Echo Chapter 20

The administrative building's basement was nothing like the pristine facade above. Concrete walls, exposed pipes, and the constant hum of machinery—this was where the community's true infrastructure lived, hidden from the residents who believed they were living in paradise.

Marcus shoved me through a door marked "Environmental Systems." Juno stumbled in behind me, flanked by two guards who looked uncomfortable with the whole situation. Good. Discomfort meant doubt, and doubt could be weaponized.

"Sit." Marcus pointed to two metal chairs bolted to the floor in the center of the room. Behind them, a wall of monitors displaye heart rates, stress hormones, dopamine levels. Every resident reduced to fluctuating numbers.

I didn't sit. "I want to speak with Gray."

"You will. After we establish what you were doing in the library."

"Reading books. Shocking behavior in a library, I know."

Marcus's jaw tightened. He pulled out a tablet, swiping through screens. "At 23:47, you accessed the community server using an unauthorized device. At 23:51, you initiated a data transfer of forty-seven thousand files. Care to explain?"

"I think you have me confused with someone else."

"We have biometric confirmation. Your thumbprint on the mouse, your thermal signature at the terminal, your wellness band placing you at those exact coordinates." He turned the tablet toward me. There I was in infrared, hunched over the library computer like a thief caught mid-heist.

Juno spoke up, her voice steady despite the guards flanking her. "She was helping me catalog the collection. We were transferring inventory data."

"For six minutes? In the middle of the night?" Marcus shook his head. "We're not idiots, Juno. We know about the encrypted drive."

My blood went cold. If they knew about Liam's drive, if they'd already searched me—

But Marcus was still talking, still interrogating. Which meant they didn't have it yet. It was still in my jacket pocket, still safe. For now.

"Here's what's going to happen," Marcus continued. "You're going to hand over the device, you're going to tell us everything you copied, and we're going to have a nice conversation with Mr. Gray about appropriate boundaries for guest researchers."

"And if I don't?"

He gestured to the wall of monitors. "See that?" He pointed to a cluster of red dots scattered across the grid. "Those are residents whose emotional stability has been flagging. Stress markers up, serotonin down. You know what they all have in common?"

I looked closer. The dots were concentrated in certain areas: the gardens, the musicion, the recreation center. Gathering points. Social hubs.

"They've been talking to you," Marcus said. "Every conversation you've had, every question you've asked—you're destabilizing them. Making them remember things they shouldn't remember. Feel things they shouldn't feel."

"You mean making them human?"

"I mean making them sick." He zoomed in on one particular data stream. The name at the top read: ORTIZ, MAYA. "This woman was on the verge of a complete breakdown when she came here. Anxiety so severe she couldn't leave her house. Now look at her." He pulled up historical data showing a steady flatline of perfect equilibrium. "Three years of peace. Three years of being able to care for her son without fear. You want to take that away from her?"

"You already took it away. You just replaced it with chemical compliance."

"Call it what you want. She's happy."

"She's sedated. There's a difference."

Marcus closed the tablet. "You're wasting my time. Empty your pockets. Now."

I didn't move. Beside me, Juno's hands clenched into fists.

"Marcus, please," she said quietly. "You know what they'll do to us if we go to Re-education. You've seen what comes back. Gabriel doesn't even remember—"

"Gabriel is fine. He's adjusted."

"He's a ghost wearing my husband's face!"

The guards shifted uncomfortably. One of them—young, barely twenty-five—looked away.

"That's enough." Marcus's radio crackled. He lifted it to his ear, listened, then nodded. "Mr. Gray is ready. Bring them up."

As the guards moved to flank us again, I noticed something on the monitor wall. One screen showed a different kind of data—not biological metrics but system diagnostics. And there, buried in the scrolling code, was a pattern I recognized from Liam's notes: a rhythmic pulse of data packets, regular as a heartbeat.

The backdoor. It was still active.

And it was syncing with something.

I pretended to stumble, forcing the guard to catch me, giving me three extra seconds to stare at the screen. The sync pattern matched perfectly with the emotional fluctuations Marcus had just shown me—the red dots on the grid weren't random. They were markers. People Liam's program had identified as potential allies. People whose to the Oracle's manipulation was strong enough to create measurable "noise" in the system.

The guard yanked me upright. "Move."

We were herded toward the elevator, Marcus in the lead. As we passed a maintenance closet, I caught Juno's eye and tilted my head fractionally. She gave the barest nod.

"Wait," I said. "I need to use the bathroom."

"You can hold it."

"I can't, actually. Unless you want me to have an 'accident' in Gray's office."

Marcus sighed, the long-suffering sigh of a man dealing with tedious necessities. "Fine. Juno can escort you. Two minutes."

"I'll need more than—"

"Two. Minutes." He jerked his thumb at a door marked with a faded restroom sign. "Rodriguez, go with them."

The young guard—Rodriguez—followed us into the women's bathroom. I went into a stall while he stood awkwardly by the sinks, trying not to look at Juno.

"This is humiliating," Juno said loudly. "Standing here like a criminal."

"Just following orders, ma'am."

I flushed, ran the water, emerged. As I washed my hands, I met Juno's eyes in the mirror and mouthed: *The grid.*

She frowned. I dried my hands and casually shifted my position so Rodriguez couldn't see me tap out morse code on the counter: *L-I-A-M-S P-R-O-G-R-A-M. A-C-T-I-V-E.*

Her eyes widened. Then she turned to Rodriguez with a brilliant smile. "You know, you don't look like you belong here."

"Ma'am?"

"You've got kind eyes. Most of Marcus's people don't."

He flushed. "I'm just doing my job."

"Of course. But tell me—do you ever wonder if the job is doing the right thing?"

"Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to—"

Juno stepped closer. "My husband used to ask questions like that. Before they took him. Before they *fixed* him." Her voice cracked. "Please. You seem like a good person. If you could just look the other way for five minutes—"

"I can't." But he sounded uncertain.

I pulled Liam's drive from my pocket, holding it behind my back. "What if I told you this contains proof? Proof that people are being erased. That the Oracle isn't healing anyone—it's lobotomizing them with code."

"Dr. Reed—"

"Your name is Rodriguez, right? Do family here?"

"My sister. She... she came here because of depression. Tried to kill herself twice."

"And now?"

"She's better. She's happy."

"Is she? Or does she just not remember being sad?"

He looked away. "Time's up. We need to go."

As he turned toward the door, I made my decision. I grabbed the soap dispenser from the wall and swung it at the back of his head. He dropped like a stone.

Juno gasped. "Jesus Christ, Evelyn!"

"Help me move him." We dragged Rodriguez into a stall, propped him on the toilet. His pulse was strong, breathing steady. He'd wake up with a hell of a headache and probably a demotion, but he'd wake up.

"Now what?" Juno hissed.

I checked the door. The corridor outside was empty—Marcus and the others were waiting by the elevator, expecting us to emerge any second.

"Now we find out what Liam's program was really doing. And we use it."