ECHOES

Luna nodded toward the path. "Come on. You want answers, right? Follow me."

Without waiting, she turned and led Luke past the familiar walkways of campus, an old building—barely used, almost forgotten.

Luke squinted. "This building's still open?"

"Technically? No," Luna said. "But rules are flexible when you're desperate.

They kept walking until they reached the basement of the building. A door closed. Dusty. Something about it felt... wrong.

Restricted Area: 

Do Not Enter

All Unauthorized Personnel Keep Out

"It's locked," Luke muttered.

Luna pulled a bobby pin from her hair. "Not for long."

Luke stared. "Are you seriously—"

Luna didn't even glance at him. "Told you—I've been chasing this for a while."

Click.

The door creaked open. The air that met them was cold, stale, thick with dust and time.

Inside, crooked shelves almost about to collapse, books stacked carelessly. The air smelled old—dust, ink, and damp paper.

They stepped inside. Luke coughed and waved his hand. "Why does this feel like the start of a horror film?"

Luna smirked. "Because it probably is."

They fanned out. Luke wandered toward the larger shelves; Luna disappeared into a shadowed corner.

"You won't find your answers in the fiction section," she called.

"Then where?"

"Special Archives. Hidden shelf. Over here."

She pulled back a row of thick books and gave the shelf behind them a solid shove.

With a reluctant groan, the panel slid inward, revealing a narrow staircase spiraling downward.

Luke's eyes widened. "A hidden room?"

Luna was already descending. "Yeah. Found it by accident. Or maybe it found me."

The stairs creaked beneath them. The deeper they went, the colder it grew. A bare bulb flickered overhead, casting their shadows across stone walls.

At the bottom: a single heavy shelf built into the stone wall, dusty and sealed behind a glass pane. Labels were carved directly into the wood: Phenomena: Undocumented

Luna ran her fingers across the shelves, then pulled three thin volumes free. Dust flew.

They flipped through the pages quickly. Mostly incoherent scribbles. Scanned photos. Unverified accounts.

First book: notes from an old experiment on emotions. Sparse details. Lots of guesses.

Whoever wrote it seemed desperate to prove something no one else believed.

The second: notes on "Echoes."

Luke slowed. "Echoes..."

He read aloud: "A phenomenon triggered by intense emotion. Echoes—memory impressions, emotional frequencies burned into physical space." The page included a diagram of a room with spectral energy coiled around a chair.

Luna leaned in. "Like emotional radiation."

She turned the page. Another note, scrawled in red ink:

'The more they feed on emotion, the more they will be devoured.'

Luke read the line again. 'The more they feed on emotion, the more they will be devoured.'

His grip on the book tightened. "Devoured by what? The power? The memory?"

"No one knows for sure," Luna said quietly. "Some say the Echo burns too bright and eats away at you. Others think it's the emotion itself—like you get so consumed by what you feel, you stop being you."

She turned the page again, slower now. "But me? I think it's simpler. You feed the Echo too much... and eventually, it forgets it belongs to you."

Luna set the second book down, brushing off the dust with the back of her sleeve.

"Here," she said. "Let me show you something."

She pulled out the third volume. This one was thinner—its leather spine cracked and the pages inside warped like they'd been pulled from a fire. 

"You already knew about this," Luke said, his voice low.

Luna gave a short nod. "Not everything. But enough."

She tapped a paragraph with her nail. The ink was shaky, written like someone had been racing the clock.

"Echoes — phenomena triggered by overwhelming emotion. They are not ghosts. Not people. Echoes are abilities—manifestations that appear when someone nearby experiences heightened emotional senses. Each Echo is unique. Singular. No duplication."

Luke leaned in, rereading the words. "Echoes are… abilities?"

Luna met his eyes. "Yeah. What we can do—that's an Echo. I hear thoughts when they're too loud. You see threads when emotions get too strong. We're not the only ones, either. There are others."

He frowned. "So they're not something you're born with?"

"They are. But most don't know it. Not until something triggers it. A trauma. A breakdown. A moment that cracks them open."

She flipped to the next page—a diagram, red ink scrawled along the border.

"No two Echoes manifest identically. Once awakened, they are permanently tied to the individual. If one ability exists in the world, it cannot appear again in another. The phenomenon is singular, unreplicable."

She glanced sideways at Luke. "There's a reason yours is the only one like it."

Luna kept turning pages—faster now, more restless. She stopped at a spread of clippings, newsprint brittle with age.

"Here's where it gets worse."

Old newspaper headlines lined the page:

"LOCAL TEEN MISSING. NO TRACE FOUND.""FAMILY CLAIMS COVER-UP: 'SOMEONE TOOK OUR DAUGHTER'""ESCAPED YOUTH SAYS 'THEY EXPERIMENTED ON US'"

Luke scanned them, unsettled. "Who would do this?"

"An organization," Luna said quietly. "Reverie."

He looked at her. "I've never heard of it."

"You're not supposed to." She pointed to another clipping. "They don't go public. Don't show up in official reports. But the pattern's there. People with Echoes—abilities—started vanishing. Or worse… the people connected to them did."

Luke froze. "Like Cael."

Luna's jaw tightened. "And my sister."

She pulled out a folded paper from between the pages—a grainy photo of a girl and a boy, maybe fourteen, surrounded by police tape. The caption blurred, but the expression on the girl's face—blank, glassy—was seared into the image.

"They weren't Echoes," she said. "But they were close to people who were."

Luke's voice dropped. "Collateral."

Luna nodded grimly. "Reverie couldn't always find the Echoes themselves. Some were too guarded. Too unstable. So they found other ways to get leverage."

Luke stared down at the newspaper. "So they're not after us because we're dangerous."

"They're after us because we're unpredictable."

He looked up at her. "Do you think they have Cael?"

"I don't know," she said, voice taut. "But I don't think his disappearance—or my sister's—was random. They knew things about us. Things we never shared. Reverie doesn't just hunt Echoes. Sometimes they go after the people closest to us… because they've seen too much."She looked straight at him. "They're not trying to break us, Luke. They're trying to silence anyone who might know what we are"

Luke didn't speak.

He couldn't.

Luna turned the page one last time. It was covered in what looked like unidentified symbols—half-sentences, diagrams, notes scratched over each other like someone was trying to bury them mid-thought.

Then—

A sound.

Not loud.

Not obvious.

Just the soft thud of footsteps. Muffled. But close. Too close.

Luna froze.

Another step. Careful. Deliberate. Someone descending the stairs—slowly, like they already knew someone was here.

She shut the book, spine whispering shut like it had secrets to keep.

Luke's breath hitched."Did you—"

Luna didn't answer. Just grabbed his sleeve and pulled him behind a collapsed shelf, pressing a finger to her lips.

The bulb above flickered.

The footsteps reached the bottom.

And stopped.

Long silence.

Then a single, deliberate inhale—like someone was listening.

Luke's pulse thundered in his ears.

He didn't dare move.

| Some truths don't want to be found.| They find you first.