“And your head?”
“Same woman.”
“Ah. A fighter, and a good one. You’re the most decorated mid-level Warden in the northeast. You don’t go down easily for a reason.”
“First time, she ambushed me. Second time, I had her until she pulled a knife from out of nowhere.”
“Impressive. Sounds like she fights like you. Echo?”
“I don’t know. Need to find her first. I hope she’s an Echo, so I can kill her a few times as payback.”
Curtis frowned. “Rowan, you have to start thinking of the longer game. We’ve been in this war too long without a decisive victory. We keep chipping away at the Commonwealths on each continent, but if we’re going to win anytime soon, we need to do it with combat specialists. If she is conditioned to be a Warden, she’ll excel in battle. If her mind doesn’t accept reconditioning, we could use her to reproduce, gain more full-blooded Echoes in our ranks.”
A few of the bodies glowed blue. Rowan walked over to one; he had regenerated as a child, no more than eight years old. He shook his head. “The younger the age they return to, the easier it is to condition them, but they take days to recover post-regen.”
Curtis shrugged. “They’ll become part of our ranks one way or another, regardless of age.”
The Warden guards moved in to drag the healing Echoes away from the human corpses.
“Hmm, only four out of that group,” Rowan said. “I want more.”
Within three days, Rowan helped lead the Wardens in securing the city, clearing it of any CNA presence, and capturing hundreds of Brigands who didn’t flee in time. They identified a quarter of those captured as Echoes and brought them into service.
A week after the initial attack, Rowan stood with three other Wardens before his superiors to receive commendations for the successes in taking Portland. He stood before those gathered and waited while those of a higher rank babbled about the Wardens’ might. Everyone present had a physical outward appearance of fortyish years or younger. The original Echoes who came to Earth had perfected the genetic mimicry of humans, including the unwanted side effect of aging. Unable to remove that portion of the genetic code, the Wardens had instituted mandatory regens to keep their troops in prime condition. The maximum physical age for a Warden was forty-five. Even the highest-ranking Wardens, the regent and vice regents included, barely had a wisp of gray hair before they regenned to a younger age—keeping their titles when they did, of course.
Rowan knew he could do more for the Wardens if he obtained a higher rank. The commendation was well and good, but it wasn’t the promotion he needed. After the brief ceremony, he left the gathering. Once alone in a corridor, he removed the medal from his uniform. He passed his thumb over the decorative ribbon and the glittering medallion below it. He wanted a different kind of award.
Dani’s body never turned up in the searches; somehow, she’d escaped. Rowan tossed the medal aside, promising himself he’d find her. The woman that had bested him twice in one day wouldn’t beat him in the next fight.
CHAPTER
13
Dani opened her eyes when large hands pulled her from the warm blanket she had pulled over her head. When her vision cleared, she made out a strange man moving about the small, dark room. She wanted to run, but her legs didn’t work, and she sank to the floor. She crawled to a corner in the room and wedged her body into it.
The man approached. “Dani, I know you’re scared, but I need you to put these on.” He placed a pair of boots next to her feet and pressed two pairs of socks into her hand.
She didn’t know where she was or why she was tucked into a narrow room. Her body ached, and her limbs didn’t want to move the way she wanted them to. The man seemed somehow familiar to her, though.
“You remembered my name last night, Dani. Do you remember me still?”
Dani didn’t remember anything from yesterday, or the day before that. She frowned and tried to remember something. Only a vague image of written words came to her mind. Boston. Momma, Daddy, Jason, and Brody. “Daddy?”
He shook his head.
“Jason?”
“Yes. I’m Jason, but you call me Jace.”
“Jace,” Dani said, though she didn’t remember who he was. She leaned forward to view his face better but recoiled with a gasp when someone pounded on the room’s door.
“We’re leaving now,” a voice on the other side of the door said.
“We’re coming,” Jace said.
Dani clutched her socks as Jace rushed to shove things back into his bag. He threw her boots in last and slipped the bag’s strap over his head. She flinched as he hurried to her with a small jacket in his hands. He fed her hand, still holding the socks, through one of the sleeves, and placed her other hand through the remaining empty sleeve. He didn’t bother with the zipper before scooping her off the floor. He put one arm under her rump and held her close to his body, his wide palm against her back. With no other choice than to go with him, Dani hooked her legs around his waist and wrapped her arms around the back of his neck.
Jace carried her out of the room. Dani turned her head to see where they were going, and she bounced against his body as he trotted to catch up with two men who were already striding out of the house. One man wore a dark coat, and the other wore a lighter-colored, longer coat. Jace followed them outside, and Dani drew in a sharp breath when the cold night air met her bare feet, hands, and face.
“Please give me another minute to finish dressing her,” Jace said.
The two men stopped and glared at Dani as Jace lowered her to the ground.
“This will be the only time we wait for you, old man,” the man in the dark coat said.
Jace took the socks from Dani’s hands and unrolled them. “We won’t slow you down once I have her dressed for the cold.”
His hands moved in a blur of motion, putting the socks on her feet, grabbing the boots from his bag and slipping them on her feet, lacing them up tight. Jace shoved the remaining socks over her hands as substitute gloves, then zipped up her jacket.
