Our Last Echoes

by Kate Alice Marshall

  “There are many,” Sophie said. “They aren’t all real at once.” She looked at me helplessly, her words failing her, and I stared at her, trying to put her knowledge into words.

  “There are hundreds and hundreds of layers of the echo world,” I said slowly. “But most of the time they’re sort of—collapsed into each other. They only become real enough to exist in when you . . . well, when you exist in them already. You don’t always notice when you fall out of one and into another, but to get to the last one—or rather, the first one—you always have to go through there.”

  I pointed at the bunker. It was where it always was, in every echo. I wondered what had been there before the bunker was built, in the real world. The Six-Wing, and the echo world by extension, had seized on it and embedded it right into the center of this mad architecture.

  The door in this echo was made of the same bone-white wood as the trees, and the red sap had dried over it in rivulets that looked disturbingly like veins. Liam hauled it open, revealing the dark corridor beyond, the familiar doors to the left and right. Inside, the bunker looked perfectly normal. It was the connective tissue between all the different echoes. We fumbled with flashlights for a moment.

  “Hello?” a voice called.

  We whirled around. Dr. Kapoor half raised her shotgun.

  “That was Lily,” Liam said.

  “Lily’s dead,” I said.

  “I know,” Liam said. “I know that.” And yet he was peering into the mist, something almost as solid as hope in his gaze. Could there be any way—?

  “It’s a trick,” Dr. Kapoor said. “It makes copies, that’s all.”

  “Not anymore,” Sophie said. She twisted her hands together. “They come out wrong. They all come out wrong.”

  “Liam?” Lily called. “Sophia?” She came closer with staggering, lurching steps. There was something wrong about her silhouette in the mist. Something misshapen. “Help me. I got away, but I—” She coughed, whined.

  The indistinct outline of her body was solidifying, the shape of her clearer. There was movement where there shouldn’t be, something jerking and tugging at her side while her head lolled to the left. “Please,” Lily called.

  “You don’t want to see,” Sophie said. She retreated back toward the bunker.

  Liam let out a breath, the not-quite-hope extinguished. He followed Sophie.

  The thing in the mist screamed. It threw itself forward, racing along on all fours, its grotesquely lengthening arms pulling it along the ground faster than we could react. It leapt from the mist and straight for Liam, its limbs streaked with purplish veins like a blood infection.

  It had Lily’s face, but it was wrenched to the side, her neck crooked and a tumorous wing bulging from it. Slashes and open sores covered her body as if she’d tried to slice the traitorous growths from her skin.

  I didn’t think—I just threw myself in her way. She struck me and we toppled to the ground, her hair stringy, her mouth a razor-slash of a smile, too full of teeth. She had one arm around my neck before I could react, and then she was pulling us both back into the trees, scuttling crab-like on limbs that bent wrong and reached too far.

  The others screamed. I caught a glimpse of the shotgun muzzle and Dr. Kapoor’s furious eyes, but the Lily-thing held me between her and the gun, and then we were vanishing into the mist.

  “Where’d they go?” I heard Dr. Kapoor demand. “Did you see?”

  The forest was a maze of mist and identical trees. I twisted, tried to pull free, but she held me tight, cooing softly against my cheek.

  “One to bring and one more to fetch. Even broken dolls have uses, and I’m oh-so useful now,” she whispered, and her tongue darted out, scraping my face with a quick cat’s-tongue rasp.

  I tried to scream. Tried to breathe. But there wasn’t enough air in my lungs—

  Water closing over me, darkness rushing in—

  She charged out of the mist, half-blind—Dr. Kapoor, wielding the shotgun like a club, slamming it into the Lily-creature’s elbow. I heard bone crack. Her grip went slack. I rolled free, gasping, and then came the blast, so loud I heard nothing else but ringing as I clawed my way upright, surging to my feet. I staggered, but Dr. Kapoor grabbed my elbow, steadying me.

  I didn’t look down. Didn’t want to see. The ringing in my ears faded.

