Echo 8
Authors: Sharon Lynn Fisher
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For A
DELAIDE
B
EBBâ
died June 23, 1940, on the Seattle ferry
Kalakala
âwho “found life too beautiful and at once too difficult.”
*
And for J
ASON,
who finds all of life beautiful, even the difficult.
You are an inspiration.
Â
*
“
Kalakala
's Table Set for Unseen Guest,”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, February 13, 2002;
Bremerton News-Searchlight,
June 24, 1940.
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Contents
Tor Books by Sharon Lynn Fisher
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Quantum theory successfully describes physical behavior from the atomic to cosmological domains.⦠It would be astonishingly unlikely to find that one small domain, the one that our bodies and minds happen to inhabit, are somehow
not
best described as quantum objects.
âDean Radin, Ph.D.,
Entangled Minds
Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own.
âCharlotte Brontë,
Jane Eyre
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But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one.
âBram Stoker,
Dracula
Seattle Psi Training InstituteâAugust 10, 2018
T
HE MAN
on the floor was transparent.
He tracked Tess as she crossed the room, stopping a couple meters away from him. He studied her, and she knew he was trying to understand. Trying to remember.
Her heart ached for him. He was human, after all. At least he had been.
“How do you feel?” Tess asked, taking another step toward him.
“Close enough, Doctor.” The low, cautioning voice came not from the fading visitor, but from the FBI agent who'd moved to stand behind her. Tess did what she usually did when Ross McGinnis spoke to her in that tone. She ignored him.
“Where ⦠am ⦠I?” The visitor's voice scraped like dry leaves blowing across pavement. “Who are you?”
“I can answer those questions for you, but⦔ Tess swallowed. “It's going to come as a shock.”
He blinked at her, and his gaze slid around the lab. The equipment had been removed, leaving nothing to look at but the exposed brick walls, painted ductwork, and gleaming hardwood floors.
“Where am I?” he repeated.
There was no time to make him understand. He had maybe an hour to live. But he deserved what little explanation she could offer.
“You've come here from a different Earth.” His gaze snapped back to her face, and she could imagine what he was thinking. “There was a catastrophic impact eventâan asteroid. The destruction knocked some of you loose from your own reality. Brought you to ours. We don't know how or why.”
He stared at her, long and hard.
“Who are you?” His voice was stronger now, more insistent. But it still had a hollow, echoing quality.
“My name is Tess. I'm a parapsychologist.”
One corner of his mouth twisted. Tess started to ask if he was in painâbut then realized the half-dead transparent man was smirking at her.
“This is a joke, right?”
She frowned. “I'm sorry. No.”
Tess debated about how much to tell him. Compassion for the dying man warred with her sense of duty. She had a responsibility to glean as much information as she could from him. The lives of people on her own Earth depended on it.
“What's your name?” she asked as he continued to study her.
“Jake.”
“Jake, I'd like to ask you some questions.”
“How about you answer a few first. Like why do I feel like a pile of grated cheese?”
“That's complicated.” She knelt on the floor so he wouldn't have to look up at her. “Your dislocation left you unable to sustain life energy.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“I'm afraid I don't have a more scientific explanation for you. The impact somehow relaxed the laws of physics as we understand them. Weakened boundaries between our universes, which allowed some of you to pass through to our Earth.”
“I got a D in high school physics,” said Jake, “but I'm thinking that shouldn't be possible.”
“Some scientists believe we might one day be able to communicate with parallel worlds, and communication is just an exchange of energy. But the short answer is since you're here, it's possible. And without the connection to your own world, well ⦠you're broken, for lack of a better word.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.” His eyes searched around the room. “There are others like me?”
“We know of as many as twenty. And more keep popping up.”
“Where are they?”
She studied his face, which was little more than a ghostly residue. “They died, Jake.”
“I'm dying too.”
“Without a transfusion of energy, yes.”
He gave her a tired smile. “I don't think my insurance covers that.”
“I'd help you if I could. Unfortunately the effects ofâ”
“Doctor,” interrupted the agent, “I think you've told him enough.”
The Echo's ticking clock, and her compassion for his situation, shaved a slice off her already thin tolerance for the Bureau's interference. Glancing up she said, “Agent McGinnis, please do your job and allow me to do mine.”
The agent's dark eyes registered no surprise. From their first handshakeâmonths ago at the International Echo Summit in Washington, D.C.âthey'd generated neon sparks of animosity that had singed anyone within a three-meter radius.