“Can you stand?” Jace pulled her to her feet.
Dani wobbled.
Jace caught her and picked her up again.
“We’ll leave you both behind if you slow us down,” the man in the light coat said.
“She has a concussion,” Jace said. “She’ll be fine once she’s had proper rest.”
Another man and woman sprinted from the house and joined them.
“We changed our minds,” the newly arrived man said.
“Thought you might after the Wardens sacked B Block overnight,” the dark coat said.
Dani didn’t know what a “bee block” was, but she remained silent.
“The Wardens will sweep the remaining blocks by the end of today,” the light coat said. “Portland’s lost.”
Dani’s curiosity won. “What are Wardens?” she asked Jace.
“Is she serious?” the woman asked.
“She hit her head yesterday,” Jace said.
Dani opted to not ask her remaining questions. She assumed if Portland was lost that they were helping find him or her again.
The man in the dark coat grunted and led the group away from the house. Jace kept up with them, Dani in his arms. He wasn’t wearing a coat, and his skin glistened with sweat despite the chilly night air. Sleepiness settled over Dani as she bounced along in his arms, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. She tried to remember more about the words she’d seen in her mind earlier, but they blurred. She closed her eyes, and one arm slid from Jace’s neck.
She was jarred awake by a sharp jolt. She opened her eyes. She was in the back of a truck. The vehicle’s engine raced and lurched forward then back again. Dani crashed into the other people in the truck. As soon as the truck stopped shaking, she reached for the side, panicked, ready to jump out. A hand snagged the back of her jacket.
“Dani!” a man’s voice said. “Dani, you’re okay.”
She
tried to twist free of his grip, but he continued to hold her. She stopped fighting him for a moment to stare at his eyes. She’d seen him before but couldn’t remember when or where. And she didn’t remember getting in the truck at all. Her chest heaved with a sob as tears filled her eyes, and the man released her jacket.
“I know you’re scared and are having a hard time remembering things,” he said with a soft voice.
The other people crawled out the back of the truck, and the men started yelling at the driver.
Dani wiped at her tears and shivered, though she wasn’t cold. She stared at the socks on her hands. The daytime temperatures had risen, and the sun peeked between thick, fluffy clouds. Her clothes and boots were too big, and she remembered a narrow room.
This man had helped dress her—last night or this morning. She wasn’t sure which. “Jace.”
He nodded.
“I keep forgetting things,” she said.
“It’ll get better. I promise.”
“Are we still looking for Portland?”
Jace’s brow creased, and he shook his head. “What?”
“Old man, get out,” a man in a dark coat said. “We have to push the truck out of the hole our blind driver couldn’t manage to avoid.”
Dark Coat, Dani thought. She remembered him a little. Not a nice man.
Jace helped Dani from the truck bed and carried her to the side of the rural road, shot through with cracked paving and potholes from years of frost heave and lack of maintenance. He lowered her, and she found she could stand on her own. He placed his bag at her feet. “If you’re warm enough, take the socks off your hands and put them on your feet so your boots will fit better,” he said.
Dani nodded and pulled the socks from her hands. Jace returned to the others. They discussed the best way to dislodge the tire while she removed her boots. Two of the men argued while Jace talked with three other men and a woman.
After getting the second pair of socks on her feet, Dani pulled her boots back on. She laced them tightly, and her feet didn’t slide inside them so much. She stood and inspected her jacket. She considered taking it off, but another idea struck her. She could run away. The adults were busy talking, and none of them noticed her. Jace might not be a friend. He still hadn’t told her anything—not anything she could remember, anyway—about who he was or why he was with her. He’d told the others she’d hit her head.
She stuck her hands in her jacket pockets and found a watch with a yellow band and a cartoon black-and-white dog on the face. The watch still ticked, but the time could be inaccurate. She turned her body to line the hour hand up with the sun and visualized an imaginary line between the hour hand and the twelve on the face of the watch. If the time was right, she now knew which way was south.
When did I learn how to do that? I don’t know where I am, so I don’t know which way to go.
She knelt and dug through the man’s bag. She shoved some of the food in her mouth and chewed while she pulled a canister out. After taking a gulp of water to wash her food down, she replaced the canister. There were other items in the bag beneath a rolled blanket, but she didn’t paw through them. She had food and water. The road was lined with numerous trees, she could disappear into them in an instant—but she didn’t.
The truck lunged forward out of the hole after much grunting and swearing from those working to push it free. Jace was out of breath when he returned to her. “You okay?” he asked.
Dani nodded. “I had some of the food and water in here.” She handed him his bag.
“That’s fine.”
“Where are we and where are we going?”
“We’re in Maine, north of Portland. We’re riding to Waterville using back roads, so it’s taking us a long time to get there. After the ride, we’ll rest and hike north to Bangor. Life should be easier there. Plenty of lumber, and I’m told we could even build our own little house.”
“Why are we going there?”
“I’ll explain everything once we start the hike. It’ll be easier for us to talk then.”
“Old man, let’s go!” Dark Coat said.
