Chapter 2

An eternity went by, and Echo spent this short period of forever in a personal hell, tailored and fitted to emulate the worst nightmare she’d never had in her life. Her dreams, throughout much of her life, had only been sweet and mundane. It’s the sleep-walking that set her apart from the masses. Dreams so horrible she couldn’t even remember them, despite walking a mile or two this way or that through the neighborhood she grew up in, and in the dead of night no less. She’d been much younger then. It was just a phase, her parents had been assured. The psychiatrist had been mostly right.

The motion of the vehicle stopped, and she suddenly felt too afraid to peep. What if it was the same men transporting her who’d hurt her so badly? What if she played dead, and they just ... dropped her off and left her alone? Maybe alone in the woods somewhere, where the only things she would have to worry about were exposure and wild animals. That would be okay. That was better than anything else she could think of. The faint, muted sounds of classic rock met her ears, and it made her feel nothing. Not even when someone picked up the heavy blanket she was wrapped in did she make a sound. She was tense, frozen with fear to the point where she forgot to breathe for several seconds at a time, or maybe was just too afraid to. They passed through three doors. The way she was jostled, and the sounds told her as much, but then there was a pause. Not a long one, but one that was more terrifying than any moment of stillness before it.

“Mnnhhh! OUT! Let me OUT PLEASE OUT, PLEASE!” she suddenly screamed, thrashing as much as she could. She didn’t even recognize her own voice. It sounded disjointed, broken. Completely unlike herself. Her struggling was half-hearted, despite all the effort she put into it. She was still in a bad way. Still hurting, and her vocal-cords felt raw and brittle.

He stared intently at the opening for long seconds before his mind parsed the words. She was alive! How was this possible? He watched her die. There was no mistake, he watched the Spaniard crush her throat and choke the life out of her. His steady hand now had a visible tremor to it as a cold sweat ran down his armpits. He slapped his free hand on the gun to steady his grip and forced himself to think and analyze the situation. Maybe she was a good actress. Maybe she had some freak genetic mutation that allowed her to still breathe. The logical side of his brain and his curiosity soon got the better of him as there didn’t appear to be any immediate threat. She was a slim defenseless girl before, and she is still that scared girl now. He used the barrel of the gun to push open the flaps of the black bag to a better view and ensure there weren’t any more hidden surprises.

Echo’s vision blurred when light greeted her, and cool air greeted her face. The blanket was parted down the middle, she saw, but that’s not what she saw first. The man with the dark hair, a stranger to her, was pointing a gun down at her, and it occurred to her that this might be it. This might be the last thing she ever saw.

She covered her mouth with both hands to stifle the onslaught of screams that threatened to climb out. Don’t give him a reason to shoot, she thought, and it was the clearest thought she’d had in a long time.

“S-s-stop,” she stuttered on a quiet, choppy breath out. “P-” She squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. “Please don’t shoot.” She held her hands out in front of her, and she could still see the indents on her wrists and forearms where the rope had dug in so cruelly. Her eyes watered at the thought, and from the memory of feeling her hands go numb, becoming useless. They had sensation in them now. She could feel everything. She just wished the terror would subside, but it continued on with its crescendo, making it difficult to communicate.

The room they were in was sterile. It was plain, almost like a laboratory...

Morgue.

Her honey-ochre eyes widened as she realized where this was. “I’m not dead!” she proclaimed defensively.

Her words and their pleading tone finally set his mind at ease. They were so innocent ... so completely guileless. He lowered the gun so it was no longer in her face, but still pointed to the side and very much at the ready. She may not be a threat, but this was definitely a wrench in his carefully laid out plan and he was now in full data acquisition mode as his head quickly swiveled about to check the state of his surroundings. His green eyes snapped back to and locked onto her golden orbs as he said, “You should be. How are you not dead?” His tone was mix of accusation and disbelief.

Echo took her time sitting upright, a precarious hand braced on the floor beside her.

‘You should be.’ Dead. He was telling her she should be dead, and that ached like a punch to her heart would. Had crueler words been spoken to anyone? She wrapped her arms around herself, hiding her breasts from him. One still sported bruises from being squeezed until she squealed.

“I don’t want to be dead. I’m alive. I want to stay alive,” she stated these simple revelations, then looked around the room again. Definitely a morgue, and what was behind her? Turning her head, she saw a big metal machine with a door-latch on the front, and a blank screen on the right side of the door. At first glance, she thought it looked like some sort of high-tech vault, but that didn’t make sense for the setting. A cold, sinking feeling pitted her guts, and she slowly turned her head back to face the man. Haunted, knowing eyes stared up at him, and she shook her head while saying, “I won’t tell anyone. I just want to go home. Please. I swear, I won’t tell anyone anything. Not the cops, not anyone.”

That thing behind her, she understood now, was an incinerator.