Echoes by Marissa Lete (best books for students to read txt) 📕

“Hello? Laura?”

“Maverick. You—you need to come back,” I say between sobs.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“My parents,” I say, then I have to take a moment to breathe. “Alice has my parents.”

“I’m coming,” Maverick tells me. “Is anyone else there? Are you sure you’re alone?”

I look around the house that I’d just searched minutes ago. “I’m alone,” I reply.

“Stay there. I’ll be there soon,” he tells me.

Ten minutes later, he finds me sitting on the kitchen floor, my head on my knees. He squats down next to me, his hand on my back.

“Laura. I’m here. Are you okay?” he asks. I look up at him through teary eyes.

“She left a note,” I say, spotting it on the floor and reaching for it. I hand it to him, and I watch as his eyes flick across the page. Then they meet mine. “We have to go,” I tell him.

Maverick shakes his head at me. “It’s a trap. It’s always a trap.”

I shake my head back. “But we have to. What is she going to do to them?”

Maverick doesn’t answer me. I feel another wave of sobs coming on, and I put my head back down, resting on my knees. Gently, Maverick grabs my arm, pulling me to my feet. Then he wraps his arms around me, and I bury my face into his chest.

When I finally calm down, I look over at the clock on the stove. It’s almost two in the morning. When had Alice left the note? She’d written eight hours. What if it had already been eight hours? What if we’re too late?

“We need to go. Right now,” I tell Maverick.

“She’ll be expecting us.”

“I don’t care. My parents could die,” I reply.

Maverick just looks at me, his yellow eyes filled with pain. I realize that he understands completely. Both of his parents are gone. Maybe not because of Alice, but still.

“I’m sorry, I—” I start to say suddenly, but Maverick puts his finger to my lips.

“I get it. Let’s go get them.”

✽✽✽✽✽

We roll to a stop in the small clearing in the woods that Maverick had parked in the last time we were here. We get out and Maverick opens the trunk. He pulls out the handgun that he’d taught me how to use earlier and puts it in my hands.

“Do not be afraid to use this. Especially on Alice,” he tells me firmly. Then he pulls out another, similar one for himself.

The plan is to sneak in from a direction Alice won’t expect so we can find my parents and get them out. She might have all of the entrances blocked off, but we have to try our best not to get caught anyway. If she finds us, I don’t know what she will do.

There’s a back door on the building, and we walk through the woods toward it. When we get there, surprisingly, it’s unlocked. Inside, it’s dark. Maverick’s hand finds mine, and we move through the hallways, deeper into the massive, terrible building. Eventually, we reach a door, and we look out through a small window into the main hallway. Bright fluorescent lights shine down on the bare, white linoleum floors. It’s empty.

We silently go through the door, then start down the hallway. After about ten steps, the sound of static fills my ears, then Alice’s voice rings loud through the building. Maverick and I freeze.

“I’m so glad you could make it. Just in the nick of time, too.”

Maverick’s eyes flick around the hallway, and both of us spot the camera at the same time. We rush over to it, and Maverick jumps, ripping it off the wall. It falls to the ground and shatters.

Alice is still talking over the intercom calmly. “I’m so grateful for your help, actually. I’ve never been able to study the parents of an anomaly before, and I’ve discovered some useful information about the causes of these strange occurrences.”

Maverick drags me down the hallway and we enter a side room. He smashes the camera in here, too, before we get into its view.

“I didn’t know that you were an anomaly at first, my dear Laura.” Chills run through my body at the sound of my name. “But when we took your blood, we realized that it wasn’t that of a normal person.”

“She knows we’re here. I don’t know where all the cameras are. I don’t think we’ll be able to find your parents and slip past her,” Maverick whispers to me, urgent.

I pull the gun off my hip, clutching it between my fingers angrily. “Then we’ll just have to find her.”

Maverick reaches out, touches the side of my face with one hand. He rubs his thumb over my cheekbone, giving me a worried look. “Okay,” he tells me, “I think I know where her office is.”

As we exit the room, she keeps talking over the speakers. “For a long time, we’ve been hitting a wall with our research. But you, Laura, are special. You’ve helped us tremendously, and because of you, we’ve finally had some breakthroughs.”

Maverick reaches a solid white metal door. He holds his gun in both hands. “At the first sight of her, we shoot. Are you ready?”

I nod, feeling a drop of sweat drip down my back. I’m ready to face Alice, yes. Ready to kill her? No.

Maverick pushes the door open. We rush inside, guns pointed forward. The lights are off except for a small lamp that shines across the desk onto a rolling chair with its back turned to us. We step toward it, guns trained.

“Guns? Now, that’s not very nice,” Alice’s haunting voice rings through the room.

Maverick tenses, then fires his gun at the chair. At the same time, a black figure leaps through the shadows, crashing into him, and they