I looked up at my echo, standing uncertainly before us. “You’ve seen this?” I asked her. She nodded. “Abby gave it to you.” Or did you take it from her? I didn’t ask.
“She said. She said bring it,” my echo said. The corner of her mouth trembled. “I brought you something else. It’s yours. I held it, but I think you need it back.”
“What?” I asked, bewildered. “What do you have?”
She beckoned. I stood, leaving the camera with Liam, and approached her warily. She tilted her head, an invitation to come closer. A drop of salt water tracked from her hair and down her cheek. I stepped toward her, and she leaned in, her lips nearly brushing my ear.
“Memory,” she whispered—and the ocean roared.
* * *
I couldn’t breathe. I had no lungs for it, and the water was everywhere, black and cold. I could feel the whole expanse of it, this ocean—the water, the salt, the decay, the life flashing quicksilver through it. The water was ever-changing, and it was constant.
I was drowning, and then I wasn’t. The water let me go and I crouched in the bottom of a boat in the dark, watching two giants struggle. Not giants—just people, but I was small. A child. The stars were shimmering back into existence above me, and the boat rocked violently as William Hardcastle threw Vanya Kapoor down. Her head cracked against the bench. She moaned—conscious, but barely. Her eyes fluttered and her hand grasped feebly for Hardcastle. I shrank against the flat stern of the boat as he turned toward me.
We stared at each other. Was this a dream? The cold air biting my cheeks and the press of metal against my back said no. My left eye throbbed with a hot, dull pain.
“Don’t,” I said in a child’s voice, and with the words, the sense of who I was, who I had been in the years between me and this moment, flowed away. I was only Sophia, three years old and terrified, crouched in front of a monster.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He grabbed me by the front of my jacket, fist twisting the fabric. I screamed and kicked, clawed at his arm, but I was nothing next to his bulk. He started to lift me over the side. I thrashed in blind panic, and he dropped me.
My shoulder hit the edge of the boat with a jolt of pain, and then I was in the water. For a moment it closed over me, and then I kicked and my head broke the surface. I grabbed at the only solid thing before me: the white side of the boat. My cold-numbed fingers closed over it. And then he was there again, hands around my wrists, prying my fragile grip free.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I have to.”
He threw me away from the boat. I went under again, the water closing over me, and this time when I kicked, I didn’t break the surface. A roar shuddered through the water—the motor. I knew how to hold my breath, my mama had taught me that, how to kick and how to move my arms to swim, but not with my clothes on, and they were so heavy and it was so, so cold—
There were wings in the water. Wings and a song, and a whisper against my ear. Hush, little bird.
I rose through the water, carried by unseen arms. The water turned to ice, then turned to wood, and I watched a boat weave itself from nothing into something. I crouched, shivering and afraid, as the ocean lost its grip on me.
A creature hovered in the air before me. Its wings beat slowly, and its empty eyes blazed down at me. I wasn’t afraid. Not of that.
Hush, little bird, it whispered. And then it vanished, and so did the memory.
I was in the hallway again. Staring at my reflection who was not a reflection, my wild echo. It wasn’t just the memory that she’d given me. I stared at her, knowledge swirling through my mind. She didn’t have the words for it, didn’t know how to tell me.
I did have the words. And what I knew was terrifying.
“Sophia,” Liam said, uncertain.
“I’m all right,” I assured him, stepping back. Though I didn’t know if I would ever be all right again.
“There’s another video,” he said. I turned to him, startled. “It’s not from 2003. It’s from 2018. It’s from today.”
“Abby,” I whispered. I glanced at my echo, but she made no move to stop me, so I returned to the bench. “Play it,” I told him.
“What if it’s . . .”
He didn’t want to watch her die, which I understood. I squeezed his shoulder. “We have to see.”
He pressed play.
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Recorded by Abigail Ryder
JUNE 30, 2018, TIME UNKNOWN*
Abby pants, watching the space beyond the camera. Her lip is split and bloodied.
