Chapter 45
Seph
My head was blurry.
Whatever they had hit me with made the world spin and out of focus. My body felt heavy and numb.
Rough latex covered hands manhandled me.
“No. Stop,” I mumbled.
Over and over.
But they didn’t stop.
I slipped into a dream world. It was like stepping into pure light. Everything was white. Everything was too bright. It burned.
It hurt my eyes.
Where am I?
Seph.
A voice spoke. Or did it? It’s like it was in my head.
Hello?
I couldn’t make my mouth move. I could only call with my thoughts. But there, on the edge of my consciousness I felt a tickle, like a presence.
Someone I knew.
I am here
Who are you? Why can’t I see you?
I see you. I hear you.
A phantom touch glided over my cheek. I wanted to turn towards it.
But I couldn’t move.
Through the fog I could see a blurry form ahead of me. Like I was looking through a distorted glass. Shadowy figures without real form moved before me.
Slowly, surely, my eyes focussed.
And I saw… myself.
Dr Marr had wheeled me in on a bed. My hair fell down the side of the sheets in a long, billowing veil. My eyes were closed. My hands were limp, still gloved.
What is happening?
A tremor passed through the white, as if my question had weight.
You are seeing what I see, the presence whispered.
I recognised her, like I could feel her.
Echo.
The brightness pulsed, sharpening into edges again. The blurry figure on the bed — me — flickered like an overexposed photograph.
This isn’t your sight, Echo murmured. It’s mine.
My breath caught, or it would have, if I could feel my lungs.
Yours?
My thoughts wobbled.
Why does everything look like— this?
The white quivered, thickening at the edges like tears in a lens.
Because I do not see the way you do, Echo said softly. I see light. I feel shape. I feel… you.
The echo of her hand brushed my cheek again — not skin, not real, but a memory of touch.
You slipped into me when they hurt you, she whispered. And now you’re looking through me.
Below us, the world shifted — cold metal, Marr’s voice, straps tightening across my wrists — all of it warped into the too-bright nothing that Echo perceived.
I watched it like a ghost inside a ghost.
Dr Marr lifted my body from the bed and shackled me to a harness against the wall.
My limbs dangled for a moment before the leather restraints were fastened into place, forcing me upright.
My head was pinned by a cold leather band, my chin locked forward.
Wires and tubes slithered along my arms and legs like veins that didn’t belong to me.
Each one led somewhere else.
To where I now existed.
To Echo.
What is he doing? I whispered into the white.
Echo didn’t answer at first.
But I felt it.
Her misery.
Her fear.
Her helpless, quivering panic.
I could hide it from you, she said at last, the thought trembling. I could make it so you don’t see.
Echo… who are you? Are you real? What are you?
Silence.
Fleeting.
Fragile.
Then—
Real, real… what is real?
Her confusion cut like glass.
Echo, I tried again, gentler. Please.
I dream of you, she whispered. In the long light. I see you. Friend.
My breath faltered.
Of course, I whispered.
And something more, Echo breathed, as if she was remembering herself in real time.
Like me… you are like me.
A shiver ran down my spine.
Echo — my thoughts shook — you are flesh? You are alive?
A ripple went through the white.
I live, she said slowly, like she was testing the shape of the truth. But flesh… the vessel?
Yes, I breathed.
Another tremor. This one soft. Almost shy.
I feel things.
A pause.
Pain… empty… and…
And what? I pressed.
The brightness flickered.
And you, Echo whispered. You have feelings inside — warm. I see faces.
My heart lurched.
A boy with different eyes, she murmured, images bleeding through the connection like spilled ink. Another with strange blood. And—
And?
The white dimmed, paling to a frightened hush.
A man.
A pause so heavy it felt like a held breath.
He is… mean?
My pulse spiked.
Who, Echo? I whispered. Who do you mean?
Echo pressed close, trembling like she wanted to hide inside me.
The one who hurts you.
My breath caught.
Father.
Gideon’s face flicked to my mind, branded there.
He is.
Marr is …father, Echo said, as if testing the word.
Before I could respond, the glass between our worlds shuddered — a ripple, a bending — and a dark figure stepped into the other side of it.
Dr Marr.
He moved into the frame like he’d been waiting for a curtain to rise.
His smile spread too wide across his face, excitement stretched thin over something rotten.
“I have a surprise for you today, Echo,” he crooned, placing a hand against the warped surface — against her.
“Finally, you will have a friend.”
His grin widened.
The white around us buckled — warped inward like the world was folding in on itself.
Pain lanced through my arms as something stabbed deep into my flesh.
A needle.
Cold.
Sharp.
And then—
A pull.
Like a vacuum.
It ripped me from the safety of Echo’s mind, tearing through the thin silver thread that held us together. I felt my own power react — a terrified animal — dragging me backward, toward the weight of my body.
Echo, I tried to cling to her, but my fingers slipped through light.
No—no—no— she cried, reaching for me as I was ripped away. Don’t look—don’t come back—he will take you—he will—
My consciousness snapped.
My eyes flared open.
The world slammed into me like a punch.
Cold straps biting my wrists.
Metal against my cheek.
The sour sting of chemicals in my nose.
My lungs seized around a broken gasp.
And then I saw her.
Not through warped glass.
Not through light.
Not through a dream.
Her.
A girl.
Suspended in a tank of luminous fluid across the room.
White hair floating around her like smoke underwater.
Bare skin glowing faintly as if lit from within.
Small.
Too small.
Almost childlike in her stillness.
My breath shattered.
Echo.
She looked like me —
and nothing like me —
and everything like the pieces Marr had always taken.
My stomach heaved.
Marr’s voice echoed behind me, smug and triumphant.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?”
Echo’s chest moved up and down in the water.
Around us the lights flashed and surged, strobing violently.
And in my skull — faint, ragged, terrified —
Don’t let him touch you.
“Now, now, none of that.”
Marr’s voice sliced through the air, unbothered, almost cheerful.
He injected something into a tube attached to her tank — the fluid around her pulsed darker for a moment, swallowing the light.
“What… what have you done?” I breathed, my voice shredded raw from screaming.
My throat burned.
My chest shook.
“What have you done to her?”
Marr looked delighted by the question.
“I have created a miracle. My girls, one light and one dark, both absolute,” he said, like a priest unveiling a holy relic. “With you both here — now, finally, we can begin.”
“Begin what, you sick bastard?” I spat, trying to pull free of the restraints.
They carved into my wrists, cold and merciless.
He didn’t even grant me the courtesy of a glance.
He turned his back, humming under his breath as he opened a drawer and sifted through its contents with precise, almost tender fingers.
He selected a syringe.
The needle was long.
Vicious.
“Changing the world,” he said simply.