Chapter 2 - Chapter 2: Threads of the Unseen

Einstein Voss didn't sleep. Not after the junkyard, not after the thing—the Echo—that crawled out of nowhere and spoke in his head. His apartment was a shoebox above a laundromat, the kind of place where the walls smelled of damp and the radiator clanked like it was auditioning for a horror flick. He sat on his sagging couch, staring at his hands. They didn't glow anymore, but the cut on his palm pulsed, a faint shimmer of aetheric plasma under the skin. What the hell am I now? he thought, the question looping like a bad song.The clock read 4:52 a.m., Earth-Alpha's dawn still a rumor. His phone buzzed on the coffee table, Milo's name flashing. Einstein ignored it. Milo could wait for his damn generator. The world felt wrong, like he'd seen behind the curtain and couldn't unsee it. That voice—"Find me, or be unmade"—lingered, cold and sharp, tied to the shimmering figure he'd glimpsed at the gate. Not human, not an Echo, but something else. Something that knew him.He stood, pacing the cramped room, his boots scuffing the worn linoleum. The cut on his palm itched, and when he scratched it, a spark flared, a thread of plasma curling like smoke. He yelped, shaking his hand, but the thread didn't fade. It hovered, alive, waiting. Okay, this is bad, he thought, heart racing. He tried to will it away, but it twisted, forming a faint shape—a key, or maybe a claw—before dissolving. His chest tightened, the same pull he'd felt in the junkyard, like the plasma was part of him, hungry for more.A knock at the door jolted him. Nobody knocked at this hour, not in this neighborhood. He grabbed a wrench from his toolbag—old habits—and crept to the door, peering through the peephole. A woman stood outside, mid-thirties, short black hair, wearing a leather jacket and jeans that didn't scream cop but didn't scream friendly either. Her eyes, sharp and tired, locked onto the peephole like she knew he was watching."Who's there?" Einstein called, voice rough."Zara Kade," she said, low and steady. "You're Einstein Voss. We need to talk."He froze. Nobody knew his full name, not even Milo. How does she—? "Talk about what?" he asked, gripping the wrench tighter."The thing you saw in the junkyard," she said. "The Echo. Open the door, or it'll find you again."Einstein's stomach dropped. He unlocked the door, keeping the wrench ready, and stepped back as Zara entered. She moved like she'd seen worse than a dive apartment, her gaze sweeping the room—couch, empty beer cans, a half-dead plant—before landing on him. "You're a mess," she said, not unkindly. "But you're alive. That's a start.""Who are you?" he demanded. "How do you know about… that thing?"Zara pulled a device from her jacket, a sleek metal cylinder etched with symbols that glowed faintly. "I'm with the Aetheric Concord," she said. "We clean up messes like the one you just made. That Echo? It's not gone. You trapped it, but it's still out there, and it's pissed."Einstein's head spun. "Concord? Echo? Lady, I don't know what you're talking about. I just fixed a generator, and then—" He stopped, the memory of the Echo's voice—"You've woken me"—choking him.Zara's eyes softened, but her voice stayed firm. "You tapped into aetheric weaving, Voss. That glow in your hands? It's plasma, the stuff that holds the Eidolon Cascade together. But it's not free. Every time you use it, it takes a piece of you—your strength, your years, maybe your mind.""The what?" Einstein asked, feeling like he'd fallen into a sci-fi flick."The Cascade," Zara said, leaning against the wall. "Think of it as… everything. All the worlds—Earth-Alpha, Earth-Noir, Earth-Aether—linked in a web bigger than you can imagine. It's alive, and it's breaking. Echoes are the cracks, and you just stepped into one."Einstein lowered the wrench, his arm aching. "So, what, I'm supposed to join your secret club? Fight monsters?"Zara snorted. "You don't get a choice. That Echo marked you. Others will come, and they won't stop. The Concord can teach you to survive, maybe even fight back. Or you can wait here and see how long you last."He wanted to laugh, to tell her to get out, but the cut on his palm pulsed, and he felt it again—that pull, like the plasma was awake, watching. "What's in it for you?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.Zara's jaw tightened. "I lost someone to an Echo," she said, voice low. "I don't want to lose anyone else."The silence stretched, heavy. Einstein's mind raced—This is insane, but what else makes sense? The junkyard, the voice, the glow—it was all real. He nodded, slow. "Alright. What's next?"Zara tapped her device, and it hummed, projecting a faint hologram—a map, but not of Earth-Alpha. It showed a web of nodes, pulsing lines, and a red blip labeled Echo-13. "We've got a problem," she said. "That Echo you trapped? It's linked to something bigger. We need to contain it, now."Before he could argue, a tremor shook the apartment, faint but wrong, like the world was shivering. The air shimmered, and Einstein's cut burned, plasma sparking. Not again, he thought, but there it was—an Echo, smaller than the last, a writhing knot of non-existence hovering near the ceiling. Its form flickered—eyes, claws, nothing—its voice a hiss in his mind: "You cannot hide."Zara cursed, raising her device. "Containment Prism, hold!" A beam of light shot out, forming a cage around the Echo, but it thrashed, cracks spreading through the prism. "Voss, help me!" she shouted.Einstein's hands glowed, the plasma surging. He didn't know what he was doing, but he reached, willing the threads to move. They snapped into place, reinforcing the prism, but the effort hit him like a truck—his vision blurred, his knees buckled, and a sharp pain stabbed his chest. This is what she meant, he realized. It's eating me.The Echo shrieked, collapsing into the prism, sealed. Zara exhaled, lowering her device. "Not bad for a rookie," she said, but her eyes were on his hands, still trembling. "You okay?""No," Einstein rasped, leaning against the wall. "What was that thing?""Echo-13," Zara said, checking her device. "Low-level, but persistent. It's got Nonexistent Physiology—it's not really here, not in a way we understand. The Concord's been tracking it for weeks."Einstein's head throbbed. "And the big one? From the junkyard?""That's the problem," Zara said, her voice grim. "It's tied to Echo Prime, something we can't contain, not yet. It's… rewriting things. Realities, stories, us."He stared at her, the weight of it sinking in. Stories? What does that even mean? But before he could ask, the air shimmered again—not an Echo, but a presence, faint, like a memory of light. Izarael, though he didn't know her name. Her voice whispered, not to him but to Zara, too: "The threads are fraying. Weave, or break."Zara's face paled, but she shook it off. "We need to move," she said, heading for the door. "There's a safehouse downtown. Others are waiting—Talen, Kaelith. They'll explain more."Einstein grabbed his jacket, the cut on his palm still burning. He didn't know Talen or Kaelith, didn't know the Eidolon Cascade or its layers—the Noetic Shroud of dream-born gods, the Aetheric Resonance where thoughts became real, or the Archetypal Crucible where Eidolons like Azryth wielded relics like the Scythe of Transience. He didn't know about void conjuring, which could pull from nothingness but risk erasure, or the Abyssal Dissolution, a void threatening all worlds. But he felt the pull, the spark that burned brighter with every step.As they stepped into the dawn, Earth-Alpha's streets felt alive, the air humming with secrets. Einstein glanced back at his apartment, a life he might never return to. I'm in deep, he thought, but something in him—stubborn, stupid—wanted to see where this led. The Cascade was calling, and he was already caught in its threads.