  “Are you all right? In one piece?” Dr. Kapoor asked. The brisk efficiency of her voice was belied by the worry in her eyes.

  “I’m okay,” I said, though with the adrenaline coursing through me I couldn’t feel my body enough to be sure if it was true.

  “Let’s get—” Dr. Kapoor began, but she didn’t finish.

  “Help me.” Lily’s voice. Lily’s shadow, off to the left.

  “Please.” Lily again—but this one was off to the right, this form tall, like it had been seized and stretched by some great hand.

  “Help,” she called, her voice garbled with the clamoring of birds, her figure a swarm of shadows approaching from straight ahead—a woman at the center with demented creatures flapping crookedly around her.

  And there were more. They were everywhere.

  “Get back to the bunker,” Dr. Kapoor said calmly. “Run and don’t look back.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. But you’re not going to wait for me. Clear?” Dr. Kapoor said in the same even tone she used to instruct me in how to fill a spreadsheet properly.

  The Lily to the left lurched forward. The blast of the shotgun made my ears ring. The figure dropped with a wet thud. But there were more shadows, more voices, pleading and whimpering and calling.

  “Now,” Dr. Kapoor commanded, and I obeyed.

  I ran through the mist, through the trees, following the thread that ran between my heart and Sophie’s. I didn’t need to know the way to the bunker, because I knew the way to her. I’d always known the way back to her, but I hadn’t understood.

  I burst from the mist to find Sophie and Liam waiting at the bunker door. The shotgun roared behind me; the mist lit up. Then again. “Where’s my mum?” Liam demanded.

  “She said not to wait,” I told him, shaking my head helplessly. He leaned forward, as if to run out after her.

  “Sophia,” someone called. Not Lily this time. Some other voice, some other throat—the voice was a stranger’s, but they knew my name. It came from behind us, from up over the hill.

  “Sophie, Sophia,” another voice sang.

  “We have to go,” Sophie whispered.

  “My mum’s still out there,” Liam said.

  “We can’t wait,” I said. I had always been good at making people do what I wanted them to, what I needed them to.

  Liam nodded. He stepped inside the bunker.

  The echoes were coming. I looked again toward the trees, in the direction of the shotgun blasts. Rocks skittered down from the hill up above.

  I tore myself away, plunged back into the mouth of the bunker, and slammed the door shut behind me. On the inside, the door was the more familiar steel, and I threw the lock, fighting with the rusted mechanism. Bodies slammed against the outside, gibbering and cackling.

  Distantly, a muffled shotgun blast rang out.

  Liam slid down into a crouch, fingers digging into his scalp. I knelt next to him, but I wasn’t sure what I should do. Touch him? Tell him it was okay? I’d never really been close enough to someone to offer comfort. I didn’t know how it was supposed to go.

  “A few hours ago I thought she was the enemy,” he said. “Now she’s gone before I—”

  “She’s not gone,” I said fiercely. “You’ll see.”

  “I thought you were done lying to me,” he said. I flinched away, the hand I had raised, almost touching him, curling against my belly instead. And then, aware of the process in a way I had rarely been before,
I felt myself step away from what I felt—not fear or distress this time, but what I felt for Liam. Because it was too strange and too immense. Because I didn’t know what to do with caring for someone so intensely and suddenly, and I couldn’t help his pain if I was lost in it with him.

  Sophie took in a sharp breath, but she caught my eye. She could carry that awhile for me.

  “Listen,” I said, without the weight of grief to dull the words. “If anyone can survive out there, it’s your mom. And she’s got the guns. She’ll make it, and she’ll find a way out. She’s done it before. But we can’t let worrying slow us down. Do you understand?”

  He looked at me with hatred in his eyes. But the part of me that cared was safely guarded, safely tucked away in Sophie’s heart. And then the hatred softened back into sorrow as he cast away his misplaced anger. I took his hand and helped him to his feet, and if he didn’t quite meet my eyes, he at least wasn’t glaring poison at me anymore.

  A footstep scraped behind us. I jumped—and then I laughed in sheer relief and joy.

  Abby.

