Anomaly

Chapter 12 -Echoes

Her name rose unbidden, like a whisper that cut sharper than the city’s noise.

Mara.

Elias hadn’t let himself think about her since the fall. He’d tried to keep her out of his mind, the same way he buried thoughts of home, of family. But hunger and exhaustion stripped his defenses thin, and her face slipped through anyway — the crooked smile, the way she tilted her head when she teased him, the small scar above her eyebrow she always tried to cover with makeup.

The memory stabbed deeper than the silence of his unanswered calls.

She would be at school now. Sitting in the cafeteria. Laughing with friends. Wondering why he hadn’t shown up, why his phone only rang to voicemail. He imagined her scrolling their messages, re-reading the last one he sent — something stupid, something ordinary, like don’t forget your notes for math.

He wanted to call her. More than anything, he wanted to hear her voice, even just for a second. He pulled his phone out, thumb hovering over her name in his contacts.

But his hand froze.

Because what if someone was watching the call? What if Mara was already being watched? What if the faceless men who pushed him off a roof had eyes on her too, waiting for him to make the mistake of reaching out?

The thought coiled tighter, suffocating. His thumb trembled. He pressed the power button instead, shutting the screen black.

Mara’s name lingered in the dark behind his eyes anyway.

He sank onto a bus stop bench, his hood shadowing his face. People came and went around him, paying him no attention. For a moment, he let himself imagine she was there beside him — Mara nudging his shoulder, making some joke about his terrible posture, the kind of ordinary moment he’d never appreciated enough.

The hum inside him stirred, answering the thought.

The glass of the bus shelter shimmered faintly, his reflection bending. His chest clenched, panic spiking. He pressed his palms flat to his thighs, forcing himself still, forcing it down.

Not here. Not where anyone could see.

He squeezed his eyes shut until spots of light swam behind them. Her face surfaced again, clearer this time — not just a memory, but a warning. If he slipped near her, if she saw what he was becoming, she’d never look at him the same way again. Worse — she’d be dragged into this, hunted alongside him.

A sharp, broken sound tore from his throat. Half laugh, half sob. He scrubbed it away with the heel of his hand, but his chest still shook.

He couldn’t call her. He couldn’t see her. Not anymore.

Loving her meant staying away.

The thought gutted him, but he clung to it like the only thing keeping her safe.

When the bus pulled up, doors hissing open, Elias grabbed his backpack and stood. He didn’t care where it was going. Anywhere was better than sitting still with her ghost beside him.

He stepped aboard, dropped the last of his coins into the slot, and collapsed into a seat near the back.

Outside, the city rolled past in fractured glimpses. Crowds. Towers. Blurred reflections in glass. His own pale face staring back at him, split by sunlight into something almost unrecognizable.

Mara’s name pressed in his chest like a bruise.

And for the first time, he wondered if he’d already lost her — not because she didn’t care, but because he couldn’t risk being near her.

The bus lurched forward, rattling over cracks in the asphalt. Elias gripped the metal bar of the seat in front of him, his knuckles white. The steady thrum of the engine pressed against his bones, vibrating in rhythm with his heartbeat.

He tried to focus on the window — the blur of buildings, the wash of colors — anything to anchor himself. But Mara’s face hovered in the glass, faint and insistent, half-memory, half-phantom.

He remembered the last time he’d seen her. They’d been sitting on the school steps, backpacks at their feet. She’d been talking about some assignment, her voice animated, her hands moving as if to sketch the air. He hadn’t been listening — not really. He’d been caught in the shape of her smile, the way it lit her whole face when she thought she was making a clever point.

Now the memory cut sharper than any blade.

A child squealed somewhere near the front of the bus. A man muttered into his phone two seats over. The air was thick with too many sounds, too many vibrations. Elias clenched his jaw, trying to block them out.

But then the window shimmered again, faint, just enough to warp Mara’s reflection into something fractured. His chest tightened. He dragged his sleeve across the glass, as if he could erase her, erase the distortion, erase all of it.

“Stop,” he whispered under his breath. His voice was barely audible, but the hum inside him responded anyway.

The metal pole he was gripping vibrated. Not from the bus. From him.

He released it instantly, shoving his hands deep into his pockets, but the pulse lingered, crawling up his arms, demanding an outlet. He bit down hard on his lip until the sting cut through the rising wave.

A woman across the aisle glanced at him, frowning. He ducked his head lower, heart hammering. Did she see? Did she notice the pole tremble? Or was she just irritated at another twitchy teenager on public transport?

