Echo 8

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  For ADELAIDE BEBB—died June 23, 1940, on the Seattle ferry Kalakala—who “found life too beautiful and at once too difficult.”*

  And for JASON, who finds all of life beautiful, even the difficult.

  You are an inspiration.

  * “Kalakala’s Table Set for Unseen Guest,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 13, 2002; Bremerton News-Searchlight, June 24, 1940.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Beyond Help

  The Messenger

  Entanglement

  Windows

  Offerings

  Compromised

  Denial

  Truth and Consequence

  Falling

  Sacrifice

  Jake

  Derelict

  Alpha

  Hide-and-Seek

  Dislocated

  Flailing

  Nothingman

  PSI Games

  Graduation Day

  Errant

  Survivors

  New Friends, Old Foes

  Foundation

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  About Echo 8’s Ghost

  Tor Books by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  About the Author

  Copyright

  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.

  —Dean Radin, Ph.D., Entangled Minds

  Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own.

  —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

  BEYOND HELP

  * * *

  But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one.

  —Bram Stoker, Dracula

  * * *

  Seattle Psi Training Institute—August 10, 2018

  THE 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 event—an 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 pain—but 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 of—”

  “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 handshake—months ago at the International Echo Summit in Washington, D.C.—they’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 subject—or 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.

  THE MESSENGER

  * * *

  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.

  —Professor Alexi Goff, University of Edinburgh, Echo Dossier

  * * *

  One week earlier

  TESS 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 respected—Tess’s mentor, Professor Alexi Goff.

  The post was dangerous, and Tess was young—the 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 unexpected—and familiar—face 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 gray—the 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 her—a 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 him—albeit long-distance—had 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 uncertainty—of deference—caused 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 fact—after his interviews with 5 and 6. But 7 was almost gone when they got him—hadn’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 Echoes—of conducting energy transfers without killing the donor—the 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.

  Yet Goff was dead.

  Abby slipped an arm around Tess, and she realized she’d begun to tremble. “I want you to take a couple of weeks off. Fly to Scotland for the service. You can decide about the appointment later.”

  Tess glanced again at Agent McGinnis, who stood waiting and watching. She didn’t want him here. She could feel the cracks in her composure forking and expanding, and she didn’t want him reporting back to his superiors how the new task force member had gone to pieces when she heard the news.

  “Why did they send you?” she asked.

  He was a cool customer. No hint of emotion.

  “I’ve been assigned to you,” he replied.

  Tess gripped the edge of the table, lips arcing down. “What do you mean ‘assigned to me’?”

  “Assigned to protect you.”

  “Protect me from…?” But she knew where this was going.

  “No one wants to see what happened to Goff happen to you. There’s growing evidence the Echoes are drawn to members of the task force. I thought you were aware.”

  Tess was aware. Goff wasn’t the first to die. He’d hypothesized there was some kind of entanglement involved—in the quantum sense, where entangled particles were able to share information across distances without contact. “Spooky action at a distance,” Einstein had called it. It was like the Echoes knew where to go for help, at least on a subconscious level.

  Though as of yet they hadn’t managed to help a single one.

  Despite all this, she didn’t quite buy the agent’s explanation. It felt like interference. Like they weren’t sure whether they could trust her to do her job. Goff had openly disapproved of the FBI’s policy regarding Echoes, and Tess suspected the disapproval ran both ways.

  “You don’t have to do this,” interrupted Abby. “Not for Goff, not for anyone. Tess…” Abby’s voice deepened. “I’m asking you not to do this.”

  Abby had complete authority over Tess in her role at the institute, but she could do nothing to stop this appointment, and both of them knew it. She was the only maternal figure in Tess’s life, however, and Tess appreciated her protective impulses.

  “Goff was the only one who understood,” Tess said simply. “Now it’s just me.”

  She did have to do this. She had believed in Goff, and his efforts had cost him his life. She couldn’t let that be for nothing. And she still believed it was the right thing to do.

  The director rose and turned from her, toward the window, resting her hands on her hips.

  Tess slipped off the edge of the table and glanced at her new colleague. “Welcome to Seattle, Agent McGinnis. If you’ll excuse me…”

  Tess was barely out the door when the first sob heaved out of her. She hurried down the corridor and up the central stairway toward her apartment.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs behind her.

  “Doctor, wait … I need to talk to you about—”

  She rounded on him, startled to find him close behind her. “Later, Agent McGinnis,” she snapped, her voice raw with grief.

  He sank backward a step, and the controlled lines of his face loosened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—”

  She turned and ran up to her apartment, closing and locking the door behind her.

  * * *

  —the two of you were so close.

  Ross felt like an ass. He turned and headed back down the stairs.

  They’d gotten off on the wrong foot now. Though really that had happened at their first meeting in D.C. On orders from the Bureau’s director, Ross had been seated next to her at the summit’s opening dinner. She’d taken an immediate dislike to him.

  I’m sure it had nothing to do with questioning the vali
dity of her life’s work. Asking her how it was possible to train people in a skill that had never been scientifically validated had probably not been his smartest move ever. Her resentment had been palpable. And her accusation that he was criticizing a field he knew nothing about had been deserved. It was a mistake someone in his position should not make. But when she’d explained her line of work to him over the bouillabaisse, she’d unknowingly pricked a nerve.

  He’d been ordered to stay close to her at the summit, and it soon became clear that the assignment had been compromised. It was difficult to subtly shadow someone who was actively avoiding you.

  He’d confessed his sins to Bureau Director Garcia, with far less fallout than he would have expected. He had not been reassigned. Garcia did not seem to care that Dr. Caufield hated him.

  But it was going to make his job a hell of a lot harder.

  She’d accepted an apology from him on the last day of the summit, but it hadn’t thawed her even minutely. Now he’d brought her news of the death of her colleague. He doubted he could recover with her, but he had his orders and he had to try.

  Instead of going back down to the conference room, he stopped on the second floor, where they’d assigned him the studio apartment directly below Dr. Caufield’s. He tossed his bag on the bed and started transferring his clothes to the dresser and closet. The room was spare, with battered secondhand furniture, but he’d slept in far worse places.

  His thoughts returned to Caufield and all he’d learned about her for this assignment. He’d scrolled through dozens of images of her on the ride to the summit location on the outskirts of the capital. As he’d studied her features, his gut had told him she was going to be difficult. His gut was hardly ever wrong.

  But it was hard not to wonder whether he’d created his own reality in that hour before their first meeting. And then fulfilled his own prophecy with that barbed comment at dinner. That was his problem with psi abilities in general. How much of it was simply self-deterministic, even if on a subconscious level?

  There was more to it than her being difficult, or a psi expert, though. When she’d taken her seat beside him—smiling warmly, her auburn hair wafting jasmine with every turn of her head—parts other than his gut had responded in unexpected ways. That was a recipe for disaster, and he had to consider the part it might have played in his antagonistic behavior.