Resonance - Erica O'Rourke Page 0,8

cauterization. The Echo on the other side of this cut site still exists.”

I snatched my hand away. “How is that possible?” And if she was right, did it mean Train World, where I’d left Simon, was intact?

“Cleaving requires that you cut all the threads at once—you need all the strings of a cut site free in order to weave the edges together. But a cauterization cuts only a few threads at a time, knotting each half. Once that’s done, the Echo is untethered.”

“Doesn’t it unravel?”

“No. Both sides are knotted, so both sides remain intact. The energy stays within the cauterized Echo, and once the seam is finished, it’s a completely independent, self-sustaining reality.”

I reached into the cut site, examining the knots again, trying to sense the world on the other side.

“You cauterized Train World?”

“Yes. My team found Simon shortly after you and Addie returned. The process was a little trickier, because you and Simon had already cut the strings. As you know, he makes worlds stronger, which bought us extra time.”

Exactly as I’d hoped. I pulled my hand free as my knees gave out. I slid down to the floor, my back against the lockers. “You saved him.”

“We did.”

I hadn’t believed her before now—not truly, not in my bones—but I did now, and the knowledge knocked loose a chunk of the sorrow I’d carried, dissolving it to tears.

Ms. Powell was nice enough to look away while I pulled myself together. Once I did, I asked, “Can I cross over?”

“Once a world is cauterized, there’s no getting through again. It will grow, and generate Echoes of its own, but there’s no going back.”

“He’s trapped there?” Had she given me hope only to shatter it again?

She touched my shoulder, her words a rush of reassurance. “We pulled Simon out before the cauterization was complete. He’s lucky we were monitoring him—it was a close call.”

“So let’s bring him back,” I said, rising to my feet.

“It’s not safe for him here. Not while the Consort exists.”

“Then I’ll go to him.”

“And join the Free Walkers?”

Becoming a Free Walker meant living in Echoes, hiding from the Consort, leaving behind my family and Eliot and the plans we’d made. If I joined the Free Walkers, I wouldn’t just be a troublemaker. I’d be a criminal, and I’d spend the rest of my life running.

“You make it sound like it’s all or nothing.”

“There’s no middle ground here, Del. Either you’re ours, or theirs.”

“Why don’t you tell people about cauterization?” I asked. “The Consort’s convinced you want to destroy the Key World because you won’t cleave. If you explain—”

“You think they don’t know? The Consort knows all about cauterization, and it’s only made them more desperate to stop us.” Her gaze bored into me. “Tell me why the Consort cleaves.”

“To protect the Key World from Echoes,” I said automatically, a response drilled into me from my earliest days.

“Why else?”

I thought back to all the textbooks I’d skimmed. “To harvest their energy and bolster the Key World.”

“Exactly. They want to capture as much of the energy as they can, and they get it at the expense of the Echoes. Cauterization would cut off the supply.”

“Then why cauterize? If we need that energy, why wouldn’t we continue cleavings?”

“Because the Echoes need it more. They need it to live.”

I looked at her blankly. “But they’re not—”

“Echoes aren’t merely copies of Originals. You know that better than anyone.”

I thought of Simon, of all the versions of him I’d met, each distinct and vivid and whole. “I know. They’re real.”

“They’re more than real. They’re alive. The Consort knows it, just as they know cleaving—the great and sacred duty of the Walkers—is murder.”

CHAPTER FOUR

SOME SONGS YOU LOVE FROM the instant you hear them. Six notes in, part of you rises up and says yes. Before the melody’s complete, before you’ve heard the lyrics or the bridge, something within you recognizes it as part of your soul, as if it’s been waiting for you all this time.

Ms. Powell’s words were like the chords to a song I’d always known but never heard. Still, the logical part of my brain resisted.

“Echoes aren’t alive. They don’t exist until their world has formed. They can’t survive unless they’re tethered to an Original. When we cleave, they don’t even notice they’re unraveling.”

“With cauterization, they don’t unravel. Once the strings are knotted, the Echoes are as alive as you and me.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” I didn’t doubt Simon’s Echoes were real. I’d watched one of them cleave, and the horror of