MUSE OF ECHOES Chapter 4

Hi Patrons!

Here's the fourth chapter of Muse of Echoes! As always, this is a rough draft, so please forgive the inevitable typos and inconsistencies.

You can find the previous chapter here, and I'll be updating the masterpost with new chapters as they drop.

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MUSE OF ECHOES
Chapter 4

Keeping pace with Echo was like trying to fly alongside a fighter jet. Reeva had to channel nearly all her power into her wings as the pair tore through the air above Mara’s clouds. At a certain point, she realized that she was allotting so much energy to flight that her defensive aura had thinned to almost nothing, allowing the wind to sting her cheeks and eyes. Fortunately, this was just about when their destination came into view, meaning that it was time to slow down anyway. All told, the flight had taken less than a minute.

Like most buildings on the Eren Islands, the Nulenbo police station was needlessly pretty, made of warm exposed brick and trimmed with elegant carvings in paler stone. Reeva imagined that there weren’t many places in the Kiloverse where you found window boxes on the side of a law enforcement office, but here they were, beautifully maintained and bursting with flowers.

This time, as she came in for a landing, Reeva was careful not to make a fool of herself. Spreading her wings wide to slow her descent, she set down onto the roof as gently as she could so as not to strain her legs.

Realizing that Echo had noticed the ginger landing, Reeva jumped to turn attention back on the ex-Xin. “You’re very reckless about using your powers on a planet that won’t know what to make of them.”

“I chose a profession where that would be allowed and encouraged,” Echo said, seeming unruffled by both the comment and the flight. “And I have nothing to hide.”

Reeva, out of breath, managed only a derisive scoff in response as Echo’s massive white wings folded into her back and disappeared.

“Feel free to scan me with your little Aurin friend before I enter your station if it makes you feel better.”

But Reeva didn’t need to scan Echo to learn what she wanted to know. The flight alone had made it clear that Echo was capable of what Reeva suspected; anyone with the power to break the sound barrier had the power to cut a man in half. Not keen on sharing that line of thought just yet, Reeva tugged her ruined coat straight and said, “It’s not my station.”

Echo raised her eyebrows.

“I’m not a member of the force,” Reeva explained as she headed for the rooftop door. “I pop in, I pay the bills, I get out. With that in mind, let’s get this over with.”

The inside of the Nulenbo station was every bit as fetching as the outside, each hallway bright with cheerful paint and trimmed with gold accents. Even the narrow stairway to the roof sported elegant ironwork on the handrail and a cheerful coat of orange sherbet paint.

Pretending that Echo’s form looming a little too close behind didn’t bother her, Reeva led the way down two flights of stairs to the main floor to find Officer Damel. He tripped over himself staring up into Echo’s alien eyes and asking if he could show her to the interrogation rooms, maybe get her a coffee, get her anything at all. 

Leaving Damel to his fate, Reeva descended the stairs to the side doors to meet Gunter. She reached the lot just as the detective pulled noisily into his parking spot.

“Reeva!” He smiled as he got out. “Where’s your old friend?” 

“She’s not my friend.”

“Okay.” Gunter went on looking at Reeva expectantly, and she realized she hadn’t answered.

“Upstairs,” she said shortly. “We just got here.”

“So? Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” he asked.

“I wish I could, Detective,” Reeva said honestly, “but I’m not sure.”

“Not sure?” Gunter repeated as he joined her in the climb back up the stairs to the station’s side door.

“Lieutenant Echo and I knew each other a long time ago.”

“And you didn’t think to bring that up when I mentioned her name? Or when she became an Enforcer?”

“I didn’t think it’d come up,” Reeva grumbled, “and keep your voice down.”

Gunter’s brow was creased in thought. “So, you knew each other? Out of hundreds—thousands?—of Volta out there? Out of the hundreds of thousands of planets in the Kiloverse, you both ended up here? How? Why?” 

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Reeva muttered darkly.

“Any theories?”

“No.” Not any I can share yet. “Just don’t trust her. I know she’s wearing your planet’s white uniform and she puts on a nice face, but whatever she is, she is not a protector. However she appears, however she comes off, it’s an illusion.”

