Chapter 13 - FIRE IN THE DEEP

The Echoes hated the flare.

Lena shrieked and covered her face.

Ruth stumbled backward.

The central mass contracted.

Mara ran.

She kicked over the first fuel can.

Diesel spread across the stone.

Caleb shouted, “Left side!”

She saw another can.

Halverson had prepared this years ago and never finished.

Mara understood the torn notebook page now.

Ezra had planned to burn the mine.

But Lena had stopped him.

Mara cut Caleb free.

“Can you walk?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s enough.”

The central mass pulsed violently.

Every voice Mara had ever loved erupted from it.

Her father begging.

Her mother crying.

Lena screaming from the river.

Mara staggered.

Caleb grabbed her.

“Don’t listen!”

Lena appeared through the red light.

Her skin blistered where the flare’s heat touched it.

“Mara!”

For one second she sounded like a terrified little girl.

“Please don’t leave me again.”

Mara froze.

The river.

Her wrist slipping from Mara’s hand.

Don’t let go.

Caleb shouted, “Mara!”

Lena stepped closer.

“You promised.”

“I know.”

Lena held out her hand.

“Then keep it.”

Mara looked at that hand.

Same small scar near the thumb.

Same shape.

She wanted to believe.

Then she remembered something.

Lena had not had that scar before she drowned.

She got it when Ezra said the imitation cut herself on glass.

The Echo had copied even the injury that happened after.

Mara raised the flare.

“My sister was afraid of deep water.”

Lena stopped.

“What?”

“She would never have walked into that river smiling.”

Lena’s face went blank.

Mara threw the flare.

Fire ran across the spilled diesel.

The cavern erupted in orange light.

The central mass convulsed.

The mine screamed with a thousand voices.

Caleb and Mara ran.

Behind them, Lena’s voice changed one last time.

Not child.

Not woman.

Something vast.

“You will carry us out.”

Caleb stumbled.

Mara caught him.

Then she saw black fluid running from his right ear.

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The thing inside him was moving toward the surface.

And it was moving fast.