Page 57 of Lost Echoes
Luke’s eyes narrow. “That’s not stage language. It’s their internal code.”
I lean closer. “What are the facilities?”
He scrolls. The first, North Ridge Behavioral Wing B, is a private psychiatric unit attached to a children’s hospital in Oregon. The second, Willow Glen Research Institute Wing B in Idaho. Both with “grant therapy” money funneled from the same Radley shell company.
My stomach twists in tight knots. “Phoenix must’ve left this for us to find. Watch the wings. Look at the facilities we knew so little about.”
Luke clicks deeper into North Ridge’s file. Hidden in the metadata of a scanned memo is a date for next week and the words live rehearsal. He clicks on the other facility. Same date, same wording.
“They’re synchronizing programs.” His voice is low, almost a growl. “Same day, two facilities. It’s not just here.”
My pulse races. “They’re expanding… or finishing something.”
A cold thought slices through me. Or they’re moving survivors before we can get to them.
Luke backs up the files to three drives, shoving one into my hand. “If Phoenix is compromised, this could be bait.”
“Or a warning.” My voice is barely a whisper. “Either way, we can’t ignore it.”
We both glance at the message one last time. The performance isn’t over. Watch the wings.
Luke straightens, his decision clear. “Then we start with North Ridge. Quietly. We see if we can hack into their video systems, and we look for Phoenix or whoever’s pulling his strings. And we get the kids out before the curtain rises.”
I nod, my whole body trembling, but my voice steady. “For Phoenix, for Kenzi, and everyone else the Radleys have hurt. And for Fenna, so they can never get to her.”
Luke scrolls deeper through the archives, opening file after file. It’s enough to make my eyes go blurry, and that’s saying something. Each file is worse than the last, with fragments of performance schedules, lists of medications cross-referenced with children’s initials, invoices buried under “grant funds.”
The more we find, the colder I feel.
“Ember.” Luke’s voice is tight. “Look at this.”
On the North Ridge log, beneath a line of numbers, is the message:
Stage manager: confirmed.
No name, just an ID number.
My stomach drops. “Stage manager.” Another theater role, another position in their script.
Before I can respond, Luke’s screen glitches. A new window pops open, uninvited. Black background. White letters.
L00kCl0ser:
Mr. Stark. You have a promising new career at Jefferson. Walk away now, and it stays intact.
I grab his wrist. “Who is that?”
Luke doesn’t answer. He just stares as more text appears.
L00kCl0ser:
Choose your future. Your job… or answers you don’t want. Forget you ever heard about Wing B or any of this.
My pulse spikes. “They know who you are. That you work at Jefferson Elementary.”
Luke shuts his eyes for a second, jaw clenched. I can see the war inside him—working hard to graduate homeschool early to get his education certifications at eighteen, and now everything he’s risked by working with me, colliding with the reality on the screen.
I can’t ask him to risk it, but I don’t see how we can win this without him. He’s the one who taught me much of what I know about cybersecurity, and his knowledge is so much vaster than mine. While I’m definitely leaps and bounds ahead of the average person, I don’t touch his knowledge. Starting in the third grade, he would finish his homeschooling days early to learn this stuff. It’s as much part of the way he thinks as is the English language.