“Again.”
I thrust my glaive forward, and Angelina caught it in one of her two-pronged daggers, deflecting it harmlessly to the side.
“Your stinger is venomous, Quinn. You’re putting way too much force into your strikes. You’re just trying to break the skin, okay? Not slice their head off. Again.”
I pulled back and swung again. She knocked it aside again with ease.
“You’re not listening. Stop aiming for my body. Aim for the hands or feet, or for my weapon.”
“Your weapon?”
She lunged forward, swinging her dagger at the smooth edge of my stinger. I easily blocked her strike, but she slid her blade down along the edge of mine, down the handle towards my wrist. At the last second, she spun her blade to tap the flat edge against my palm.
“Like this?” I said, swinging my blade in a wide arc towards her dagger. The instant they made contact, I tipped the blade downward. Angelina caught the blade with her other dagger just before it could hit her hand, pushing the tip away.
“Yes. Better.” She wiped the sweat off her forehead.
I was feeling tired too. I’d never really been one for exercise, so the past half hour had been brutal. I’d definitely be feeling this tomorrow. “Is there a reason we don’t practice in our Imagos?” I asked.
“Of course,” said Angelina. “You need to train your human body to have the same instincts and reflexes already imprinted in your Imago. Otherwise, when you enter a stressful situation, your mind will give out. You’ll let your Imago take control. And that’s not acceptable.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way. But thinking back, there had been a sort of primal instinct commanding me in that body. Telling me what to do at every moment. “So that’s what Vespa got so upset about.”
“Yes,” Vespa buzzed in my ear. “The Imago has its instincts to guide it, but you must harness that and make it yours. If we are to defeat the evil that lurks around us all. You must—”
“That’s enough, Vespa,” said Angelina.
“Whatever you say,” she replied. Ever since I’d started staying here, she’d gone much less talkative. I could see why. Angelina, Heidi, Nep... they were all so... dismissive? That didn’t quite capture how they acted. It was suspicious, that was for sure. Still, Vespa insisted that it was all fine. That I should trust them. That she’d messed up, and they were just upset because of that.
I was just glad that the pigeons had mostly stopped coming.
The alarm on Angelina’s watch beeped. “That’s it for today,” she said. “I have an appointment.” Her skin turned glossy, the chrysalis forming rapidly. As it hardened, it became transparent, just in time to see the liquid inside melt the flesh off her bones. Her skeleton dissolved into the liquid, too, replaced by the exoskeleton reforming just beneath the surface. The surface split, and she stepped out. So quick. The whole process had taken just a few seconds. In the light, it was easier to appreciate her Imago. It had all the sleek contours of a sports car, shining black and metallic gold, wings humming excitedly as she tested them for flight.
“An appointment?”
“There are Demons to kill, kiddo.” The four daggers materialized in her hands as she headed towards the roof.
“I want to come too.” I already knew her answer, though.
“Don’t be absurd. You may think you’re able to hold your own after what happened, but trust me, You have no idea what you’re getting into. Give it a few weeks, at least. Or perhaps when there’s a less dangerous target.”
“Right.”
Angelina chuckled. “I know you want to get back your parents. But you gotta be patient.” She disappeared up the stairs. I took a shower and changed before heading back to my room and collapsing onto the bed. These past few days had been a whirlwind of stuff to do. Nep had piled up a mountain of schoolwork for me to ensure that I didn’t ‘fall behind’ my peers. I’d tried to tell her this was way beyond what we were supposed to be doing, but she was having none of it. I had to wonder where she was getting all this material. She’d probably answer with something vague like ‘I have connections’, or something.
Of the four of them, she was certainly the most secretive. Sarah was a doctor, always at work during the day, and although Heidi was always at the apartment, she was a streamer or something and so was always ‘busy’. Despite her objections to having to give me training, Angelina had taken the task seriously. At least, that’s how it seemed. I didn’t exactly have the background to tell if she was doing a good job. On her off-hours, she did... well, I was pretty sure she had a job somewhere.
As for Nep, she worked at the university, but beyond that, I had little to go off of. I considered peeking into her room, but the door was always locked tight. Despite her job only being during the day, she was usually absent in the evenings, and the others said that’s how she always was. Once or twice, when I was having trouble sleeping, I heard what must’ve been her coming up the stairs late at night. I had questions. I also had all this work.
I caught for only a moment, out of the corner of my eye. A flash of black and red streaking down the street. It was that Echo. “That’s...”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Yes, go. It is an Echo,” Vespa buzzed.
I pulled on the jacket Sarah had given me. Somehow it had grown on me. Not literally. Well, maybe a little bit. It was very warm and fit well, perhaps a bit too well, as it moulded itself slightly to fit my frame.
Heidi was already in the stairwell. “You noticed it too.” she muttered, matter-of-factly, leading the way down and out the front of Sanctuary 73. I followed her through the busy streets. It was around noon; people were busy going about their business, catching lunch, hurrying to meetings, completely unaware of the Echo among them. Although then again, they never seemed to anything to interfere with ordinary people.
