Echo Read online

  “What power did the original Cooper have?” Sky asked.

  “More than a few. Psychic surgery, levitation,” Isabelle said. “It’s strange we were able to put these powers into our technology—our healing rods, our anti-grav gurneys—but not into our bodies.”

  “Is that how you climbed the side of the building?” Sky asked, fighting to keep the fear out of her voice.

  Isabelle looked at the window, then glanced back with a wicked grin. The next thing Sky knew, her grav-gun was in Isabelle’s hand, and a blast hit Sky square in the chest.

  33

  Danny dove for Tommy, tackling him out of the line of fire. The grav-gun left a gaping hole in the wall where the blast hit. The door was open, as was the window, and Danny had no idea which way Isabelle had exited. For all he knew, she could teleport.

  “Morrigan? Sky?” he called.

  The table rattled, and Danny heard the thump of limbs against the table legs. Sky writhed and flailed, struggling against an invisible assailant, making as much noise as she possibly could without breath.

  “Sky!” Danny cried, scrambling to her, pressing her flat onto her back. There was a giant bruise on her neck and a bump on her shoulder that suggested her collarbone might be broken. Danny must have pushed too close to the injury, because Sky’s eyes rolled back into her head.

  “Hyproxin?” Morrigan asked. “Is there any left?”

  “She has some in her,” Danny said, though he didn’t know how it would hold up against this. They’d made the tea weak on purpose since they weren’t planning to sleep for very long. Sky’s lips were already blue. Danny pinched her jaw, forcing her mouth open, and she sprayed saliva. She needed something stronger than tea!

  Running to the bedroom, he searched the sheets for the sealed bag. He shook out the blanket and loose bits and bobs scattered across the floor, including the Hyproxin pouch. Returning to their kitchen, he scoured the cabinets for something he could use as a filter. There was gauze on the table—they’d used it to nurse Amanda and Tommy’s cuts earlier. That would have to do.

  “Morrigan, get me water!” Danny ordered.

  Taking a leaf from the pouch, Danny spat on it to moisten it, then rubbed it against Sky’s tongue.

  “Don’t swallow,” Danny said, praying the words because Sky was unconscious. “This is going to burn.”

  Morrigan brought a bowl of water. Not wasting any time, Danny wrapped the leaf in the gauze and dipped it in the water. Pulling back Sky’s lips, he tucked the herb into her cheek. Sky gasped, her panic morphing into a fight.

  “Stay calm. I’ve got you,” Danny said.

  “Where’s Amanda?” Morrigan asked, running for the door, but stopping before crossing the threshold. The guards that were supposed to be there were missing. “Tommy, did you see where she went?”

  “She’s gone,” Tommy said. “She ran.”

  “Tommy, go after her. Get her to the NR lab and finish this,” Danny said.

  Tommy nodded. He was sad, and his movements were slow, but he left without questioning. Fearing he’d manipulated the man, Danny glanced at the table, but the bracelet was missing.

  Sky’s hand patted the ground searching for her weapon. Isabelle must have taken the bracelet and the grav-gun. Tommy was in danger, but there was no way to call him back.

  Turning her head to the side, Sky tried to spit out the gauze.

  “No, hold that in. It’s the Hyproxin. It’ll help you breathe,” he said.

  “Air,” she wheezed, pushing it out with her tongue. Danny dipped some clean gauze in the pitcher and rinsed the inside of her mouth. She choked on a few droplets of water, then fainted again. Danny soaked the leaf more thoroughly, added an extra layer of wrapping, and put it under her tongue.

  “We need to get more of this into your bloodstream before you take that nap,” Danny said. He reached to shake her shoulder, saw the giant bruise again, and shook her leg instead. “I’m watching over you. I’ll keep you breathing.”

  Michael burst into the room and dove onto the floor next to them.

  “Careful!” Danny cried. Both Michael and Sky thrashed, but then Michael laid next to her, pressing his body to hers, splaying one hand over her sternum. A moment later, they were breathing in unison. Sky’s eyes fluttered open, and she pushed out the gauze wrap again. Her breathing remained steady, matching the rise and fall of Michael’s chest.

