The Foundry | Part Three | Chapter Thirty-One
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Three | Dominion
Part Four | Unmasked; Unbound; Unleashed
Chapter Thirty-One
The dichotomy between the differing modes of being about The Foundry was wildly erratic. People were responding to the weight of threat about them in strange means of joyful play, perhaps inspired by most recent events. Echo’s showing out through the feeds was making her into somewhat of a cult figure with her peers, and she hated it.
Echo sought with her sharing of self and those things she’d created to find place in a community of equals. To feel pedestalized was not ever the hope. Receiving it was a confusing notion to a woman long unseen. Echo appreciated that people knew of who she was, and all she’d be capable of doing, but there was a bitterness borne from how othered she felt.
It was only in the presence of people she’d chosen as friends — perhaps, the reason why she’d pursued those friendships to begin with — where she felt comfortably witnessed as herself.
People were going crazy over The Rumble. Leopold had been tweaking it. There were many elements planned which they’d not gotten in before that maiden voyage. The musical entrances hadn’t been programmed yet, along with the pyrotechnics, and he had yet to created that back-stage area Echo was so insistent on including.
She hadn’t gotten to do The Shocker once either, and Alan hadn’t used either of his finishers. She’d been most hoping to see him use The Running Man in-action, so she’d have quality means by which to make fun of him for being scared of her all that time. Though, Echo was glad he hadn’t busted out Ultimate Man Meat — that was always Leopold’s thing.
Anyone who wished to take part could now interface with the simulation and create their own character, up two three could form a commentary team, and he’d built in Poe’s biggest wish left unfulfilled. She’d so hoped for herself to be the leader of Hell’s Army; a faction of faceless minions she could command about the arena in hunt of her prey.
Leopold had actually started programming a spin-off sim just for Zabroth. Poe asked him to once finally realizing The Rumble wasn’t what she’d been looking for at all. Still, Echo demanded Zabroth stayed in, he’d become iconic in his briefest appearance on the feeds.
There was also a thought which Echo had stumbled into receiving when watching it all back. She’d been expressing inner gratitude about how Zabroth had remained disengaged from the actual fighting, pondering the Synapse Melder quite specifically — as well as his secondary finisher, also quite aptly named; Cholera — and realized herself in possession of solutions she’d been seeking for some time.
As Alan and Echo entered the Council Chamber, she’d gone right up to Ekara Oaksmith and started wildling away at the beginnings of her great plan. Realizing she’d need two for the punishment she had in mind, Echo was also reconsidering the passive-aggressive way she’d been dealing with her bitterness towards Chloe. Perhaps, it was time to grow up, and start being nicer to her as well.
She’d just not been able to let it all go. The Rumble was simply too much of a dream come true to Echo’s strange sensibilities, and there was that other thing too. She hadn’t even been acknowledging her obsession with it, but her remembrance of Death’s Kiss was keeping her up at night. She’d just go back to that memory and stay in it. Something about the way her whole body had melted into that pliable mush as their lips landed upon hers, and how it felt to be so completely helpless in Rory’s hands — those simply weren’t notions Echo would be able to let go of, just as they’d never been before.
Rory smiled across the room towards Echo’s pensive reception of it, who was feeling a bit awkward while standing beside Alan. Those were a newest blessing shared in the evolving flow of their relationship. Echo was grateful for every one of them, even if they’d been a bit taunting of late. Rory knew most completely of how they’d bore themselves into Echo’s sad-little brain using Death’s Kiss the way they had, and they’d seemed to be loving it.
Rory was teasing her about it, and as usual, Echo found this a most frustratingly appealing cruelty. She thought Rory was sweet, and they had long hated it. Echo still remembered an instance on her first go-round at The Foundry, having expressed such sentiments, only to be met with a most calloused and determined affirmation of their own nastiness.
Echo had responded through clearest knowing it would be poorly received, determined to express her truth regardless, “Well, you’re the sweetest to me.”
Thinking about how that all worked inside herself would make Echo feel crazy sometimes, but she knew what it really was. Rory was just being felt as they truly were through it all. That’s why Echo had never stopped believing they might be friends again; it just seemed there were things they didn’t know about themself yet.