“An illusion? Are there Volta who can do that? Change their whole appearance?”

“Oh, sure, lots.” Reeva’s old captain, Shoma, for one. “But Echo’s not that kind of illusionist. The way she lies is subtler than that. Just be careful around her. Don’t tell her anything you don’t absolutely have to. Don’t show her your back. Don’t go anywhere with her unless you take me along, too.”

“Wait… Aww!” Gunter’s face brightened—as if there was anything here to be pleased about.

“What?”

“You’re worried about me!”

“This isn’t a joke, Detective.”

“I know. That’s why I said ‘aww.’”

“Just promise you’ll stay on her good side,” Reeva pleaded. “Don’t give her any reason to think you’re an impediment. Let me do the antagonizing.”

“So, our usual act,” Gunter said. “Good cop, bad cop.”

“We don’t have a usual act,” Reeva said, “but sure.” If it was easiest for him to think of it that way.

The main floor of the station was occupied mainly by detective’s desks, men and women in their tidy little uniforms either chatting over cases or bent over paperwork under the light of swirling metalwork lamps. Gunter mercifully didn’t pause here for the usual small-talk with the other officers, instead letting Reeva set their urgent pace to the interrogation rooms on the next floor. 

The Eren-Mara hadn’t figured out holographic force fields or even the one-way glass police used on Reeva’s home planet. Instead, the rooms here were all blocked off by transparent glass behind steel bars. That was how Reeva could see at a glance that it was a slow day for interrogation—all cells empty except one where Myrtell Reed waited, eyes still red with tears, looking exhausted and terrified.

Echo had the authority to enter the room and begin the interrogation without Gunter or Reeva, but she had waited for them in the hall anyway, making polite conversation with Officer Damel.

“Lieutenant Echo,” Gunter said, all warmth—the good cop. “I’m so glad you could join us.”

“Thank you, Detective,” Echo said. “I hope your consultant will come to share the sentiment by the time we’re done here.”

“Oh, Reeva?” Gunter played this off with an admirably clueless smile. “Don’t let her attitude get you down, ma’am. She’s like this with most people.”

“Is she?” Echo’s expression was surprised for a moment before settling into its default mocking smile. “I’ll try to keep my chin up. In the meantime, Officer Damel here was kind enough to fill me in on your case from this morning and let me look over the notes. I see now why you’re so eager to see it solved.” She had arranged her face into an expression of concern. “It sounds brutal.” As if she hadn’t done worse in her day.

“Appreciate it, Damel,” Gunter said. “I’m sure you’ve got an official report to finish up, so you’re dismissed.”

As Damel left them, Gunter turned to Echo. “Is there anything else you need to know before we begin the interrogation?”

“Just the one thing.” Echo met Reeva’s eyes and extended a hand. “The impression I got when I shook Officer Damel’s hand was somewhat scattered. So, if you could show me the crime scene?”

Reeva just looked down at Echo’s hand, incredulous. 

“Right.” Echo closed her fingers, seeming to remember that she had promised not to touch Reeva. “Apologies.” She turned to Gunter. “I’ll need you to show me, then.”

Gunter was visibly confused, unprepared to deal with a duplicitous Volta in his mind. “Show you wh—?”

“No.” Reeva said firmly. “I’ve got it.” And before Echo could throw her off balance, she made contact, grabbing Echo by the wrist—no chance for the ex-Xin to return the grasp and hold her in place; Reeva controlled the interface.

In a jolt, Reeva’s own aptitude met the hard ice of Echo’s soul, as mirror-smooth and inscrutable as it had been ten years ago. Almost. Except for a strange give beneath Reeva’s touch, a crack that hadn’t been there when they were teenagers. Something was bubbling up from the deep through that breach—something that set Reeva’s heart fluttering with nerves and shot her through with heat. But Reeva’s reading wasn’t what mattered here. She knew that trying to parse Echo’s emotions would do her any good. Because it was a trick. If Reeva thought she was getting something from Echo—pain, loneliness, longing—it was always a trick.

Ignore it, Reeva told herself, mentally smacking her own hands from the lake’s surface. Ignore all of it.