Jace sighed and ushered Dani back to the truck. She grasped the top of the tailgate and stepped on the rear bumper to climb in. Jace followed and sat next to her. His gray hair and wrinkles made him look old and tired. He also looked sad. Each time she caught him staring at her, his eyes got shiny, like he might cry, despite the smiles he kept giving her. She didn’t like him being sad; she decided to stay with him for the trip.
CHAPTER
14
Jace slowed his pace, and Dani did the same to remain next to him.
“Are you tired?” she asked.
“No, just letting us have a little more space between us and them so we can talk,” Jace said.
Dark Coat, Light Coat, and the others hiked ahead of them. Dani didn’t mind walking at the rear. Dark Coat was an annoying man that often barked orders at Jace and called him an old man. Last night she’d tried to put a spider in his blanket while he slept, but Jace had made her stop.
This morning was more of the same, but Jace never got angry at Dark Coat. Dani didn’t understand why he didn’t just punch him in the mouth to shut him up.
“Dani, do you know what year it is?”
“2068.”
“No, it’s not,” Jace said before explaining the history of Echoes arriving on Earth and how they could heal their bodies after death to live as immortals, provided they weren’t killed during their recovery period or separated from their heads. “They’ve been here since the 1700s, but the humans didn’t know that for a long time.”
“Weird. Why did they come to Earth?”
“An old war tore their home planet, Ekkoh, apart. That’s ‘Ekkoh’ spelled e-k-k-o-h. The Ekkohrians lived on Earth, hidden and reclusive, for centuries. As their numbers grew, though, they dispersed and began living as humans—which created problems with concealing the fact that non-humans were on the planet. Rumors sprang up everywhere that aliens were on Earth. Still, they somehow remained mostly hidden until the war began. As soon as the attacks started in 2069, with technology the humans had never seen before, the militant factions revealed themselves as an alien race from Ekkoh. The humans called them Echoes, and the new name stuck.”
Dani remained silent, absorbing this information that was new and yet felt somehow familiar to her.
“These factions wanted to take Earth from the humans, turn it into another Ekkoh,” Jace continued. “They call themselves the Wardens of the planet. Most of the Echoes not involved in the attack joined forces with local governments to help them against the Wardens when the war began. The Wardens killed billions of people, humans and Echoes, bombing countless cities across the globe. The humans couldn’t compete with the advanced alien tech, and they were forced to abandon the larger cities like Boston, where we used to live. We fled Portland last night because the Wardens moved north to take the city from the CNA.”
“CNA?”
“Commonwealth of North America. After the war started, every nation was impacted by the attacks. Most of the leaders of the nations were killed or imprisoned. The United Nations reorganized. Each continent set up their own Commonwealth as an interim government. The temporary solution became more long term as the war continued. The Commonwealths still communicate with each other, but mostly everyone looks out for themselves.”
Dani frowned. To her, this seemed like a bad way to run a government, but she didn’t understand why she felt that way. Again, she got the sense that she knew all this somehow.
Jace continued. “You and I are Brigands. We’re part of a mixed group of humans and Echoes, the civilians—or refugees, however you want to look at it. We’re poor, and we scavenge for food and supplies. Successful Brigands are the ones that survive. Dani, the year is 2113.”
“I hit my head so hard that I don’t know what year it is or any of that history?”
Jace chuckled; it was the first time Dani had heard that sound fr
om him.
“You don’t have a concussion. I have always waited until you were older to tell you that you’re an Echo, but since that has never worked out well, I figure it won’t hurt to tell you now. It’s safer to live as a human since so many humans hate, or at least distrust, Echoes. Even though you and I didn’t start the war, some will still hate us.”
Dani’s feet stopped moving.
Jace turned to face her and knelt. “This is a lot of information to throw at you at once. Take some time to adjust to it.”
“Who are you?”
“Your half-brother. We have, had, the same father.”
“My parents are dead?”
“Yeah,” Jace said.
“You’re my brother?”
Jace nodded.
“You’re ancient, and I’m a kid. Did I die?”
“Yes. Loosely translated, Ekkoh means remember. Each life you live is called an Echo. Most Echoes remember their past lives when they heal and come back. You don’t. I think you displace your memories, stick them somewhere in your subconscious.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Dani, you forget everything about your past each time you die—you lose everything except your survival skills.”
She pulled the watch from her pocket. “That’s why I knew how to find which way was south using this.”
“When did you discover that?”
“While the truck was stuck. I used the watch and the sun to figure out the direction for south. I thought about running away.”
Jace smiled. “I’m glad you stayed. You also return to a much younger age than most Echoes, so it takes you longer to recover physically.”
“That’s why I couldn’t walk at first?”
Jace nodded.
“How did I die?”
He sighed and stood. “Let’s talk while we walk so the others don’t leave us.”
She slipped her hand inside his—something that seemed to surprise him, judging by how his eyebrows disappeared into his hair.
After a moment of walking in silence, he told her about the day she died—how he’d followed her, but she was always too far away for him to help. “You went after a Warden sniper alone. He had you beat. You managed to kill him, but you couldn’t finish him. You’ve never been a killer, Dani, and that’s a good thing.”
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