkness with killer intent, however, and I continue on to the rooms farther down the hall. One after the other, I force each door open, achieving a balance of mental desire and telekinetic strength when I hit the seventh door.
When I reach the last door on the left, a strange, intuitive feeling in my gut makes me hesitate. On impulse, I grab the knob and open the door the old-fashioned way. It swings inward to reveal a brightly lit room. An occupied room.
Brennian and Williams are inside.
Chapter Sixteen
“Adem,” says Brennian, “please come in.” He downs a shot of something burnt orange and launches the glass at the back wall. Instead of shattering on impact, it goes into the wall, which ripples like the surface of a pond.
The moment I clear the door with my painfully slow advance, it slams shut behind me and melds with the wall, a thick black outline the sole sign there was ever an exit to begin with.
“I didn’t expect you to be here,” Brennian continues. “When I saw you outside, I thought you’d escaped from the airfield and ended up at Valkyrie in real life. No such luck, it seems. How did you manage it? I was told you can’t cross when sedated.”
“None of your business. I reveal secrets to trustworthy people.” I step into the lowered circle cut into the middle of the floor. Within it, two couches rest on either side of a long glass table. Regina Williams sits on the couch closer to me, staring pointedly at the floor as tears stream down her cheeks.
“That hurts, Adem,” Brennian says.
“You hurt me.”
“So you’re resorting to vengeance? I thought you were above that.”
“No one is above vengeance. And it seems men who call themselves dignified aren’t above slaughtering innocents.”
Williams whimpers.
“Are you talking about the idiots on the dance floor?”
“You no longer have the right to judge anyone, so shut it before I decide to pass permanent judgment on you. This has gone on long enough. If you hurt one more person, then I will end you.”
He scrutinizes me, eyes lingering on the gun that rests against my thigh. I’m not a quick draw or a great shot, but I’m close enough to shoot him dead regardless. “You can alter my dream that easily, huh?” he says. “It didn’t even take an ounce of effort, did it, to transform my little pet into harmless insects? I was right about you. You’re extraordinary.”
Out of nowhere materializes a gun identical to mine. Brennian snatches it out of the air and aims it at Williams’ head. Every muscle in my body constricts, and a strangled cry sticks to the back of my throat as I watch his finger tighten on the trigger. I’m nowhere near fast enough to get there in time, and just before the sound of gunfire beats against my eardrums, I stretch my hand toward Williams’ prone figure, praying. Miss.
Instead of burying itself inside her brain, the bullet grazes her forehead before deflecting with a sharp ring into the far wall. There was nothing visible between her and the round, but there she sits, mostly intact. A line of blood runs down her face, and she reaches up to touch it. At first, she’s so stunned that she stares at the stain on her fingers without comprehension. Then she breaks down into a fit of hysterical sobbing.
Brennian gawks at me. “How did you do that so quickly? How is it so natural for you? It’s like your powers are an extension of yourself, something innate as opposed to something manufactured. Incredible.” He sits the gun on the table, shaking his head. “Gods, how you’ve been wasting your talent at the IBI. They’ve been using you for cheap labor to do things far beneath you. Disgraceful.”
“You helped me, Director,” I reply, “get into the IBI.”
“I know. It’s only fair to blame myself. I wanted you in a place where I could watch you easily. He asked me to keep an eye on you.”
“Who is he?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“For some reason, I doubt that, considering EDPA is prepping to storm the airfield as we speak.”
A wry smile crosses his lips. “What makes you think I don’t have a backup plan?”
“What makes you think your backup plan will do you any good? If EDPA doesn’t catch you now, the IBI will catch you later.”
He snorts. “The IBI is an organization of self-important, self-righteous fools.”
“Well don’t you fit right in then?”
He rises from the couch and sighs. “As do you.”
“I have a reason to work for the IBI.”
“To search for the person who killed your mother?”
“Yes,” I say. “Even if this, even if you ruin my career, some way or another I’ll stay in the IBI. Because it does what I need it to do. It hunts down killers who break into homes and slaughter innocents. This, all of this, is the most spectacular experience I’ve had in my life, but dream worlds and monsters mean nothing to me in the grand scheme of my life. I will find my mother’s killer, even if I have to take down a hundred men like you first.”
