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Gabriel and I exchange glances, and I know we agree about what to do next.
We send the Echo flier back to where he'd come from, though we have no conscious knowledge of where that might be. We just know we sent him there.
The Echo creature didn't instigate our abduction. That leaves me with another question.
I face Aldith. "How can the Brain command an Echo creature? It's not a sentient being, is it?"
"No, but we are talking about supernatural forces."
Right. I shouldn't expect magic to make logical sense. I don't recall what the world was like before the apocalypse, but I'm pretty sure magic didn't rule the Earth. I miss those days, even though I can't remember them.
Boom.
The entire stronghold shudders, and I stumble into Gabriel. He slings his arms around me.
Boom.Another explosion detonates, shaking the stronghold.
We all race into the other bedroom to peer out the picture windows. Our gazes veer downward, to the ground far below us. Buildings look like toys, but the bolts of lightning slamming into the earth seem all too real. Is the Brain trying to capture us again? I don't see how lightning beneath us will do anything except destroy the ground. We're too far away for it to harm us.
But the Brain doesn't want to hurt us. It must not, right? Why else would it try so hard to capture us and stop pounding the worlds once we came to the stronghold? What is it after now? We're here, where it wanted us.
Did the Brain actually stop pounding Earth once we left?
"I don't understand," I say. "Why is the Brain causing mayhem down there? We did what it wanted. We came to the stronghold and sealed our bond."
Gabriel hugs me to his side. "The Brain doesn't have its hemispheres, right? It's basically an empty vessel struggling to fulfill its purpose."
"I guess so. But how can we stop it from destroying both worlds before we have the chance to figure out what we're supposed to do?"
"The Brain can't think on its own. That's the way I see it." He hugs me a little tighter as more lightning bolts strike the ground, sending plumes of dust and debris high into the atmosphere. "It needs to be told what to do. That means we need to give it instructions."
"How? I don't think we're ready to join with the Brain, or whatever we're supposed to do."
"I agree. But we can sort of give it a gift to make it happy for a while."
Though I open my mouth to complain about what he said, I stop short of actually speaking. Maybe he's right. We used our Echo power to summon that flying beast. Why can't we magically send the Brain a gift? A power boost to keep it going while we sort out the details. We need to know a lot more before we take the plunge and take command of the Brain.
Another boom detonates out there, but it sounds much closer.
We peer out the windows again—and my heart thuds.
Two fireballs are streaking down from the highest levels of the atmosphere to rain their fire and destruction down on the land below. One fireball has already struck, setting a large building ablaze and destroying most of the structure. The two fireballs streaking toward the ground seem much bigger.
No time to talk about it. I know Gabriel will agree with my idea, and I feel the energy of our Echo power already surging between us. I grab his hand while focusing on the lightning and fireballs below us, and the magics we share grow warmerand stronger, tingling through me more powerfully than before. Gabriel grips my hand even more tightly. The magics expand and strengthen, invisible yet palpable, a living energy that heeds our bidding.
The two remaining fireballs are snuffed out.
Smoke billows up from the destroyed structures on the ground, but at least we stopped most of the fireballs. The lightning seems to have disappeared too.
I look at Gabriel, and he looks at me. His grim smile probably mirrors mine. Yes, we're glad we circumvented the devastation. But that was only a stopgap measure. Unless we can take control of the Echo's Brain, things could get much, much worse in both worlds.
"We should check on our friends in Sanctuary," I say. "And see what's going on elsewhere on Earth too."
"How? We can't get out of the Echo."
"I think we can. We just stopped fireballs and lightning, after all."
Gabriel gazes out the windows, his grim smile now just a grim expression with no hint of anything resembling satisfaction, despite the fact we saved potentially innocent beings from suffering a terrible death. But I think I understand now why he doesn't seem happy that we might have the power to escape the Echo. I know we'll probably need to come back to fix the Brain, but then we can go home, I assume. Gabriel spent years in this world. He doesn't know how to fit in with normal people on Earth anymore. And he feels like he failed, because he couldn't save his Echo friends.