  “What is he doing?” Morrigan demanded. “Get him away from her!”

  “I think he’s helping her breathe,” Danny said. “Is he making you breathe?”

  Sky nodded, her eyes clouding with terror.

  “Help!” Morrigan cried, yelling into the hall, then finding the comm tablet Ryndam had left them. “Help!”

  “Morrigan!” Danny cried.

  “She’s out there,” Morrigan said. “Isabelle Cooper, the hybrid. And we have no idea what powers she has! And now he’s here?!”

  “That’s right,” Danny said, frowning at Michael. He was supposed to be confined in Building Thirty-seven, in a cell separate from his mother, by his own request. He’d escaped again. The confinement bracelets had no effect on him. Danny tapped Michael’s shoulder. “Michael, how did you know to come here?”

  “Amanda told me.”

  Danny closed his eyes. Somewhere in the spirit realm, Amanda was still alive and watching over them.

  Tommy chased Isabelle across the monument park to the water center where the pipes led out of the city. With the main gate locked down, it was the only way out of the city.

  “Isabelle!” he called after her. “Wait!”

  “Get away from me, Tommy!” she warned. “I know you’re on their side. I don’t know how you convinced me to talk to them. I see power. You have none. You can’t make me help them.”

  He felt her psychic push, but she didn’t have Michael’s strength. “We had a plan, Isabelle. You promised to look—”

  “What does it matter, Tommy? The plan was not to stay in the city!” Isabelle said, whipping around to face him. She had Sky’s grav-gun in her trembling hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to point it at him. “The plan was to run. Why string them along by making it look like anything else? How will it help?”

  Tommy kicked himself for believing he could help. He’d run away. He was already fifteen miles from the city, and he’d come back to save Amanda. The kiss with Isabelle had been a lie. He’d seen Aunt Sky kiss Danny and get him to do things. Michael kissed Morrigan. Hawk had only teased about kissing, and Tommy bent to his will.

  “What about Ian?” Tommy asked. “We could save her, too.”

  “Ian can’t go to Nola,” Isabelle said. “She’s not my twin anymore. I’m an original. I can start fresh. This is my way out.”

  “That’s my plan, too. Run,” Tommy said. “I came back for you. We should go to the lab and make sure Ian finished what she needed. Make sure you’re okay.”

  “You don’t have your brother’s power of persuasion. You are nothing but a Fisher clone with an extra chromosome. I’m something better. I may be the first real Cooper in centuries. And I have power,” she said, running her hand under his shirt, pressing her finger into the divot where his breast should have been.

  Tommy felt a tingling under his skin as she began her psychic surgery and jerked back. His stomach twisted. He hated anyone to touch him there. But just like Michael, she had a pull on his mind, and he couldn’t run. A real Cooper could repair his injured breast with a thought. Or she could stop his heart if she detected his betrayal.

  “Fine. Let’s go to Nola. I don’t want to make the trek alone,” she whispered, her lips brushing his. “What else is there for you here? There, you can be whatever you want. You won’t have to hide anymore.”

  “I don’t have to hide,” he echoed, feeling her control. Corin had told stories of hybrids like Michael—people with the power to read minds and see the future. He hated the idea of being surrounded by people like Michael.

  “We can be togeth
er,” Isabelle said.

  “It’s not your body.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said, stroking up and down his arms with her middle finger. “I can make you happy.”

  She moved in to seduce him and he stiffened automatically. He’d been through the song and dance of sex as a test subject, and he hated that she’d triggered that memory. There was no comfort in her touch, nor lust in her eyes. He wished she’d look at him the way Amanda did. With that mix of love and lust.

  “Stay right here,” she whispered, backing out of the kiss. She positioned herself in the pipe to escape, and suddenly the leash on Tommy’s brain snapped. He snatched her from the water, stole the grav-gun, and shot her.

  Jack Fisher sat in Chelsea Granger’s office, sickened at the mess she’d created. She thought she could help a friend and help her boys in the process, and now all she had was a pile of regrets that would culminate in both her and Michael’s execution. Who even knew what had happened to Tommy?