It wasn’t too hard to find, lying curled up on the street corner not too far away. It certainly didn’t seem like much of a threat: a sleeping dog, its black skin cracking open with each breath, just enough to reveal the red-hot material glowing inside.
“It’s that dog again!”
“E1-Friend,” prompted Vespa.
“E1-Friend. The one that Ecto sent to distract me. While he... my parents...”
Heidi stared at me with a puzzled expression. “That is not one of his Echoes, Quinn. We know which ones are associated with him. This one must belong to someone else.” Her hammer materialized in her hand, fingers gripping it tightly.
“But—” It led me away from home, right before he came. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. There had to be something more to it.
“Shh,” said Heidi. “Let’s not startle it.” Her steps were quiet, but to any onlookers she must’ve looked suspicious as hell. A girl wearing a sweatshirt and hood, walking slowly down the street with a hammer hanging from her hand. Still, it seemed to be working; the Echo hadn’t noticed her approach. She raised her hammer to shatter it.
Shatter it? No, I needed to find out what was going on with this thing.
“Hold on. Wouldn’t it be better to see who’s controlling this one, then? If it isn’t Ecto, then—”
“Nep knows this stuff. She can check with the database. It’s always better to destroy these before they become a problem.”
“It’s not hurting anybody right now.”
“What do you want to do, wait until it does?”
“It might... it might have something to do with where my parents are. Can we try to follow it at least?”
Heidi sighed, lowering the hammer. “You know, we have a protocol for this for a reason.”
“Yes, it’s bad to break protocol. This is an Echo. It must be destroyed,” said Vespa.
“But...” said Heidi, biting her lip. “We can make an exception this time. Right, Hylobius?”
Her insect symbiote’s voice was surprisingly deep, though I couldn’t really see where he was. “It is... possible. If really insist, Heidi.”
“Hylobius,” I whispered.
“A pleasure to meet you, Quinn. I’m usually not one for words.” A tiny weevil flew from Heidi’s shoulder and landed on mine. Even next to Vespa, he seemed minuscule, the same rusted copper-gold as Heidi’s imago, with little pits running in neat rows down his back.
“Not to interrupt, but the Echo is leaving,” said Vespa.
Indeed, E1-Friend had decided to stop taking its nap, weaving through the crowd as it headed on its merry way. Heidi tucked her hammer away and we hurried down the streets behind it. The crowds thinned somewhat as we entered Stanley Park, and dissipated as we followed it through the tall forest trails. As if noticing the absence of others, it looked behind for a second, staring at us with glowing red eyes before bolting into the undergrowth.
We could transform now, with nobody watching. Even if we were caught, there were plenty of rumours of mysterious creatures lurking in here. Perhaps someone else had been clumsy with their Imago in the past. Heidi changed quickly; if she felt any discomfort, she didn’t show it. As for myself, I grit my teeth as the membrane closed over my body and the acid ate away at my skin. It stung like crazy, though I was starting to get used to the dull aching pain. Was that a good thing?
In my Imago, it was easy to see where the Echo had gone. The stuttering particles it left behind made a trail of paradoxes. The creature, after all, was a walking mistake. It was wrong. There was no better way to describe it. While the ferns and moss and trees were right, the Echo just did not belong. We ran off the trail, clambering up over the rocks, gaining on it.
We cornered it in a clearing.. It simply stopped to face us. We drew our weapons and pointed them at it, but it decided that now the was the time to finish its nap from earlier. We looked around for any sign of its owner or controller, but we seemed to be alone here.
“It’s a bust,” said Heidi. “It’s not going to show you where its controller is. Sorry, Quinn.” She raised her hammer again and flung it at the creature’s skull. But at the last moment, it got up and moved out of the way. It faced us head-on and growled, not like an animal, but like an earthquake, a deep, primal rumble from a creature without vocal chords. It opened its mouth way, way too wide, folding back as if to unwrap the inside of its skull. Three smaller heads peeked out of its still-widening mouth, snapping and snarling, teeth foaming with sickly red fluid.
It lunged.
I caught the first attack with my blade, but unlike the pigeons, this Echo was hard. On head clamped down on the tip and pulled me towards it, while the other two extended to snap at my arms. Heidi beat them back with her hammer and pulled me back. She kicked it hard, several times, smashing it repeatedly with her hammer. Its rocky skin cracked and dented from the impacts, ichor oozing out. It fell to the floor and she stepped on its neck, pushing down hard. Her Imago’s heavy armoured boots made the Echo’s skin crumble underneath, staining them with the glowing red fluid.
Its head snapped off.
The outer shell shattered, the three little smaller heads inside slipping out from under Heidi’s boots. Freed, it sprung to its feet and ran impossibly fast, vanishing into the forest with its trail disappearing far behind. She cursed. “My bad, this time,” she said. “Don’t tell Sarah about this.”
“Sure,” I replied. She smiled back at me. As we started back along the trail back towards Sanctuary 73, I heard something rustle in the trees. Were it not for that, I wouldn’t have noticed the silhouette of a person disappearing into the woods.