The Echo Within

Chapter Four - The Press calls him "Echo"

The fluorescent lights above the squad room buzzed faintly, casting a cold hue over the cluttered desks and half-drunk coffee cups. The scent of stale takeout hung in the air, mixed with the faint metallic smell of photocopied paper. It was only 8:30 a.m., but Crimes Investigation Unit 9 was already deep in tension.

Detective Jace Marlon stood over a corkboard pinned with crime scene photographs. His arms were crossed, eyes narrowed at the now-familiar symbols carved into the victims’ skin. Two murders, same meticulous style. This wasn’t a spree — it was a message. One they hadn’t deciphered yet.

Across the room, Maya Kwon, CIU-9’s lead profiler, reviewed her notes with silent intensity. Her usually sharp bob was slightly tousled from an early morning run, and her eyes scanned the page like she was trying to peer into the killer’s mind.

"You ever feel like he’s watching us?" Eric Langley asked, settling into his chair beside Rayna, the newest profiler on the team. He had a habit of speaking just loud enough to draw attention, but soft enough that everyone leaned in.

Rayna tilted her head. “Who?”

“The killer. Echo. Or whatever they’ll end up calling him.”

Maya looked up sharply. “Where’d you hear that name?”

Eric pointed to a tablet on the desk. The headline was bold and dramatic: “THE ECHO KILLER? Mysterious Symbol Links Tunnel Murder and Alley Corpse.” Below it, a blurred still from one of the crime scenes. A reporter's voice played from the embedded video:

“Sources within the Crimes Investigation Unit suggest the killer may be repeating patterns, echoing a message. Thus far, the media has dubbed him ‘Echo.’”

“Goddamn media,” Ross muttered as he walked in, tossing his coffee on his desk and glaring at the screen. “They give him a name, they give him power.”

Jace sighed and turned from the board. “They’re going to do it no matter what we say. Better ‘Echo’ than something sensational like ‘The Skin Carver’ or ‘The Ritual Reaper.’”

Ross shot him a glare. “Don’t encourage them.”

Maya stood and approached the board. “Still, ‘Echo’ isn’t wrong. It fits the psychology. This isn’t about impulse. He wants something reflected back — attention, fear, recognition. Maybe all of it.”

“Or none,” said a soft voice.

Ellis Vale stood near the hallway door, unreadable as always. Dressed in black, hands tucked in his coat pockets, he didn’t move farther into the room. “Sometimes people like him don’t want to be understood. They just want to be remembered.”

Rayna glanced at him uneasily. Something about Ellis always felt off. Not dangerous — not exactly — but hard to read, like he lived in his own private echo chamber.

The room went quiet for a beat.

Then Ross clapped his hands once. “We don’t have time for philosophy. The press is poking around again. We need progress — fast.”

The press wasn’t just poking around. They were circling like vultures.

Outside CIU headquarters, reporters camped at the front steps, bombarding any officer who stepped out. Cameramen huddled near vans, editing footage for evening broadcasts. Inside, CIU’s media liaison struggled to keep things under wraps, but the leak had already lit a fire.

Someone within the department had spilled to the press.

Ross was fuming behind closed doors, and the rest of the team split into groups. Jace, Maya, and Rayna took a lead on building a behavioral profile. Eric was tasked with re-examining the forensics, hoping they’d missed something. Ellis, as always, chose to work alone.

Rayna approached Maya’s desk. “So, you think Echo’s craving attention?”

Maya shrugged, pinning her notes to the board. “It’s possible. But attention’s only the surface. Look deeper. Echo isn’t just leaving marks — he’s crafting a story. A pattern. There’s structure in the chaos.”

Rayna frowned. “You think he wants us to understand the message?”

“No,” Maya said. “I think he wants us to fail.”

That night, Jace couldn’t sleep.

He sat on the edge of his bed, files spread out before him like a paper graveyard. The victim photos stared up — not gruesome enough to paralyze him, but eerie in their silence. A tunnel worker. A college student. No clear connection. Except the cuts.

Each had a precise symbol carved just below the collarbone. Not deep enough to kill. A mark. A signature.

He reached for the map he’d been sketching on — a rough overlay of the city with both murder scenes marked. They formed no obvious shape. But a memory itched in the back of his mind.

He rubbed his temple, trying to summon it.

And then it hit him.

He reached for the cold case files from six years ago. A murder in the same tunnel system. Brutal, personal — but buried under a different jurisdiction. Jace flipped through the photocopies.

A woman with slashed wrists. No mark. But the location — and timing — were eerily similar.

He circled the address and jotted a note beside it: Check for pattern.

He didn’t sleep at all.

The next morning, the name Echo was trending citywide.

Talk shows, podcasts, even morning radio hosts debated the psychology of serial killers. Conspiracy theorists claimed Echo was tied to a government experiment. Armchair detectives dissected the symbol on online forums.

CIU-9 had become the center of a storm.

Ross summoned the team to the briefing room. “Effective immediately, we say nothing to the press. No comments. No acknowledgments. They’re feeding on us.”

“But the leak came from us,” Maya said quietly. “It’s someone internal.”

Ross gave her a hard look. “And we’ll find out who.”

Jace cleared his throat. “I found something. There was a murder six years ago — same tunnel system. Victim was a woman, around thirty. No carvings, but something about the file felt off. I think it’s connected.”

“Dig into it,” Ross said. “Full deep-dive. If Echo has a history, I want to see it.”

Jace nodded.

Across the room, Ellis leaned against the wall, eyes on the ground. Rayna noticed his fingers twitching slightly.

“What about the symbols?” she asked. “Any closer to translating them?”

Eric spoke up from the corner. “They’re not letters. Not directly. I ran them through pattern analysis — they’re variations on spirals. Almost fractal. Maybe mathematical.”

“Or artistic,” Maya said, her voice dropping. “Like an echo visualized.”

Everyone turned to her.

“I mean, think about it,” she continued. “An echo is a repetition. A reflection that diminishes over time. What if that’s what the killer’s trying to replicate? Not just through sound, but visually. A symbol that mirrors itself, over and over.”

Rayna looked pale. “That would mean there’s a sequence. And we’ve only seen the first two.”

A silence settled in the room.

Then Ross stood. “We follow every thread. No distractions, no egos. I want this man off the streets before the city crowns him a goddamn legend.”

As the team dispersed, Ellis Vale lingered in the room, staring at the symbol on the screen.

His face remained still.

But behind his eyes, something flickered.

A memory?

Or something far worse.

That night, in a room with no lights but the flicker of a CRT television, a man watched the news coverage.

He sat cross-legged, clean hands resting on his knees. Around him were photos — printed, pinned, taped — of his victims. Faces. Scenes. Symbols. A shrine to silence.

Onscreen, a reporter said his name.

“Echo.”

The man didn’t smile.

He didn’t move.

He simply reached forward, and turned up the volume.

As the world gave him a name,

He listened.

And planned.

The third echo would be the loudest yet.