SWNOVELXO Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Echo Site Theta
The chopper tore through the mist-choked sky like a ghost with burning wings, its rotors thudding a slow death beat against the silence of the north. Jack sat near the open side hatch, his gaze fixed on the storm-wracked landscape below — scorched forests, flooded towns, skeletal ruins twisted by time and Echo radiation.
Beside him, Lena double-checked her rifle's magnetic clamps while Veyne tinkered with a sphere-like drone in his lap. The air inside the craft was thick — not with fear, but with something quieter and more dangerous: expectation.
> "Echo Site Theta," said the pilot through the intercom. "Ten minutes to drop. Gods help you."
Nobody responded.
The place they were heading didn't need gods.
It ate them.
---
Ten minutes later…
The team dropped into silence.
Echo Site Theta looked more like a wound than a facility. Buried halfway into a jagged mountainside, its outer walls were half-collapsed and overgrown with bio-moss — a mutant fungus that pulsed faintly under the surface like veins in a corpse. The main entrance yawned open like a broken jaw, its reinforced doors snapped in half.
> "No resistance," Lena whispered. "Too quiet."
> "Too wrong," Veyne added, holding up a scanner. "Echo signature's unstable. The energy's spiking in intervals, like… it's breathing."
Jack stepped forward, Echo already stirring in his blood. The hum in his skull returned, but different this time — not invasive, not alien. Familiar. Like the call of a forgotten name.
He felt drawn in.
---
Inside, the facility was a tomb.
Collapsed support beams. Warped hallways. Corpses turned to ash and shadow.
Every few meters, Jack's team found evidence of the vanished recovery squad: shredded gear, melted rifles, the occasional smear of crimson leading nowhere. But no bodies. Nothing left of the people who had once screamed here.
> "Echo resonance here is off the scale," Veyne said, eyes darting over his HUD. "Something's altering space-time in this zone. This place shouldn't still exist — but it does."
Lena stopped.
Her flashlight illuminated a word scrawled onto a steel wall in what looked like old, dried blood.
> "RUN."
Then something howled.
---
It wasn't a natural sound. Not animal. Not human. It echoed from the depths of the structure, reverberating through concrete and bone alike. Jack felt his teeth vibrate. The Echo in his bloodstream reacted violently — not with fear, but hunger.
> "We're not alone," he muttered.
> "No kidding," Veyne whispered. "That scream had three pitch overlays. It wasn't just one thing…"
Lena raised her weapon. "Move fast. Find the source. Get out."
---
Deeper into Echo Site Theta…
They reached what looked like the core chamber — a circular arena surrounded by collapsed observation decks. At its center pulsed a crystal obelisk, cracked and bleeding strands of crimson light into the air. The Echo energy here was unstable — alive, chaotic, twitching through the air like lightning bound to no storm.
And then they saw it.
The bodies.
Piled at the far end of the room, partially fused into the wall itself. Dozens of them. Some wore Black Banner armor. Others… were harder to recognize. Melted flesh. Mutated limbs. Open mouths frozen in silent screams.
One of the corpses sat upright, staring with empty sockets.
> "That one's recent," Lena said, stepping forward.
But before she could touch it, the body twitched.
---
The obelisk screamed.
A shockwave of Echo energy blasted out — knocking Lena back, sending Veyne to his knees. Jack staggered but held his ground, his body absorbing the pulse like it was made for it.
From the pile of bodies, something rose.
It looked like a man once.
But now its bones were wrapped in strands of Echo-light, its flesh half-transparent, its fingers sharpened into jagged blades. Its face was split by a glowing red rift, and from its throat came a sound like a thousand flies buzzing in unison.
> "HOST IDENTIFIED," it croaked in a mechanical voice. "RESISTANCE: UNNECESSARY."
> "You sure about that?" Jack snarled, raising his arm.
The creature lunged.
---
The fight was chaos incarnate.
Veyne rolled to the side and deployed a shock drone that fizzed harmlessly against the creature's Echo barrier. Lena unloaded her rifle into the beast's midsection, only to watch the rounds pass through its semi-corporeal body.
Jack moved differently.
He stepped into the pulse — let the Echo guide his limbs. His blood ignited with power, and when he struck, his fist shimmered with burning light.
> "Come on!" he roared.
He slammed his fist into the creature's chest, sending it flying across the chamber.
> "It's not real!" Veyne shouted. "It's an Echo remnant — a memory given flesh!"
> "Then I'll break the memory," Jack growled.
The creature reformed and howled again. The obelisk pulsed brighter.
And then… Jack heard it.
A voice.
Not the creature's.
Not the Echo's.
> "Jack… why are you here?"
It was his mother's voice.
---
For a heartbeat, Jack froze.
A memory unbidden surfaced — the image of his mother, smiling in a garden, long before the Mist swallowed the world. A moment he hadn't recalled in years. A memory only he should know.
> "You left us…"
The creature mimicked her tone perfectly. Her voice. Her regret.
Jack's eyes flared. He stepped forward slowly, each footfall shaking the ground.
> "You're not her," he said. "You're not anything."
The obelisk tried to resist. It flared again.
Jack screamed — not in pain, but defiance.
And he punched through it.
---
The obelisk cracked with a sound like a scream being sucked into a vacuum. The creature let out a final, garbled shriek before disintegrating into harmless motes of red light. The air grew still.
Lena staggered to her feet.
> "What… the hell was that?"
Jack stood over the shattered obelisk.
> "An Echo projection," he said. "But someone sent it. Someone fed it my memories."
Veyne groaned from the floor. "That shouldn't be possible."
Jack looked back at the wall.
The blood writing was gone.
But in its place… a new message flickered, this time etched in light, not blood.
> "YOU ARE NOT ALONE, JACK."
"—REVENANT"