The Foundry | Part Two | Chapter Twenty-One
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Three | Dominion
Chapter Twenty-One
Things had been coming back quickly for Echo since that ‘conversation’ which hadn’t lasted more than a moment with Rory, along with the supplemental medical attention she’d needed. They’d been separated again most immediately afterwards.
Rory really hadn’t liked it when Echo tried to explain that bunny dream and how it made her feel. The viciousness bore within that impact of her skull into the wall had shaken something loose inside her mind. An unfolding was happening at rates which were ungrounding to the woman.
She’d been posted up in her cabin most days, and neglecting to eat much at all.
Fox had shown her the footage from directly after that unrecorded simulation of her own personal hell. The way she’d moved, and the energy Echo could sense coming off herself had been palpably broken. Never could she remember feeling what her body language portrayed.
It would seem a very fortunate thing for her state of mind, in the end; all of what transpired.
Remembering everything the way she had, in little bits and spurts, left it feeling like someone else entirely, and most disconnected from her current consciousness. It helped Echo reach understanding with how she’d been moved to do such an unfathomably terrible thing in response. Eventually, she’d find acceptance in it.
There was that kiss too. Echo couldn’t believe it, along with the laugh afterwards. She wouldn’t deny it felt empowering to watch back, but seeing the sick look on her face had still scared her. Only once had she ever felt in any way similar to the madness she’d clearly been struck with, and that had been the whole Ashe thing. It seemed Rory had the unique capability to call forth exceptional things from Echo.
It’d been the audio which really sold her. That helped Echo understand, and it ultimately triggered the remembrance of all which had followed. They’d called her Daniel. They told her she wasn’t welcome. That ‘no one wanted her here’.
Feeling into the emotions borne inside just hearing that, without even being in the broken place she clearly had been, nor so physically exhausted, or having been thrown to the ground in assault — Echo found an assurance in her gut. That had definitely been her who disappeared Bliss.
Fox had been able to confirm the investigation into this all hadn’t uncovered the video stream. Apparently, Rory hadn’t been so forthcoming about that part. He’d taken Echo’s own methods of subterfuge to scrub it from the record, overwriting it with footage which would seem inane if discovered.
How she’d actually managed getting to Bliss was the next journey of inner uncovery, and it started with the hope she might discover that intelligence stowed somewhere for safe keeping — which would have been a far better idea, in her estimation — though, choosing neither option would’ve certainly been the best course of action.
Still, she knew there wouldn’t be a choice to do something. Not for Echo, or with what they said; how they’d made her feel. The experiences of that simulation had come back too, along with a most prescient realization regarding a woman of stature who’d need to receive some recompense herself.
She was impressed with herself — despite how dreadfully disappointed she’d manage to be in simultaneity. Excellence had come out of her in the madness, even if it was channeled into something horrible. That’s what Rory had always enabled Echo to feel capable of. Something in that woman had shown her parts of herself long repressed. Their fire was the same as hers. She’d only smothered it within, suppressing it to endlessly exist as lost embers of her own authenticity.
Her first run on The Gauntlet had been inspired by Rory. Without the challenge of those juxtaposed feelings within her, both wanting to outclass the woman who’d broken her virgin heart, while desiring another chance to simply be their friend — having felt so completely unseen, let alone, by the one who her own witnessing of caused the activation to begin with — birthed the very flames of fury which had kept her fighting for a place at The Foundry without a chosen.
Never would she stop hurting for that woman’s lost friendship, or escape her sorrow for the hopes which burned so brightly during that briefest time they’d known each other. Yet, she wouldn’t fight for them anymore, not how she had. They’d chosen again and again to position themself as her enemy. She couldn’t care less if there were harbored feelings inside Rory which had them acting out. Echo believed it was what you did that matters.
That’s why she would earn her place at The Foundry. She’d making up to do for all she’d taken from the universe by killing Rory’s Bliss. They’d have done incredible things together.
Echo would resolve to create those same positive impacts on her own. If some miracle saw Rory make any kind of effort, to simply portray a shade of the feelings of regret Echo long prayed they’d uncover inside themself, she’d be happy to heal that wound.
If they crossed her once more. If they touched her. If they ever thought to call her Daniel again. Echo would destroy them through her glorious reign of righteous becoming, and she’d do it over and over, every time they saw her thriving in the life they’d been meant to have alongside their Bliss.
Alan was an incredible person. Echo was realizing that she’d long sold him short. He’d been far from the best version of himself when they first met. Along with that way he’d strung her along, hiding the fact that he was in a romance with Priscilla, he’d been abusing stims the entire time.
The actions which came out of him then, were the farthest things from what she might imagine this beautiful man before her could be capable of. He’d even told her how it didn’t feel like himself at all in retrospect, as if it was a whole other person.
She understood that most completely, and it inspired a bravery in Echo, seeing him share that with her, and open up about his regret for how things had gone. She’d told him about Bliss.
Echo fell in love with Alan beyond any way she felt with him before, or anyone else, in that very moment. There were more unique shades to her kinship with the man than she’d ever realized, something about the two of them which just made a powerful kind of sense.
He’d never tell a soul, and nothing was clearer to Echo. She was safe with him, and he understood her. There was nothing but compassion for her, with how holistically Alan understood what it meant to compromise your own beliefs.
The alert hit her desk terminal, blaring that notification chime she’d set for high-priority incoming messages. Still, it took a bit of time for Echo to make her way over. She’d first shared another bowl of herb with Alan from the makeshift water-piece she’d built out of a hollowed taperfruit.
She gave Alan a kiss before she’d nearly bounced across the room from that lightness borne into her chest. Such weight had been relieved to share her grief with another person. While Fox was a most magnificent and elevated being, intelligences of his nature were simply too far above and beyond the mind of a human for healing intimacy this powerful.
The incoming message’s flag and source had sparked great interest, then reading its contents even moreso. It was Rory, or at least their agent; Chloe. On her second read-through, Echo saw the vision come back of their knowing smile in that passage on the morning of her simulative hellscape. Chloe had known.
Just like that, Echo had one more on her list. She’d gone through it a third time before closing the screen without responding. There’d be time for that later. Echo had been smiling when she’d told Alan, who wouldn’t understand the pleasure it clearly brought her.
“It was Rory,” she’d told him.
“We’re running Apocalypse again — loser goes home.”