Alan had neglected to speak on Death’s Kiss altogether. He was clearly hurt in the aftermath, if only shown through his signature-style of silence, and Echo had been honest about how she felt, which might’ve made things even worse.
Still, that largest grin before her was far bigger than those Rory was sharing previously — speaking of excitement. They’d been designing a character themself, and one Echo suspected would not be uncontrollably hissing throughout the experience. She was excited for that too, especially since she had Leopold better-tune the add-on made for herself to feel some pain, and thought they might enjoy it as well.
There had been many inquisitive discussions thrust upon Echo by her peers and administrators, quite curious to hear of the strangest world she’d come from which hosted such bizarre rituals. Echo had been enjoying that. Despite all she’d endured there, and how right it felt to be apart from it, there would always be a part of her which missed that home.
The Conclave meetings had been dreadfully uneventful. Those efforts their enemy was making to occlude themselves were entirely effective. Nobody even knew where to start. They’d all just seemed to be hoping Investigator Harrison might offer some shred of a clue.
Echo doubted that one’s competency. They’d been among the few administrators who landed in a resolution of complete unknowing, regarding the destruction of Bliss. With the fact it was their job to figure things out, it felt to Echo as if some mistake had been made in them finding that station.
She’d have found suspicion in their incompetence, herself one part of a newfound group of peers determined to discover the threat they faced, if the Investigator had been of a more capable sort.
Jem Harrison was not their culprit, and as they were currently revealing in the Council session — as per usual — there’d been a complete lack of new findings. Echo caught Rory’s eyes across the room. They were the leader of this investigative force, and something told Echo they’d been thinking the exact same thing as her. That very notion they’d resolved together with Poe and Leopold; someone in the council was in on it.
At first, Echo had been insisting deeper investigations go on regarding Pauline and Marcus Demitrus — themselves not often present in these sessions — absent entirely since the most recent attack. Yet, Rory had actually met them, and assured her team there was no chance of that being the case.
Those two were angels personified into form — is what Echo had interpreted from her words. What they’d done together in creating The Foundry, having found such balance with each other through breadths of time, had clearly gifted the two with some divine bliss they’d walk about within. No two happier people could be found, nor more loving, and it was apparent they’d not held another wish but to share that with as many people as they might.
Alan’s arm wrapped tightly around Echo then, witnessing Rory and her own wordless communication, showing some insecurity he was holding about their renewed friendship. He’d been invited to join in with what they were doing, and Echo could tell he felt himself missing out, but there was such overwhelm of late in his psyche. There was a time after Atreya’s bombings for which he’d been much the same, but now that the war had made itself known so close to home, he’d fallen into that same rut. This time, he seemed to be stuck in it.
Rory wouldn’t say she could rule out Ekara entirely, but there was a shared insight between her and Echo that the woman would not be a part of such things. Rory had also spoken most clearly of the character they saw in Simion Hareth; pilot of Epoch.
The same could not be said for Jocé Remance, and she’d become one of the primary focus’ of their efforts. Not just for her hatefulness, it was more than that. Silence had been created like none other. Each and every warship — even Echo’s, so energetically subsumed by that one choice weapon — could exploit some form of projected camouflage, shielding of both sight and to the reading of their energies.
Stealth was Jocé’s clear priority when building out Silence, and it’d become a bit of a legend for its abilities. If there was anyone capable of delivering those bombs to Atreya, standing falsely beside them at The Foundry, they’d thought it her.
Data from the hangar in that lead-up to the strike had provided nothing. No movement or recorded change was witnessed in the footage or made its way into the logs. At least, until Echo looked at it. She had Fox go deeper into what she’d noticed.
He was able to uncover proof-enough, it argued the case to Echo’s three compatriots of investigation through its showing. Someone had overwritten the footage. There was subterfuge apparent at the very time it would need to exist, for a member of The Foundry to have been the direct culprit of Atreya’s destruction.
Luckily for all — except perhaps Alan, and whomever the responsibility of these atrocities could truly be prescribed to — The Council’s Consolers were on the case, and they were working together.