ABBY: I got away—no. No, it let me go, but I can’t figure out why. It told me to run. So I did. I ran. But there’s nowhere to run to. There’s no way out of here. Sophia was right. There’s never just one echo. It’s one after the other, and I think I’ve gone pretty deep.
She shuts her eyes for a moment. Her lips roll under, pressing together until they turn white. A thin whine starts in the back of her throat, and then she takes a gulping, gasping breath.
ABBY: Okay, that’s enough. I’m going to keep looking for a way out of here. And in the meantime—in the meantime, I’m going to talk to you, little camera of mine, because otherwise I’m just going to start screaming.
She pushes herself to her feet. She turns the camera around, revealing Belaya Skala—or a version of Belaya Skala. The basic landmarks seem to be the same; she is standing near the entrance to the bunker, and at the very edge of the frame, in the distance, are the rough rocks of the isthmus. But in the place of a sky, a second sea seethes overhead, and massive, ropy creatures writhe within it.
ABBY: I should call Sara* when I get out of here. I bet she never saw sea monsters in the sky. Okay. Okay. Keep it together. I— Oh, shit.
She steps around a small boulder, revealing a gruesome scene. Dozens of terns lie on the ground in various states of destruction and distress, mangled or half-dissolved into black liquid. Wings flap weakly; claws grasp at the grass; heads flop and glassy eyes stare at the sky. In the center, splayed on his back, is a young man. One leg is bent the wrong way at the knee. His hands curl against his chest, his fingers misshapen. Half his face caved in, reduced to that viscous tar, and more of it oozes from where his skin splits.
Even so, he is recognizable as Liam Kapoor.
ABBY: That is not Liam. That is not Liam, it’s an echo.
She draws a step closer. Some of the birds are not just beneath the young man but growing from him, their feathers giving way to flesh, the places where human and bird meet weeping blue-black liquid.
LIAM: Abby.
It’s not the boy that speaks, but the birds, a wheezing mockery of Liam’s voice.
LIAM: Abby, you left me. You left me alone.
His head jerks toward her. One hand splays and grasps, but he can’t extend his arms.
ABBY: What’s wrong with you?
Liam coughs. His body shakes.
LIAM: We can’t—can’t—can’t—she got inside us. They won’t come out right anymore. Abby, it’s me. It’s Liam. Don’t you know me?
His voice is a scream from three dozen throats.
LIAM: Get away from her!
Abby swings around. Sophia—no, Sophie, the echo-girl—stands a few feet away.
SOPHIE: Don’t touch him.
ABBY: Wasn’t even tempted.
SOPHIE: They come out wrong. Sometimes. More and more.
ABBY: Why? What’s happening to him?
Sophie’s hands knot together, and she furrows her brow.
SOPHIE: Hard to . . . to say. Explain. I’m not good—I can’t . . .
ABBY: Not much of a talker?
Sophie nods.
ABBY: Can you get me out of here?
SOPHIE: No. But . . . a better place. Safe. Maybe. A little while. Harder to find you.
She beckons. Abby hesitates.
LIAM: Sneak thief liar brat bring her back I know she’s here. I see her in this mind. You hid her.
SOPHIE: Please.
ABBY: Yeah. Okay. Between the two of you . . . I’ll take the one with the face.
There is a loud shriek and the sound of massive wings beating.
SOPHIE: Hurry!
The video cuts out.
27
LIAM’S FACE WAS pale, gray tones in his brown skin as all the blood drained from it. “It made an echo out of me,” he said. “When I touched that black stuff, when I felt like I was getting walled off in my mind, it must have been . . . I don’t know. Learning me.”
“But something went wrong,” I said. I thought of Rivers, the back of his skull caved in. “I don’t think it can make echoes the way it used to,” I said slowly. “Something’s changed.”
“You,” Liam said. “It’s all been about you. Both of you.” He looked at my echo. She shrank back under his gaze, eyes fixed on her hands, which she twisted around each other with a whisper of skin against skin.