Sorrow pours into Brennian’s eyes. Genuine sorrow. He wets his lips and runs a hand through his thinning hair, torn between speaking a dangerous truth and holding his tongue to protect…not himself. To protect me.
“Adem, by the old gods,” he murmurs. “I can barely say this.”
“Say what?”
“Your mother wasn’t murdered. You killed your mother.”
Mom says there are no monsters under my bed or hiding in my closet, but at six, my imagination runs rampant, and I don’t believe her. Even after she’s kissed me goodnight and promised I can open presents extra early in the morning, I bundle myself up in thick covers and peek at the closet door every few minutes. The house is warm and inviting, but a coldness creeps up my neck and keeps me shivering for hours. It’s going to get me tonight. I know it.
As I finally begin to nod off around three AM, a creak jolts me back to alertness. My closet door is open—it wasn’t before. It now sits at a ninety-degree angle, displaying the full contents of a cramped room with shelves that can’t possibly harbor a monster any taller than two feet. Yet as my eyes frantically search for the culprit, I glimpse a black, slimy tail slinking around the bedroom doorway, into the hall.
I bury myself in the sheets, repeating the mantra Mom taught me over and over. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s only in my dreams. It can’t hurt me. There’s no such thing as monsters.
At some point, my consciousness drifts away, and the next thing I know, it’s morning. Sunlight streams through my bedroom window. It’s the latest I’ve ever woken up on Christmas. Mom should’ve stopped by and shaken me awake hours ago, giggling and teasing me for being late to my favorite holiday. But she didn’t. And the sounds of her usual morning routine—breakfast followed by the nine o’clock news—are absent. Did she sleep in too?
I crawl out of bed, shedding the thick sheets I spent half the night in a cold sweat beneath, and waddle down the hallway, searching for any signs of Mom’s presence. “Mom?” I call out. “Mommy? Where are you?”
She doesn’t reply, so I check her bedroom, only to find her covers made. Like she got up hours ago. Or never went to sleep at all. Turning, my feet carry me faster than before, and I end up in the kitchen. But she’s not here either, and there’s no hot breakfast waiting for me on the table for the first time since I can remember.
“Mom?”
My body pivots around to face the living room. Our digital tree is still on, blinking fifteen different colors. The presents are in the same places, unopened, untouched. Nobody broke in and stole our stuff like I’ve seen on the news. But something is different. The white-and-gold wrapping paper is stained with reddish-brown splatters. They get bigger farther from the tree until they converge into a dark puddle in the middle of the living room carpet.
I take three steps to the right so I can see the entire room.
Mom is in front of the sofa.
She’s in pieces.
“Adem? Are you okay, son? Can you hear me?”
The living room evaporates, replaced by the worried face of Whitford Brennian. In the absence of my mind, he approached me, and he now stands far too close for comfort, with his arms outstretched as if he’s sure I’ll faint any moment.
“I can hear you just fine,” I say, voice steady. Too steady. The words leave my tongue without permission, and a flare of panic is squashed by a rush of rage. I’ve lost my cool before, but this has never happened. I have never lost control. Yet as I stare into Brennian’s fucking face, all I can think is destroy. “I heard every word you said.”
“I know how this must make you feel.”
“You just invalidated my entire life. Informed me I’ve been living a lie.”
“No, Adem. You’ve done good, catching criminals, solving crimes.” He inches closer, intent on disabling me the first chance he gets. My inexplicably amazing echo powers have him frightened, and if he had a shred less pride, he would’ve booked it the moment he spotted me heading toward the club.
“I am a criminal,” I say. “I’m a killer.”
“You were six. Hardly a heartless murderer. It’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s theirs, EDPA’s, for failing to stop you from creating a level three echo.”
“Did you think that telling me this would allow you to win?”
He halts. “Pardon?”
“You’ve had this knowledge for a while, right? You could’ve told me anytime, but you were saving it as a trump card in case one of your plans got derailed. Am I wrong?” I step forward, and he retreats toward his sofa. Williams, curled up in a tight fetal position, lifts her head to watch the tables turn, unsure who to root for. She is well aware that Brennian has come to kill her, but I’m the guy she tried to have assassinated, the one she admitted to hating last night.