  “Hey, guys,” she said. She stepped forward into the light of our flashlights. “What did I miss?”

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Recorded by Sophia Novak

  JUNE 30, 2018, TIME UNKNOWN

  Abby drops down to one knee at the top of the stairs. From her pocket, she pulls out a pale crystal and brushes white dust from it. Salt, perhaps. She sets it on the top step, and then opens a small knife. She cuts the side of her hand, letting the blood drip onto the crystal.

  ABBY: An anchor. It should hold a little while.

  Abby starts down the stairs. Footsteps ring on the metal steps.

  LIAM: Where are you taking us?

  SOPHIA: To my mother. Right?

  Abby stops. She half turns and looks at Sophia, and perhaps it is the light of the flashlights, but she looks weary and worn, as if she’s spent a month in this place, not a day.

  ABBY: She isn’t what she was, Sophia. This place has changed her.

  SOPHIA: But she’s alive.

  Her voice breaks on the word. As if it’s a dangerous notion to voice. Abby looks grim.

  ABBY: I don’t know if that’s the right word for it.

  She continues down the stairs. At every landing she stops and sets out another crystal, and relinquishes another measure of blood.

  Abby begins to pant, as if from exertion, though their pace is not strenuous.

  SOPHIA: Are you okay?

  ABBY: Something’s wrong. We should have reached the bottom by now.

  LIAM: Do you hear that? Someone’s singing.

  SOPHIE: It’s coming. It’s found us.

  Metal creaks above them. Sophia trains the camera on the dark above, and the flashlights shine along the underside of the metal steps. Down the walls comes a rush of dark mold.

  ABBY: Come on!

  They clatter down the stairs, but only keep going down and down and down.

  ABBY: The blood and the salt. It’s supposed to keep the way open. Keep it the same. It isn’t . . . it isn’t working. The Six-Wing isn’t supposed to be able to stop us like this, but—

  SOPHIE: Living blood. It requires living blood.

  ABBY: Sorry, do you know something I don’t? Because I don’t remember dying.

  SOPHIE: No. But you carry the dead. You’re haunted.

  LIAM: Aren’t we all?

  ABBY: This is no time for poetry, Harry Potter.

  LIAM: Harry Potter? Is that seriously the only British thing you can think of?

  ABBY: Fish and chips. Bangers and mash.

  SOPHIA: Can you two stop bickering for one minute?

  ABBY: I don’t know what to do.

  Something clatters and bangs against the walls up above. Sophie looks up.

  SOPHIE: You go. I stay. I can make it let you go for a little while. Long enough.

  SOPHIA: Wait a minute. You aren’t giving yourself to that thing!

  LIAM: Guys?

  SOPHIE: It won’t hurt me. Not yet.

  LIAM: Guys!

  They whip around. Their flashlights converge on the landing above. It should bathe the whole landing in light, but the figure there defies illumination. Its edges are like ink dropped into water, dissolving without ever losing its substance. Its body is human in outline, but it is like an absence in the world. Its wings are half-folded, all six of them, made of the same black void as the rest of the being. The image stutters, flickering back and forth like a digital glitch. Not quite there, not quite here.

  Sophie steps toward it.

  SOPHIA: Sophie, no—

  She snatches for Sophie’s hand, but Sophie steps smoothly out of reach, walking calmly up the steps toward the creature. She stretches out her hands, murmuring something the microphone doesn’t quite catch. The creature retreats a step, the movement uncertain.

  SOPHIE: It’s all right. It’s what must happen.

  She looks over her shoulder. There is fear in her eyes, but determination too.

  SOPHIE: Go. Find Mother. I’ll be ready.

  The creature of shadow and void spreads its wings, and leaps upon her. Sophie screams, her calm torn away, but before Sophia or anyone else can move to help her, they are gone—the Six-Wing, the echo-girl, even the mold that covered the walls moments ago.

  All that remains is the distant sound of wings.