As she glared at him, his gaze cut back to Jake. The agent frowned. “Doctor⦔
She returned her attention to her subjectâor to the spot on the floor where he had been.
“No,” she groaned. She stepped toward the empty corner, kneeling.
“Careful, Doctor,” warned the agent.
A dead bulb in the overhead light flickered on, and she jumped. Glancing down at the floor she noticed something that looked like chalk dust. She reached out and touched it with the tip of a finger.
“Tess!” the agent shouted. But it was too late.
White heat seared up her arm, and she screamed.
Sharp pains slashed down her body, a riptide of razors. Tess's life gushed out of her and into Jake, who rematerialized before her eyes. He gave a long, low moan, and Tess felt him strengthening, pulsing with her energy.
He rose to his knees as she fell back onto the floor, head striking the hardwood. He crouched over her, hands sliding up the outsides of her thighs. She gave another cry of agony.
From far away she could hear Agent McGinnis shouting. But Jake's arms coiled round her like serpents, and Tess knew she was beyond help.
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Though they have proven malignant thus far, I'm convinced they are not
malign
. They are not murderous by nature. As with any predator, we're dealing with a survival instinct.
âProfessor Alexi Goff, University of Edinburgh,
Echo Dossier
One week earlier
T
ESS WALKED
slowly to the conference room, dreading the impromptu meeting with her supervisor, Seattle Psi Training Institute director Abigail Carmichael.
Tess knew Abby had just received notification about Tess's appointment to the Echo Task Force. She would almost certainly try to talk Tess out of the post, despite the fact Tess had been nominated by a man they both respectedâTess's mentor, Professor Alexi Goff.
The post was dangerous, and Tess was youngâthe youngest task force member by a decade. But the White House had approved the appointment, and Tess had accepted. Everything was official now.
Opening the door to the conference room, Tess was surprised to find two people waiting for her. The unexpectedâand familiarâface scrambled the mental notecards she'd assembled for her anticipated argument with Abby.
Black hair and a suit to match, accented with a vividly blue tie. Handsome and clean-shaven, with eyes that might be blue or grayâthe only thing indecisive about him, in her experience.
He took a few steps toward her, and she glimpsed a shoulder holster as he offered to shake her hand.
“Tess,” began Abby, “I believe you've met Special Agent Ross McGinnis.”
“Yes,” replied Tess, taking his hand.
She'd never understood why the Bureau had sent this man to the summit. He was clearly hostile to the sort of work she did. She was used to skeptics. To rigid, fear-based ideas about science that hardened even the highly educated in the face of compelling evidence. But someone like him didn't belong at a summit created to address a very real international threat. Dozens had died at the hands of Echoes. Many more might if they couldn't find a way to stop them. This was no pseudoscientific woo-woo.
She supposed he'd had similar reservations about herâa young postdoc rubbing shoulders with the world's greatest minds. She questioned it herself daily. But Goff was in the thick of it, and her collaboration with himâalbeit long-distanceâhad rendered her more qualified than even the Nobel laureates in attendance.
“What brings you to Seattle, Agent McGinnis?” She offered him a chilly smile.
He exchanged a glance with Abby, and the tiny gesture of uncertaintyâof deferenceâcaused her heart to jump into her throat.
“What's happened?”
Abby came a step closer, fingers brushing Tess's arm. “Agent McGinnis has brought some news about Professor Goff.”
Tess backed away, bracing a hand against the conference room table. “He's dead.”
She didn't need confirmation; she felt the truth of it in her gut. Might have felt it before, had she not been preoccupied with the appointment.
She sank onto the edge of the table, and Abby moved to sit beside her. They both glanced at the agent.
Nodding, he said, “Six hours ago. The fade attacked him.”
Tess closed her eyes. Echo 7, the only one currently in confinement. “Are you sure about this?”
“I spoke to the SAS agent assigned to Goff. I'm sorry, Dr. Caufield.”
Goff was thorough and methodical. He had taken every precaution. Tess knew because she'd been videoconferencing with him since 7 was picked up by the SAS. Before that, in factâafter his interviews with 5 and 6. But 7 was almost gone when they got himâhadn't fed in days. Had Goff seen the window of opportunity closing and started taking risks? Until someone could discover a nonlethal way of sustaining Echoesâof conducting energy transfers without killing the donorâthe current shoot-on-sight policy would stand. That was an escalating tragedy neither she nor Goff could stomach. Because anyone who spent five minutes with one could see they weren't monsters.