How many random facts do we actually remember? Between numbers and digits and dates all long accepted and stored in your mind without a second thought of a need to recall in clarity, facts become distorted, altered. Gaps are filled in with imagination and other mostly forgotten facts. So, it was no surprise that Echo could remember very few details of her other life. It would be like, without aid of photographs or records of any sort, to reconstruct an entire year of your childhood. However, it was real... the framework of life events was just as real as this one, the sights, the scents, the sounds, all were vivid when intentionally drawn out. Every bit as vivid as any old memory. Echo knew even what lay behind Ailbeart’s eyepatch.
The threat struck her ears... “Talk later” Benji. It didn’t take much imagination to know what he was talking about. This was blackmail. The very thought of exposure gripped her heart, and as a kneejerk reaction she thought about how to silence him permanently.
“It needs to be done,” her mother’s voice throbbed through her head.
She woke without saying anything, and was liberated from her cell without a word, monks walking about seeming to be about their holy business, but she knew, she absolutely knew that it was all just a front and that they were all well in the knowing. They were all part of the plan. As the two of them passed the monks, she could spot concealed weapons and microphones. They repressed smiles of delight at her folly. She had been tampered with, she was a liability, she was an instrument of the enemy now.
To her disbelief, she was brought to the ship. She had never seen the exterior, but found her stride frozen as she gazed upon a symbol on the side of the ship. Earth... A blue circle with continents pristinely outlined. They were back... or maybe this was a different fantasm that she was trapped in.
There entered the faces of the crew, entering one at a time. Thalia, Owen.
Then her heart jumped.
I can do things right with Ailbeart this time.She felt radically different about Rend as soon as she could see his face. She could feel the tampering. Affection, while at the same time bathed in an ocean of indifference. It was almost real, but this lead to a haunting like she never had before. Was she merely a puppet now? She could not break eye contact with Rend.
Echo looked as though she had been in a fight with a split lip and visible scrapes. It was chilling to look upon her. But her words spread an even more sinister tone,
“I am afraid that it is very little of what we have said to instigate this change in our situation. Rather, they have discovered something that that can be done to us that has changed their minds.”