Eyes closing to the police station, she shoved the second-hand emotions aside and focused on the task at hand. She pictured the way up to Mayna Reed’s door, then gave Echo the full walk-through of the crime scene, stopping at each smear of blood and small detail she could remember. She broke skin contact as soon as the visual tour was over, shoving Echo’s wrist away.

“Got it?” she asked roughly.

Echo blinked a few times, squinting at nothing—or rather at the hallway and sitting room Reeva had just shown her.

“I think so,” Echo said.

“Good because that’s all your getting. Ma’am.” 

“It should be enough.” Echo flexed her fingers before her gaze shifted to Reeva. “You always were… vivid.”

Reeva felt her cheeks warm at the way those ghost eyes lingered on her—some aftershock of the feeling bubbling up through that ice. But she reminded herself again that Echo had supernatural, psychopathic control over her emotions. If Reeva felt something in Echo’s soul, it was because that was what Echo wanted her to feel. A trick. A distraction. So she turned to Myrtell Reed’s barred interrogation room. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Gunter unlocked the door and the unlikely trio entered. Reed’s head jerked up, and she sniffed sharply, red rimmed eyes darting uneasily between the three. She was looking even worse than she had that morning, her dark blond hair coming out of its braids, her blouse rumpled and coming out of the waistband of her skirt.

“Miss Reed.” Echo was the first to greet her, extending a hand to clasp hers. “I’m Lieutenant Enforcer Echo. Like Consultant Reeva here, I have mind magic that may help us figure out what happened to your sister.”

“Lieutenant Enforcer, you have to believe me!” Reed’s voice cracked. “I keep trying to tell them but they won’t listen. I didn’t do this! It was that rat, Carland Serra!”

Gunter opened his mouth to play the good cop, soothe the suspect’s nerves, but Echo was ahead of him. Instead of standing over Myrtell Reed or even taking a seat across from her, the Xin Volta did something utterly unlike a Xin—or an Enforcer, for that matter. She slid to her knees beside Myrtell’s chair—as if by a child, to reduce the intimidating effect of her height.

In the gentlest voice, she said, “Slow down, Miss Reed. I am so sorry about your sister and about everything you’ve been through this morning. I grew up with siblings too; I know what it’s like to lose someone who’s always been there. But I also know what it takes to get up afterward and do right by the dead. To start with you just keep breathing. As slow as you can, Miss Reed. Know that the best thing you can do for yourself and your sister right now is to clear your mind. Here. Hold my hand. It’s going to be okay.”

“Unbelievable,” Reeva muttered under her breath. Did this maternal facade actually work on anyone?

“What did you say?” Gunter asked.

“Nothing,” Reeva snapped. Not bothering with any of Echo’s preamble, she made her way behind Reed and clamped a hand on the back of her neck.

Reed immediately stiffened, flooding Reeva with a frantic jumble of emotions. Mostly fear.

“She’s not going to hurt you,” Echo assured the suspect in that low, near hypnotic tone. “She wouldn’t.”

The confidence in her voice made Reeva bristle—as if she knew Reeva. As if Reeva was still that idiot sixteen-year-old Aurin Volta Echo had manipulated all those years ago. The tone made Gunter glance between the two Volta in confusion; he didn’t know Echo was pretending.

At least she’d better be, Reeva thought. Or she’s stupider than I thought.

Apparently, Myrtell Reed was stupid, too, because Echo’s deceptively caring voice was actually calming her nerves. A flicker of comfort tingled through her skin into Reeva. I’m safe, thought some tentative thing in Reed—a childlike trust in that white uniform, no matter who was wearing it. At least with her here, I’m safe.

Reeva closed her more pragmatic mind against the emotion and rolled her eyes as Gunter began his line of questioning.

He started back at the beginning, asking Myrtell Reed to retrace her steps that morning, from her apartment, up to her sister’s door. Along the way, he reminded Reed of each visual detail of the scene he knew to be fact—the color of the door, the temperature and moisture of the air that morning, the clothes Mayna Reed had been wearing when she opened the door to her murderer.

Here again, Myrtell Reed objected with a surge of anger.

