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.