The bus rocked into another turn. Elias pressed his forehead against the cool glass, shutting his eyes.

Don’t think about her.

But of course, he did.

He saw Mara’s face when she laughed. The way she’d once told him he was braver than he thought. The warmth of her hand slipping into his under the desk when teachers weren’t looking.

Each memory a knife. Each memory a temptation.

And beneath it all, the fear that if she saw him now — trembling, breaking, shimmering wrong against the world — she would run. Not from fear of him, but from what would follow.

He forced his eyes open, staring hard at the blur of streets outside, until the memories dulled to ache instead of fire.

When the bus jolted to a stop, he didn’t even check where he was. He pulled the cord, staggered down the steps, and let the crowd carry him back into the city.

Anything to keep moving. Anything to keep Mara safe.

Even if it meant carving her out of his life one painful step at a time.

The bus hissed and pulled away behind him, leaving a cloud of exhaust that stung his throat. Elias coughed once, dragging the hood lower, and blended into the stream of pedestrians. The midday sun glared hard, bouncing off windows, making every surface a mirror waiting to betray him.

He kept his eyes on the pavement, his steps too quick, like if he slowed even for a heartbeat the memories would catch him again.

But they did anyway.

Mara’s laugh echoed in his head, sharp and clear, uninvited. He saw her looking at him the last night they’d been together, the way she’d said, “You vanish sometimes, you know that?” half-joking, not realizing how close to the truth she’d been.

He swallowed hard, the weight of those words pressing like stone. She’d always seen him clearer than he wanted to admit. If she saw him now — the trembling hands, the warping glass, the shivering air — she wouldn’t laugh. She’d be terrified.

Or worse — she’d try to stay.

The thought knifed deeper than all the rest. Mara, loyal to a fault, refusing to let him fall alone. That was what terrified him most. Because anyone who stayed too close to him would be swallowed by whatever hunted him now.

He stopped at a corner, pressing back into the shadow of a doorway, letting the crowd stream around him. His chest heaved, each breath catching against the raw edge of panic.

His phone felt like a brick in his pocket, heavy with her number glowing behind the black screen. He couldn’t call her. He couldn’t see her. But not calling felt like drowning.

He pulled the phone out again, stared at the blank screen until his vision blurred. His thumb hovered, trembled — then he shoved it back into his bag, almost violently.

“No,” he muttered under his breath. “You don’t drag her into this. You don’t.”

A woman walking past gave him a strange look. He dropped his gaze, forcing his hands into his pockets, forcing himself to move again.

The crowd carried him forward, but Mara lingered like a ghost just behind his shoulder, her presence heavier with every step.

Every face he passed became suspect. Every reflection a threat.

And for the first time, Elias realized that staying away from her wasn’t just about protecting her. It was about protecting himself — because if he saw Mara again, if he let her touch his hand, hear his voice, remind him he was still human…

He wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to let go.

By late afternoon, the city’s light had shifted, turning harsh edges soft. Long shadows spilled across the streets, folding the crowd into shifting patterns. Elias moved through them like a ghost, unnoticed, unseen — except for the storm thrumming under his skin that refused to let him believe he was invisible.

Mara’s name pulsed in his chest with every heartbeat.

He thought of her walking home, earbuds in, head tilted toward the sky the way she always did when she wanted to escape the ground beneath her. He thought of the way she chewed on her sleeves when she was nervous, how her voice dropped when she was about to tell him something real.

Those little pieces cut deeper than the silence on his phone. Because the longer he replayed them, the more he realized they were already slipping from him — pieces of a life he couldn’t return to.

He stopped at the edge of a pedestrian bridge, gripping the railing so tightly his knuckles ached. The river below shimmered with late sunlight, a thousand fragments of gold scattered across the surface. For a heartbeat, the light fractured wrong, bending into patterns he didn’t understand, as though even the water wanted to echo what lived inside him.

He forced his hands off the railing before it could bend under his grip.

His breath shook, but he kept walking.

One truth solidified with every step: Mara was the line he couldn’t cross. Loving her meant leaving her untouched by this nightmare. Wanting her was weakness, and weakness was a door his hunters would use.

He whispered her name once, so soft it was swallowed by the rush of traffic. Then he pressed it down, deep, into the part of himself that still hoped.

If he ever saw her again, it would mean he had failed.

And Elias Hale could not afford to fail — not when he was already losing the fight to remain himself.