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"There's something else," I say. "It's kind of embarrassing, but I feel like you guys need to know. You have more experience with the Echo than I do, so maybe the information will be useful. It's about me and Gabriel, our relationship."
Jeez, that sounded stupid. I practically stammered when I said the words.
Allison glances at Dax, and her husband nods. She turns to me. "It's about sex, isn't it? You and Gabriel made love, and the Echo responded to that. We've all experienced the phenomenon, though in different ways. Only recently did the four of us talk openly with each other about that stuff. We were uncomfortable discussing the topic."
"I am too. But I realized just now that it might be important, especially for getting Gabriel back."
"When Dax and I had sex for the first time, it amped up my Echo power. And the next time we made love, we both felt something indescribable had changed between us."
"That's what happened with me and Gabriel too. But then the machine got hold of him, and my powers weren't enough to save him."
"Tell us about this machine," Dax says. "My brother never mentioned that to me or to Allison."
"We never heard of it either," Erin says. "Grant and I were in the Echo for a while. Guess that contraption was waiting for Gabriel."
"For both of us, I think. Aldith said the Echo has a Brain, and that it's been adrift without Sefton. He was controlling it. Aldith believed the Brain wanted me and Gabriel to merge with it and take control of it. But if that's true, why did the Brain take Gabriel and kick me out of the Echo?"
Dax rises from his chair and paces the width of the tent. "Perhaps a remnant of Sefton—a ghost, if you will—lingers inside the Brain. It must be cast out before you two will be allowed to assume control."
"But why take Gabriel? I don't understand."
Grant exchanges a glance with Dax, then tells me, "We're all treading on unfamiliar ground here. You said the Brain has two hemispheres, and that it needs both you and Gabriel."
"That's what Aldith said. But maybe she was wrong."
"It's unlikely. She's tapped into the Echo like nobody else in either world. But it's possible the Brain shielded her from seeing that a remnant of Sefton was still in there."
"Yes, that could be," Allison says. "Sefton employed quantum entanglement to link me, Dax, and himself. I severed his links to us when I stopped the alchemy of worlds, but maybe he was also entangled with the Echo. So when he died, something of him survived."
This discussion is reviving more of my memories of the journal. I left it in my pack, and that's still in the Echo. But the more we all talk about these issues, the more I remember. "The machine is modeled after Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. But Sefton recreated it exactly, with the two sets of arms and legs. If he meant for only one person to enter the machine, why have spaces for more limbs? Aldith must be right that it's designed to accommodate two people."
"But the Echo has become corrupted by the remnants of Sefton," Allison says. "It's interfering with the machine's intended purposed."
Dax halts his pacing and looks sideways at his wife. "Sefton planned to kill me and marry you. He probably wanted you to become the other half of the Brain."
"Yes, that would make sense."
I raise my hand, which is a silly thing to do. "The journal isn't the same as it was before Gabriel and I went into the Echo. I told you the text had changed. But I also felt something strange when I closed my eyes while reading it. I could feel the text, like it was a part of me."
"A part of both you and Gabriel, I'm sure," Grant says. "The way the Heart and the Lifeblood joined me and Erin."
"Can I use that connection to get back to Gabriel and free him from the machine?"
Grant shrugs.
A growling noise erupts outside, growing louder every moment and originating high above us in the sky. We rush outside to see what's happening, but everything looks the same. Something inside that growling sound triggers a memory. The machine made a noise like that.
"What is it, Sarah?" Erin asks.
"It's the machine. It made that noise right before it took Gabriel."
"But it's not here. The noise must be something else. The machine is still inside the Echo."
"Is it? How do we know? It might be interdimensional. I mean, if the Echo can cause lightning in this world, why can't the machine affect Earth too? The worlds are connected, right?"
"Yes, they are." Erin winces as the growling grows even louder, and we need to shout to hear each other. "Got any ideas about how to stop it?"
"Sorry, no."