  31

  I SHUT MY eyes, not to block out the image of what had just happened, but to focus. There—Sophie was there. The sense of her. The sensations of her, her heartbeat quick, mouth sour with adrenaline. Alive, and not in pain, and not afraid—or not only afraid, a storm of other feelings clashing within her, too chaotic to tease apart or interpret.

  It’s okay, she’d told that thing, like she was comforting it. What did that mean?

  Meanwhile, the stones were screaming.

  It was a tortured sound, more tearing than grinding, and we clapped our hands over our ears as it went on and on and on. The walls buckled. The stairs collapsed into each other like a twisting kaleidoscope, and then everything snapped into brutal focus. The Six-Wing’s hold relinquished, the stairs led down, as they should, to a concrete floor, to a steel door.

  Abby lurched down the last few steps and to the concrete floor. Her knees buckled. She caught herself in a crouch, and Liam rushed to help her back to her feet. Her skin was the same gray as the walls around us, her lips pale and cracked.

  Alive, I told myself, looking upward into the dark. Alive. Stay that way, I willed my echo.

  “I’m good,” Abby said, pulling free of Liam’s support. She wavered, but stayed upright, and held up a warning hand when he started to reach out to her again. Oil and water still.

  I set my hand against the steel door handle. Something soft and wet gave beneath my fingers, but I suppressed my shudder and shoved the door open, revealing the round room. The memory room, I’d called it when Lily asked me what lay beyond, and now I understood why. They were her memories, of course. Sophie’s. Even her handprints, here and there, growing from the soft, pudgy hand of a toddler to the long, slender fingers of the gaunt girl I knew.

  God, what had her life been? Wandering through this tortured world? Had she seen glimpses of my life in her dreams, the way I’d seen hers? No one aged here, but she did, tugged along in the river of time by my passage through it.

  “Like Orpheus into the underworld,” Liam quipped. “I hope we can sing sweetly enough for Hades.”

  “You are such a nerd,” Abby wheezed. She jerked her chin toward the tunnel. “That way.”

  It was the only way, but someone still needed to say it, or we would have stood forever in that round room. We walked single file, and while we had to squeeze through a few narrower spots, we made it through—through to the last door,
set in stone the color of a corpse.

  Outside, everything was the same color. The sea, the sky, the stone. Not one blade of grass grew. This whole island was a grave. And it was the nearest thing to the world the Six-Wing wanted to unleash.

  “This way,” Abby said, setting out. Liam took my hand. I looked at him, startled.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Sorry for the hatred in his eyes before. But he didn’t need to apologize. He didn’t have an echo to bear the horrible things that thrashed and snarled within him. He had to tame them himself. I was the lucky one.

  But now I was alone.

  * * *

  Abby led us to the white rocks, along the track worn smooth by years of Sophie’s passage. It was a miracle that she’d survived. A miracle that she’d stayed sane—or mostly sane.

  I reached for my flashlight, but Abby put a restraining hand on my wrist. “We’ll wait out here,” she said. Not understanding, but unwilling to disobey, I handed her my flashlight and faced the shadows of the second chamber. I remembered this place. I remembered her voice. But I couldn’t remember the sight of her. Her face. Her touch. Sophie had hidden those from me, and I was afraid to find out why.

  “It’s . . .” Abby began. It’s okay, maybe. But it would have been a lie, I could see that in her face. “It’s bad,” she said instead. “But she’s still her. And she’s been waiting for you.” Liam met my eyes, and it was as warm as if he’d wrapped his arms around me.

  This is what I’d come here for. And so I walked into the dark.

  The angle of the walls almost completely blocked the light from outside from reaching the small space. Only the light that reflected off the white walls managed to filter in, and as my eyes adjusted, I could make out the contours of the room. The craggy walls. The low ceiling that I had to duck to avoid. And the form at the back of the room, against the wall, sitting with her knees to one side, arms limp at her back, head hanging low.

  “Sophia,” she said. Her voice was the hiss of the tide across a forgotten beach. “You came back.” She lifted her face. Her hair hung in stringy, stiff sections around it, and salt tracked down her cheeks, the accumulation of a lifetime’s tears.