“The door was open when I got there because I didn’t do it. It was already done. Sh-she was already…” Anger turned to hysterical grief.

“Alright, Myrtell,” Echo cut in ever so gently, still kneeling by the suspect’s chair, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You didn’t arrive to a closed door. You never rang the bell. Tell us what did happen.”

A sob shook Myrtell Reed and she clutched Echo’s hands a little tighter in hers.

“I’m with you, Myrtell. I’m with you. I’m seeing.” Echo said, eyes closed. “Speak and show me the rest.”

“I-I can’t,” Myrtell trembled, waves of grief and horror surged into Reeva, causing her to mentally pull back from the incoming emotion.

Not wanting a repeat of that morning—a dangerous loss of control—Reeva made herself utterly cold, creating a frozen dam around her emotional center. Granted, this wasn’t optimal for reading the nuances of a suspect’s feelings, but this was primarily Echo’s reading, not Reeva’s. As long as Echo got the information she needed, Reeva could get away with observing the broad movements of the suspect’s of emotions from a distance. Standing atop the dam, Reeva let Myrtell’s emotions roil far below while she calmly searched the foam and fury for anomalies.

“You can do it.” The way Echo said the words was oddly familiar, but not from any memory Reeva had of Echo. Who was she imitating? “For your sister. I know you can do this, Myrtell. What’s on the other side of that door?”

Reed let out a high sob, accompanied by a wave of grief.

“Shh, shh. It’s okay.” Echo tucked a lock of the woman’s hair behind her ear and Reeva was thankful that the accompanying feeling—the startled comfort of those long fingers on skin, brushing against the ear—was at a safe distance at the base of the dam. “Rage is muddling. Grief is muddling. I need you to push through those feelings and concentrate on what you saw. I know it’s hard, but you can do it.”

Except that she couldn’t. Reeva could feel just from the thunder of her emotions—to say nothing of the actual tremors rocking Reed’s body—that she physically wouldn’t be able to get the words out.

“You don’t need to say it,” Echo said softly. “Just picture it. And I’ll be there with you, holding you steady. Can you do that for me, Miss Reed?”

Lip trembling, Reed nodded.

A beat of silence followed in which Gunter leaned forward, eyes wide in anticipation. But he was now cut off from the entirety of his own interrogation, unable to see the pictures flashing into Echo’s mind or to feel the emotions flooding into Reeva—confusion, quickly turning to a visceral horror.

Reeva knew this type of horror: the sinking feeling of realizing something unthinkable had happened to someone you cared about, the terror at the prospect of turning the corner, confirming the worst, but knowing you had to anyway; you had to know. Of course, this very real feeling didn’t mean that Myrtell Reed was innocent. The horror could always come from something you had caused in a moment of weakness or naivety; the horror could be real and it could still be your fault. Reeva knew that better than anyone.

Then came the blinding rage.

This time, Reeva had braced for it. The dam held, and Reeva’s aura thankfully didn’t respond to Myrtell’s wrath.

“Oh…” Echo’s perfect brow furrowed, creasing her forehead. Her ghost blue eyes opened in surprise. “A man was there.”

“A man?” Reeva said. Could that really be? Had this man—not Mayna—been the target of Myrtell’s rage? Or was she just very good at revising her own memories?

“Yes.” Echo turned to look between Reeva and Gunter. “The way she remembers it, she walked in to find a man standing over her sister, covered in blood, holding a knife. Then she ran at him…”

“And cut her hand on the knife?” Gunter said.

Echo nodded. “But immediately after taking that first slash at her, the man ran away.”

“That’s what I keep telling you!” Myrtell Reed said.

Gunter rifled in a file before producing one of the Eren-Mara’s usual terrible photographs, which he held out to Echo. “This man?”

“Yes,” Echo said after a brief look at the photo. “Unmistakably.” Then she looked back up at Gunter. “Who is he?”

“The victim’s estranged ex-boyfriend,” Gunter said, “Carland Serra. The team will already be bringing him in for questioning.”