“Because I’m—we’re—like Abby said. Attuned. Special.” I spat out the word. “I’m what the Six-Wing has been looking for since it came to this place, but it lost me.” I shook my head in frustration. “We still don’t know how I survived. I remember drowning. I remember Hardcastle drowning me. But Mikhail found me in a boat— What boat? Where did it come from?”
A door banged open down the hall, and we jumped. A moment later Dr. Kapoor came striding into view, Kenny trailing. “What the hell is going on here?” Dr. Kapoor demanded. Kenny halted, gaping at my echo.
“What are you doing here?” Liam demanded. He put himself between us and her. That’s sweet of you, I thought inanely.
“I went to find you, before the mist,” Dr. Kapoor said. “You weren’t at Mrs. Popova’s, and you weren’t at home. The echoes are everywhere out there, and when I heard the gunshot . . .” She took a sharp breath. “But you’re all in one piece.”
“For now,” I said. “You locked the door, right?”
“Yes, much to the consternation of those creatures out there.” Dr. Kapoor said.
Mrs. Popova returned then, and she and Dr. Kapoor shared only a brief glance as greeting. “Everything’s secure,” Mrs. Popova said.
I swallowed against the taste of seawater. “What happened on Belaya Skala?” I asked Dr. Kapoor. I held up the video camera, and her eyes widened. “I remember you tried to stop him when he drowned me, but I don’t remember how I survived.”
She stared at me. And then she shut her eyes. “I knew we wouldn’t be able to hide from it forever. And I knew that I hadn’t done nearly enough to make up for . . .”
“At least you tried,” I said.
“And then I let him bury it,” she growled. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I helped hide all of this, because I was afraid of what it meant and I was afraid of what I’d done. When we got back, Dr. Breckenridge explained everything to us—that Theresa Landon founded the LARC to watch the island, not just the birds, and to try to find a way to destroy what her husband had worshiped. That is the work.”
“That’s what you’re trying to do with the sound equipment?” I asked.
She nodded. She had the same stiff posture as when she’d lectured me about counting chicks. “It was the military that realized the birds could travel into the echo worlds. And there was the song. They theorized it was sound frequencies that let the birds navigate, slip through. And those same frequencies bind the echo worlds together, bind them to this one. We thought if we could find the right frequency, we could create enough interference that the link would be severed. The bridge between the worlds would collapse.”
“Okay, hold on,” Kenny said. “Can someone please tell me what you’re all talking about? This sounds bonkers.”
“It’s a really long story,” I said.
“There’s a fucked-up supernatural world on the islands full of evil doubles of everyone here and a big fuck-off evil angel, and they want Sophia for some reason,” Liam rattled off.
“Decent summary,” Mrs. Popova noted, a touch amused.
“Oh. Huh,” Kenny said. I gave him an incredulous look. He spread his hands. “It explains a lot, you know? Everyone knows that island’s haunted.”
“I know why it wants me,” I said. I glanced at Sophie, but she had shrunk back. She didn’t have the words, so I would explain for her. “Abby told me there are people who are attuned to other worlds. The Six-Wing needed someone that was attuned to its world. To make an echo of. There’s a connection between us, the same kind of bridge that links the echo worlds to ours, and to the Six-Wing’s world.”
“You’re like a tuning fork,” Dr. Kapoor said. “The birds have learned to mimic the echo’s song, but it’s in your bones. You do it without thinking. If you strike the right note, you’ll make the link between the worlds strong enough that the Seraph—the true Six-Wing, the Eidolon beyond the gate—can wrench open its prison and step into our world.”
“Then why let me come?” I asked. “You knew who I was.”
“We haven’t been able to find the exact frequency we needed,” Dr. Kapoor said. “I thought if I could get you and Sophie in the same place, I might be able to isolate it. I knew it was a gamble, but . . .”