  There was no ethical or medical debate going on. There were only stunned musings into the philosophy of souls and consciousness.

  “It flies in the face of religion—a soul returning to fill a memory pattern. It makes me wonder how many souls we’ve altered with our NR tampering,” Chelsea said.

  “Or snuffed out. Where’s Amanda?” Jack asked. “Michael thinks she’s still out there. He sees her.”

  “Michael is not a reliable witness,” Chelsea said. “He has no formal education and no practical way to give context to his fantasy. He’s been through so much NR, his soul is probably in pieces, if he ever had one.”

  “What do you mean ‘if?’ Why are we the only ones who can’t tell that he’s a person? He’s an original with supernatural power, and you still won’t give him the status of a person!” Jack cried. “The spirits were right to take our powers from us. We’ve sacrificed so many lives in the name of our science. We dehumanize ourselves!”

  “You Fishers and your chronic rage,” Chelsea muttered.

  Jack jumped from her chair and stormed out, nearly plowing over Anabelle Granger at the door.

  “Chels!” Anabelle complained. Grangers were not immune to rage. “Why would you remap Isabelle without letting me speak to her first? You know—”

  “I know,” Chelsea said, likely alluding to a treasured friendship. “You’re welcome to speak to Isabelle as soon as we find her again. She gave me a black eye in her haste to escape earlier. Self-preservation. Sign of a soul.”

  “What are you talking about? She’s in there now with that lab rat!” Anabelle exclaimed.

  “Michael?” Jack asked. She’d had no doubt Michael could escape confinement again, but she’d expected him to run to Morrigan.

  “No, the one that looks like a Fisher,” Anabelle said.

  “Tommy,” Jack exclaimed, running for the NR chamber, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Chelsea pushed her out of the way, barging into the NR control room first. Tommy sat at the console, deftly operating the machine. His long hair was pulled back, a few wisps sticking to the shallow scratches on his temple. He had a scraggly day’s growth of dark hair shadowing his cheeks.

  “Rat, what do you think you’re doing?” Chelsea snarled.

  A ripple of tension passed through Tommy’s body and a flush rose up his neck. Jack could tell her son was a hairsbreadth from exploding in anger. The last time she saw that look on him, he’d punched a hole through Michael’s bedroom door.

  “Tommy, you have to stop,” Jack said, as calmly as she could.

  “I know what I’m doing, Mom,” he said. “Isabelle taught me.”

  Jack peered through the observing window into the operations area. Amanda lay on the table, restraints secured over her body. Her clothes were wet, her hair tangled and swept over head so that the dripping ends hung off the side of the bed. There were dark bruises on her face and neck.

  “She has bruises. Where did she get those bruises?” Jack asked, worried that Tommy had already had an outburst.

  “That is easy to heal. Show me her current status,” Chelsea said, leaning over the console and calling up the images on her own. “No, this is all wrong.”

  “Of course it is. It’s intermediate,” Tommy deadpanned. “That’s why I can’t stop now.”

  Chelsea exchanged a look with Jack, then called up a few more images.

  “If you kill her, you’re dead,” Chelsea growled.

  “Kill who? Amanda or Isabelle?” Tommy asked. “I need to concentrate. Please leave.”

  “I can’t let you do this alone,” Chelsea argued.

  “It’s better if I do, isn’t it?” Tommy asked, his anger dissipating. “That’s why none of the other techs volunteered to help. They’re too afraid to have a death on their records.”

  Jack shuddered. It was true. The other techs lacked experience, but in truth, they were more worried about their careers than Isabelle becoming Amanda again. Chelsea rubbed her face, then looked at Jack.

  “Give him a chance.” Jack mouthed the words and Chelsea nodded unhappily. But given Amanda’s current state, there was no going back. The only option now was for another tech to take over.

  “You really think you can do this?” Chelsea asked him.

  “Not really,” Tommy said. “But someone has to try, and I’m expendable. I should have been a cadaver long ago.”

  Jack put a hand on her son’s shoulder, her guilt rising again. She’d tried to protect him, and she’d never realized how much he was hurting inside. “You are not expendable,” she whispered. “You are brave, and I love you.”