“Okay,” Reeva cut in, not liking the way Gunter seemed to be taking this new story at face value. Memories could lie. Echo loved to lie. “If this man is the one who murdered your sister, how come you were the one seen going in and out of the house?” Grip tightening on the back of the suspect’s neck, Reeva pulled her back sharply to look her in the face. 

“He went out through the back garden,” Echo started to relay, but Reeva wasn’t having it.

“There wasn’t a trace of blood in the back garden or the fence around it.”

“In fairness, Reeva, we were distracted in the garden,” Gunter said. “It might be worth sending someone to check again.”

“Sure,” Reeva said, unconvinced. “And while they’re there, maybe they’ll find man-sized footprints that weren’t there before. Maybe blood traces out the back hall that wasn’t there?”

“I’m telling the truth!” Myrtell shouted.

“Then how come you didn’t report him?” Reeva demanded, her own wrath turning back on Myrtell. “How come the first thing you did was pack a bag and try to flee the city?”

“I-I wasn’t thinking,” Myrtell protested, heart hammering against Reeva’s unmoving ice dam. “I was just so angry.” This at least seemed to be the truth, based on Reeva’s past and current readings. But what did anger have to do with fleeing the scene and city of the crime? “I’ve always had problems with this—controlling my temper, but it’s not…” Her voice had tapered to a tremulous whisper, her eyes filling with tears as she looked up at Reeva. “Saints forgive me. Saints know I was going to think better of it before the train got there. I was going to think better of it.”

“Think better of what?” Reeva demanded.

“Killing him,” Echo said quietly. Her hand was still resting on top of Myrtell Reed’s, maintaining her window into the woman’s mind. While Reeva got only a foggy mess of fear and wrath, Echo saw whatever Reed was picturing as she spoke.

“It was just fragments of a plan,” Echo elaborated after a beat of silence. “She’d get off the train, maybe change clothes to be harder to track. Maybe pick the lock at Serra’s house and wait for him inside. Maybe a hammer to the head if one was handy in his cupboard. Maybe fire, if she could find the material to set one. It really wasn’t a fully formed plan.”

“Saints alive!” Gunter murmured. “I guess that explains it…”

“Explains what?” Reed asked.

“Well.” He drew a page of notes from the file Officer Damel had left him. “We couldn’t figure out why you took a southbound train away from the scene when you have no friends or family living there. But you weren’t headed away from a murder; you were headed toward one.” Placing the paper on the table, he turned it so that Reeva and Echo could see an address the officers had taken down. “Carland Serra lives south of the city.”

“Can you blame me for considering it?” Myrtell asked in a low voice. Eren-Mara had no death penalty. On this planet, if you wanted that kind of revenge for something, it fell to you. “All he ever wanted was to suck the life out of Mayna when they were together. If she had an idea, he wanted it squashed. If she had an opinion, he had to override it. If she was succeeding, he needed to put her down. And when she chose her work over him… obviously he couldn’t stand that.”

“Right,” Reeva said, still skeptical. “So, he waited six months, then killed her?”

“Six months of trying to get her back,” Myrtell said. “Ask anyone who knew either of them. The bastard wouldn’t leave her alone. That’s why she had me visiting every day I could before work. She knew she wasn’t safe from him.”

“Miss Reed’s memory of the crime scene is detailed, Consultant Reeva,” Echo said, “as detailed as your own.”

“That’s not evidence of anything,” Reeva said. “She knew this man, Carland. She knew the house. Obviously, she can picture him in the scene accurately, whether he was there or not. Plus, she’s had time to revise her memories, create fantasy images on top of real ones.”

Echo thought for a moment. “Right… a moment, Consultant.”

Gunter stayed with the suspect as Reeva sullenly followed Echo out into the hall. When the door to the interrogation room had closed behind them, the taller Volta turned on Reeva, perfect hair swishing about her shoulders. “I understand that people can overwrite their visual memories—”

“Some of us are even skilled enough to overwrite our emotional memories.”

Echo’s jaw tightened. “Right.” A pause. “Would it make you feel better if we try again from the beginning? We can have Detective Gunter go after her more aggressively. Maybe you’d like to control the line of questioning?”

“Gunter should do it,” Reeva said. Her pride didn’t want to admit it, but she was neither emotionally stable nor as good at measured interrogation as the real detective. 