“But the echo worlds are expanding. At first they only touched Belaya Skala, and then all of Bitter Rock. By now they extend into the ocean. They’ll reach the mainland soon. People will die,” Mrs. Popova said.
“It was a hell of a risk,” I said.
“The Six-Wing can’t control Sophie. It can’t see inside her mind. I knew we’d have time before it realized you were here,” Dr. Kapoor replied.
“But it made an echo out of Liam. It saw inside his mind. It saw who I was,” I said. “That’s why the echoes are attacking. It’s coming for me.”
This was bigger than filling in the mystery of my past; bigger than finding Abby; bigger, even, than finding my mother, that lonely voice echoing down the corridors of my memory.
“I’ve done what I can to help. All these years—” Dr. Kapoor said, and anger flared through me. All these years, she’d sat and fiddled with her equipment and kept her secrets. She’d kept the secret that had poisoned this island, had preyed on it. That had destroyed my life.
The rage was like a storm, but there was no point in being angry at Dr. Kapoor for what she had or hadn’t done—I had to focus on what came next. And so I pushed that anger away. Into the void.
And my echo’s lips peeled back from her teeth. She let out an angry growl and rocked forward, digging her fingers roughly into her upper arms. Her eyes, the whites showing starkly around her irises, met mine, and a fraction of my anger washed back into me.
“Oh,” I whispered. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The anger ebbed. She made a mewling sound and drew back against the wall, pulling in on herself.
She’d borne it all. All my anger, all my fear. It hadn’t been an empty, uncaring void that held my rage and terror for me. It was her.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. But she shook her head, as if it didn’t matter.
“It’s all right. Because you’ve come back,” my echo said. “You’ve come back and now it ends, but how it ends, we don’t know.”
I could see my reflection in her eyes. My true reflection, mirrored as it should be. And I knew, from the faint vibration in my bones, that I could slip as easily into that other world as I could step through a doorway. “We’ll end it,” I told her.
“What if we can’t?” she asked.
“Then we can’t,” I replied. I took her hand and helped her up.
One of us was real.
One of us was the echo.
One of us had been saved.
One of us
had been abandoned.
But was I the real girl? Or was she? And was the abandoned child the one who had stayed in the echo, her mother’s arms around her, or the one cast out on the sea?
Neither of us had chosen our beginning or the shape of our lives. But we could choose an ending.
“What do we do?” Liam asked.
“I—” I said. I was uncertain. And yet I felt the answer, a lump in my chest waiting to force its way out, the way I had answered Lily without knowing how. I had known the answers because my echo did. Sophie, I thought. She called herself Sophie, not Sophia. She might have aged, stayed the perfect reflection of me, but time didn’t pass in the echo world. She was still Sophie. Still the child left behind.
We were connected. I knew the things that she knew. And then, standing there with our hands linked, reflected in one another’s eyes, I remembered.
28
“PLEASE,” I SAID. The girl with the camera was afraid but trying not to show it. There was a ghost with her, but she couldn’t see it. It shimmered beneath her skin, haunting her, but the sunlight would not let it breathe and be.
“Yeah. Okay. Between the two of you . . . I’ll take the one with the face,” said the girl.
The screaming came across the hills, chased swiftly by the thunder of the angel’s wings. It was a gift and a warning, and it meant we had little time. “Hurry!” I cried.
She was a clumsy thing, scrabbling over rocks and catching herself on her palms when she stumbled. But she followed. Not toward the traps: the throat of the bunker, with only one way in and one way out, or the church, the false haven where the angel watched. I brought her toward the north, where the birds roosted. The cliffs were silent now; the birds tended their young beyond the echo, where the persistent sun would let them grow.
We were nearly there when she fell. I grabbed for her, caught her wrist, but the camera tumbled from her hand and skidded down the side of the hill. She lunged for it. “No!” I told her. “No time.” We were almost to the cliffs. We were almost safe.
Our Last Echoes Page 23
