City of Vicious Night by Claire Winn

Author:Claire Winn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure / General /Dystopian
Publisher: North Star Editions
Published: 2023-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

chapter 22

PROJECT

ECHOFALL

I can’t break. Not here.

Ty’s heartbeat threatened to punch a hole through his chest. Padded restraints held him to a steel cot beneath a trickle of sickly golden light, which illuminated a round room with concrete walls. A private lab, for a single specimen.

“I expected a lot from you, Tyren. Escape attempts, maybe. Curiosity, of course.” A silhouette cut into the light, and Luca Almeida’s surgically perfect face came into focus. Iolus lurked near the door, steady as an armored boulder. “But it seems the incident at Sanctum’s Edge is burned into your mind even more deeply than I’d imagined. You will do anything to revisit it.”

Ty set his jaw. The last thing he wanted was to revisit that place.

Talons of cold metal pressed against his temples as Almeida anchored his head into place. “What if we remove that event from your memory?” Almeida’s hand unfurled to reveal a glass tube containing a metallic node attached to a spidery swatch of Etri brain matter. “If we replace it with something . . . peaceful. What will you fight for afterward? Will you fight at all?”

Ty fought the urge to thrash. He was cornered, another lab animal taking its turn under the knife. He reached out with his mind, searching for the voice that had pulled him through these past few days.

Yllath. Where are you?

Silence.

“It seems we’ll have to keep a closer eye on you,” Almeida said, pulling up Ty’s mental profile on the overhead screen. “Thankfully we have a surgeon available to conduct the transfer today. Earlier than expected.”

Project Echofall, said the tiny letters at the top of the screen. The next phase of Winterdark. The project that had Asa’s name beneath it.

“It seems you and my daughter were fairly close. I hope you two weren’t doing anything . . . untoward.” Ty flinched at a metallic snap, inches from his ear. His heartbeat was a frantic throb. “Asa is headstrong, isn’t she?”

“You’re going to change her next,” Ty whispered.

Almeida’s lips spread into a taut smile. “She had a chance to see reason.” He set the tiny implant vial onto a surgical tray. “But now she will have a new snippet of memory—hazy, but pleasant. She will become what the world thinks she is. What she was always meant to be.”

The words forced themselves out of Ty’s throat. “How long do you think it’ll take before she rediscovers the terrible things you’ve done?”

“I have nothing to hide from her. But if she misunderstands—if she falls onto the wrong path again—that area of her memory can be reset. As her friend, you’ll be doing Asanna a great favor by ensuring Echofall works like a dream for her.”

Ty’s ribs were iron girders across his lungs. He couldn’t stop Almeida. The man would continue to take and use as he saw fit. But if all else failed, Kaya would try to save her. She’d already been through hell for her sister.

As the anesthesia machine chirped online, a hiss and a crackle came from the far end of the room.

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