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But it made a mistake. It made too perfect an echo. It stole Joy Novak’s face, her voice. Her love. And that love is strong enough to bend this false reality. It is strong enough to keep the Six-Wing caged.

The boat she has made for her daughter floats away, the girl shivering, curled up in its bottom.

Go, she whispers.Go.

Time works differently here. For the echo of the woman who was Joy, it stutters. Sometimes she sees her daughter: singing by the water, skipping rocks, running from the echoes who hunt her, always. Joy’s echo distracts them. She blinds them. She walks them into the ocean to be battered by the rocks.

She holds. For years, she holds.

She cannot protect her daughter alone. But she is not alone, and Joy Novak tends the girl well.

It is moments later. It is a lifetime past. Her daughters are both here, and she cannot hold any longer. She is so tired.

“Help them,” I whispered. I gave her memories of my own. Abby and Liam and the echoes outside, Moriarty with his furious darkness. “Help them, please.”

She could not help them. Not alone. But she was never alone here, because my mother stayed. Together they protected Sophie. And together, they can do this.

I felt her cast herself out over stone, over salt, the Six-Wing stripping free of her as she crosses where it cannot. She finds Joy Novak, half-broken, half-human. My mother’s echo isn’t made of flesh and blood anymore—she’s made of will and anger, love and rage, and she sinks into Joy’s skin, lending her strength. Unmaking herself to make Joy whole. I heard her whisper one last word, and then she was gone.

Go.

VIDEO EVIDENCE

Recorded by Abigail Ryder

JUNE 30, 2018, TIME UNKNOWN

Abby and Liam crouch behind a stand of rocks. Abby breathes heavily, but has her forearm pressed against her mouth, her sleeve muffling the sound of her breathing. Her face is white as paper, drained of blood. Liam fumbles with the phone, then extends it out around the side of the rock. The crowd of echoes stands in front of the cave. Moriarty circles high overhead, calling. Hardcastle’s echo lies facedown near the church entrance, motionless.

ABBY: One of those guns would be nice about now. We have to get in there.

LIAM: I know. How are you?

ABBY: Think I just broke a few ribs, no biggie.

LIAM: Can you move?

ABBY: Not fast. I’ll distract them. You get past. Help Sophia.

LIAM: I’m not going to leave you.

ABBY: You gotta pick one of us, Liam, and we both want it to be Sophia.

LIAM: Goddammit. If you—

But Abby surges to her feet with a yell of pain and charges around the rock, toward the echoes. They charge toward her. She screams at them, a wounded battle cry—and the scream is redoubled.

Joy Novak is there, is coming, mangled wings crusted with salt growing from her back. Shadows flicker behind her, almost like wings themselves. Her irises and pupils are doubled, filling the whole of her eyes so almost no white shows.

She looks at Liam and Abby.

NOVAK: Find her.

She spreads her full wings, black as a raven’s, salt falling from them like snow.

Abby and Liam run for the church.

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