“Are you sure? You seemed eager enough to play interrogator a minute ago.” Echo nodded 

“Apologies, Lieutenant,” Reeva spat. “I was frustrated.”

“I imagine that happens often, given how much time you must spend watching others do a job you were quite good at.” She was mocking Reeva—obviously—but in that impenetrable Echo way where none of the malice made its way into her voice. “So why not walk Miss Reed through your version of events. Tell her everything you think she did—leaving her apartment with a knife on her, forcing her way in, stabbing her sister repeatedly—and see if it triggers a visual memory.”

“I’m a consultant,” Reeva said. “I don’t insert myself into investigations like that.”

“Then why so opinionated in there?” Echo tilted her head toward the cell. “If not because you think you could do it better?”

“I don’t know,” Reeva snapped instead of entertaining the question in earnest. “Gunter and anyone who’s worked with me will tell you I’m the opposite of opinionated when it comes to police work. Maybe you’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

Echo had opened her mouth again, but Reeva wasn’t interested in being poked or prodded any further, so she cut her off.

“Coffee, Lieutenant Echo?”

“I—what?” Echo said in confusion.

“Talk interrogation strategy with Detective Gunter if you want but that’s not what I do. So?” She glared up at Echo in malicious expectation. “Cream, Lieutenant? Sugar? How many?”

Echo just stared at her, unreadable, then followed when Reeva headed for the break room down the stairs. She was quiet initially, just hovering as Reeva angrily made a cup of coffee with the station’s very pretty yet very slow coffee maker. Eren-Mara stimulants were all miserably bitter. Just smelling the drink, Reeva could tell it was about to taste awful and offered it to Echo without sweetener.

“Thank you.” Echo took the coffee, then paused with her hands around the pale blue mug. “Reeva?”—her first name, no title attached—“Why is it important that she be guilty?”

“What?” The sound of her name in that soft voice had Reeva so thrown that she had missed the actual question.

“Myrtell Reed,” Echo said. “Why do you need her to be guilty?”

“Why do you need her to be innocent?” Reeva demanded and, before Echo had a chance to respond, pressed, “Or is this not about innocence at all? You just admire her ability to lie to herself?”

Echo let out a sigh, slowly setting the mug on the counter beside her. “Hadn’t we established that she was telling the truth? I mean, you read her. If you don’t trust my powers—or my word—surely you trust your own.”

Reeva folded her arms over her chest. “I used to.”

Echo’s ghost eyes narrowed just slightly in confusion. “If you don’t trust your powers anymore, why are you working for the police? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Raw information isn’t dangerous,” Reeva returned. “It’s what you do with it. I tell the detectives what I feel in a subject, then my job is done. The work of interpreting that information is up to them.”

“And you don’t worry about the police getting it wrong?”

“Obviously. But it’s not my job or my business.” Clearly, interpretation was never what I was good at, Reeva didn’t say. “What I did back there was a mistake. Let’s leave it there.”

Just then, a low-ranked officer stuck his head into the break room. “Sorry to interrupt. Lieutenant Echo. there’s a call for you at the desk.”

“Thank you. Excuse me.” Echo nodded to Reeva and swept out of the room.

Since they weren’t playing by the usual rules, and Reeva’s powers were already loosened from the morning flight, she went ahead and let her aura brighten around her, enhancing her hearing. Through the break room door and across the floor, she heard the voice crackling from the earpiece of a telephone.

“… no sign of him.”

“Well, search the house for any evidence of struggle,” Echo said, “and pull every officer you can to sweep the area and interview the neighbors. If you have a lead on his location, don’t pursue. Contact me first.”

“Ma’am?” said the voice on the other end.

“I’ll be faster,” Echo said, “and if he’s armed, it should be me.”

The call concluded and Echo returned to the break room to find Reeva leaning against the counter, glowing a faint gold that most humans would have missed.

“You heard all that,” Echo deduced immediately.

“Yep.” Reeva waited for Echo to admonish her, ready for the fight, looking forward to it. But she didn’t. It was straight to business.