  34

  Danny stood to stretch his legs, but he didn’t go far from the bed. Sky was in a dead sleep. Michael lay next to her, his hand on her chest, his intense dreams rattling him the way Sky’s usually did. Danny worried that he’d taken over her spirit and she would die soon.

  Morrigan sat sideways on the bed, taking the spot Danny had vacated. She turned Sky’s face toward her, suctioning out pink saliva, running the knitter over the soft tissue to repair it.

  “I’m supposed to be talking to her while she sleeps,” Danny said. “It helps when I talk.”

  “Michael is taking care of her,” Morrigan said. “He saw a life for himself in the other realm. He saw it, and he was jealous. That’s what he was trying to do before he fixated on me. He was trying to escape his physical body and live in that other realm. Now I wish I’d let him die.”

  “He wasn’t going to die,” Danny said.

  “He’s getting stronger,” Morrigan said ominously. “He’s using his power on Sky. He’s making her chest rise and fall.”

  “Morrigan, you’re shaking,” Danny said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She pressed into him, trembling harder.

  “Get me out of this city, Danny,” she begged. “Get me away from him before he wakes up again.”

  “I can’t leave Sky here sleeping. But I promise, I’ll get you away from him,” Danny vowed.

  “Don’t take him to Quin. Don’t take him with us,” she begged.

  Michael lifted his head and his eyes darted across the room. He signed to Morrigan, and she gave a long-suffering sigh. Then she pulled something out of her bag and injected Sky. Sky’s heart rate shot up, and she entered a REM cycle, but she didn’t wake. Danny paced in a circle, watching helplessly.

  Michael laid down again, resting his face on Sky’s chest, but he didn’t go back to sleep. It was the first time Danny realized how much he looked like Sky. Not just the hair and the eyes, but the shape of their cheeks and the way their lips parted when they rested. Was he echoing her expression or was she secretly a mother? There were parts of her past that she just wouldn’t reveal.

  “He spends half his life in this other world,” Morrigan said, patting Michael’s face with a damp cloth. Michael sighed and closed his eyes at her touch.

  “Isabelle,” Sky rasped, fighting her way back to consciousness. Danny took her hand and whispered a catechism because he was blanking on a
nything practical. Sky’s eyelids fluttered, and her gaze rested on him. “They were all hybrids once. All of them. Now Isabelle is again. If Granger realizes it…”

  “They’ll capture originals and remap them all to regain their powers?” Danny finished.

  “No. It’s Amanda. Amanda is different. She’s special. Isabelle might think it’s her power, but she’s just tapped into Amanda’s,” Morrigan said. “It could be that’s all that’s really left of Amanda. That’s all Michael’s chasing.”

  Michael sat up, mouthing words that none of them understood. Then he jumped out of the bed and ran from the apartment.

  “Where is he going?” Danny wondered.

  “I don’t care. As long as he doesn’t make me go with him,” Morrigan said. Then a moment later, she swore a blue streak and ran out, too.

  A part of Tommy loved Isabelle and a part of him hated her. The latter part had killed her without a second thought. Killed her to prove he was in control of his own mind.

  It took hours, not days, to restore Amanda’s baseline. Tweaking a personality was a slow and tedious process because one had to make sure each stage was functional. Rewriting a personality was better done quickly to prevent any autonomic functions from shutting down. He’d asked Isabelle about it when he was a teenager, going through that awkward stage where he hated everything about himself. That stage still seemed to be going on.

  Finishing the map, he shut down the machine. He watched Amanda for a few minutes, making sure she was still breathing. He ran several scans, comparing her current state to her baseline. She wouldn’t remember anything that happened. She wouldn’t even remember her first treatment.

  Amanda’s brain activity was low, but all the memories and motor skills were aligned. She wouldn’t be tripping over her feet like Isabelle had been.

  “Amanda,” he called over the intercom. Amanda didn’t stir. She was in a coma before she woke up as Isabelle, so the situation wasn’t worse. It was time to hand things over to Dr. Granger.