“You think so badly of me, Adem?” Brennian says. “It came up. That’s all.”
“You can’t fool me with your lies anymore. Do you know why?”
He darts around the couch and pauses at the opposite end of the long table. “Why?”
“Because only my friends can lie to me, Director. You’ve lost that status.”
An air of frail authority condenses around him, and with a tug to straighten his suit jacket, he replies, “That’s a pity. I’ll be sure to try my best to regain it when we get where we’re going. Which we will, right after I finish what I came to do.”
He heaves himself over the corner of the table, grabs Williams, and throws her toward the wall with inhuman strength. I can see the outcome before it happens: she sinks into the wall, drowning or suffocating or suffering whatever other grotesque fate Brennian constructed beyond the white façade.
I can see it before it happens. So I stop it.
Williams slams into the wall and bounces off, hitting the floor with a dull thud and a low moan of pain. Ripples form in the wall like last time, but they don’t calm. Instead, they freeze in place like the poor patrons froze downstairs, and just like those who shattered from a fall, the wall explodes outward into a cascade of gleaming white splinters. Williams covers her head and shrieks, and Brennian, knowing he’s beaten, sprints for the disappeared door, calls it into existence again, and exits with his tail between his legs.
“Are you okay?” I ask Williams, not sounding particularly concerned. I’m still too annoyed by her behavior to really care about her well-being, so long as she’s still alive.
A pink, tangled nest of hair bobs in response, so I turn to follow Brennian, only to find the door has again become one with the wall. Shrugging, I pick an alternate route: through the wall and out into the hall.
I track Brennian to the elevator. The box descends before the doors have a chance to close, traveling many miles faster than it dared during my trip up from the first floor.
Dynara, who trudges around the corner at the same time I exit the room, glances from the elevator to me and back again. “Was that Brennian?” She focuses on the tension in my body, on my tight frown, on my furious eyes, and figures out the gist of what just happened in about five seconds. She proceeds toward me with caution in order to re
duce the likelihood of setting off the bomb inside my head. “He got away?” she asks.
“Not for long.”
“Bad conversation?” She glances at the black outline where the door used to be, listening to the muted sounds of Williams pleading to be released from the room.
“When were you planning on telling me I killed my mother?”
“I wasn’t.” Her expression remains apathetic. “I was waiting for you to figure it out. I gave you all the clues you needed.”
Puberty suppresses the echomaking ability.
“So children can make echoes too.”
“Yeah, but they can’t control them. Unlike adult makers, children’s brain chemistry renders them unable to consciously alter their echoes.”
“So if a child has a nightmare about the monster in his closet…”
“The monster might come to life, yes.”
I flinch, and all the doors in the hallway slam shut. “This is why you were so sure I’d join EDPA. Because my duty isn’t to find a killer. It’s to atone for killing my mother. I’ve spent my whole life walking in the wrong direction, and you knew once I figured out the truth, I’d turn right around and start marching the other way.”
“And you will, even if you hate me for not being upfront about it.” She kicks at the outline on the wall and unclips an unidentifiable piece of tech from her belt. “So why don’t you get through your hissy fit by pursuing your dear old director and talk to me again when you’re not ready to blow your stack?”
“I’m tempted to never speak to you again.”
“Don’t be so fucking dramatic. It’s unbecoming.” She holds the machine against the outline and presses a button. The wall reverts to its original form, door included. A panicked Williams yanks the reformed door open a second later, her face a splotchy ruin of color. “Morning, Ms. Williams,” Dynara says cheerfully.
Those are the last words I hear before I teleport myself to the stairwell door, from the top-floor landing to the first-floor landing, from the half-melted horror show the Valkyrie dance floor has become to the sidewalk in front of the building. Thirty-six people pull out weapons and aim them at my face when I appear. All wear EDPA uniforms, and one of them recognizes me. It’s the gruff Murrough, who shouts at the army of agents to stand down. He doesn’t do echo field though.