“The, as you might have overheard, Kamden Bora’s husband, Asten, wasn’t at his house where we expected to find him. There’s some evidence that he left in a hurry.”

“Like a guilty person hoping to evade the police?” Reeva suggested. 

“That’s what Enforcer June thinks.” Echo paced once across the small break room, then back again, musing, “I mean, I know you always look at the spouse first, but it doesn’t make sense. Asten Bora, whatever his motives, didn’t have a background in the military or law enforcement. He isn’t licensed with any weapons; he isn’t even licensed to drive. It’s hard to imagine him capable of committing such a violent murder and evading law enforcement in the aftermath. Then again, depending on how much of his work ex-Enforcer Bora brought home with him, maybe Asten knew exactly how to do it and lead the investigation away from himself…”

“Maybe,” Reeva said. Or maybe you’d like me, and June, and everyone else to follow that trail away from the much simpler explanation—that a Volta did it. “So, are you going after him?”

“No,” Echo said. “Enforcer June pointed out that until we know where our suspect is, I’m better utilized here. We both are.”

“But you want to be the one who stops him.” It would certainly elevate Echo with Captain Kinell, which seemed worryingly important to her.

“You heard what I told Enforcer June. It’s—”

“Safer that way?” Reeva said. “Or do you just want to kill him yourself?”

“Kill him!” Echo had the nerve to look offended. “I’m an Enforcer, Reeva. I’m going to bring him back here to face justice—or the best this planet can manage.”

Since when do you care about justice? was on the tip of Reeva’s tongue when they were interrupted once again. This time, it was Detective Gunter.

“Consultant, Lieutenant. Mayna Reed’s ex-boyfriend is here and ready for interrogation.”

“Already?” Echo said, impressed.

“We already had officers dispatched to his home, but apparently, he turned himself in while we were interrogating Myrtell Reed. Saved our guys the train trip.”

“You two go ahead,” Reeva said. “I’ll be a minute.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to be there to keep an eye on me?” Echo asked. The same question was on Gunter’s face, but he was quieter about it.

“I just need to take care of something that’s been bothering me,” Reeva said. Letting Echo have even a second alone with Gunter made her nervous, but she had decided it was worth the risk. “It’s for the case. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it, Lieutenant.”

Echo looked faintly puzzled, but left the room without further questions.

Reeva waited, pretending to make another cup of coffee, watching out of the corner of her eye until Echo had passed down the hall and around the corner. It wasn’t like Eren-Mara police stations had excellent sound-proofing but they had some and, with multiple doors closed between herself and Echo, there was little chance of the other Volta overhearing as Reeva pulled out her Aurinmate—quickly to minimize the time she left Gunter on his own with Echo. Barny dutifully maintained his wallet form but glowed slightly as Reeva poured energy into him. 

“Barny, I…” Quickly, she reminded herself. No time to get caught up in emotion. “I need you to message Captain Shoma Yvani,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice and hands from shaking. She had to do this. The safety of this little defenseless planet could depend on it. “Message: This is an emergency. A planet is at stake. Please… Please call me back.”

She held her breath for a moment, wondering if her aura was even sufficient to power a single inter dimensional message. Then Barny pinged in affirmation. It had worked!

Now, the question was whether Shoma would take the message. Would she even read it when she saw who it was from? Would Aurin’s filters shut out communication from an ex-operative with no access?… Was Shoma even still alive? Ten years ago, Reeva wouldn’t have thought anything could kill a Yvani, but she also wouldn’t have thought anything could cripple a Yvani either.

Several long breaths passed after the ping, during which Reeva stared down at her Aurinmate in a daze. If Captain Shoma was still alive, she had the message in hand. And that was all Reeva could do with her limited power. Calling inter dimensionally was a high-energy endeavor. If the conversation was going to continue, it would have to be under Captain Shoma’s power, and after several moments of grimacing down at Barny, Reeva realized how ridiculous it was to wait on that with bated breath—how ridiculous it was to wait at all.

“She won’t want to talk to me,” she murmured quietly.

Before Barny could offer any response, she slid him into her coat pocket and left the break room. Without Barny saying anything, they both knew the truth: Reeva was on her own.