Page 56 of Lost Echoes

Luke’s fingers fly across his keyboard, tracing logs, IPs, and other backdoors. His jaw is locked. “He’s gone.”

My throat tightens. “Gone how?”

The only answer is the clatter of his keys and the faint hum of the heater.

Finally, he says, “Not just logged off. Wiped. Like someone scrubbed him out mid-thought.”

I look at the last line again.

The performance isn’t over. Watch the wings.

It’s the cryptic tone, the stage imagery. But there’s something colder in it now, like a line from someone else’s script.

“Could he be warning us?” I ask.

Luke’s eyes flick to mine. “Or he’s compromised.”

A terrifying thought strikes me. Phoenix—the one who first reached out, who sent the files, who cracked open the new information we have about the entire network—what if he’s been folded back into the program?

The laptop screen reflects my face, pale and wide-eyed. I think of Fenna, sleeping soundly with her stuffed rabbit under one arm. I think of the kids still in the basement, of Kenzi, and of the one-eyed teddy bear.

“We can still trace him,” Luke says, like he’s trying to convince both of us. “There’s a trail… there’s always a trail.”

I shake my head. “Not if they want him invisible.”

He stops typing. “Ember, we can’t think the worst.”

“What else do we have?” I shove my chair back. “If they’ve got him, it means they’re inside the network. Watching us. Maybe even in here.”

I’m suddenly all too aware of the mansion’s hidden passageways, all of its secrets. Every flicker of shadow on the walls looks like movement, which could point to more.

Luke rises. “Then we go dark for a while. Encrypt everything, reset our channels.”

I hug my arms around myself. “And leave the others without Phoenix? Without us?”

“They were a group long before we came around.”

“Not without Phoenix.”

His silence is answer enough.

The last message burns on the screen like a ghost light after a show. The performance isn’t over. Watch the wings.

I swallow hard. “If he’s warning us, what’s next?”

Luke’s face is grim. “The ultimate act.”

His words echo through me. He’s right—we’re getting close to something. I’m not sure what yet, but it’s going to be big. I can feel it in my bones.

The cursor keeps blinking, but no new message comes.

I force myself to read it again. The performance isn’t over. Watch the wings.

“Wings,” I murmur. “Stage wings… but also…”

Luke’s already ahead of me. He pulls up an encrypted archive Phoenix gave us and starts running a search. “Wings, theater, performance.”

His fingers blur across the keys. Nothing at first. Then, buried in a file labeled Therapy Grant Disbursements 1995-2006, a spreadsheet opens. Names of facilities, coded programs. Beside two of them—ones we’d barely skimmed in the initial dump—is a note in brackets: [Wing B].