Free Echo Boy by Matt Haig Page A

knock on the door. I calmed down a little, breathed deep.
    ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Matsumoto,’ Uncle Alex said. ‘We’d better go.’
    So we left – me trembling like a pathetic leaf behind Uncle Alex as he opened the door. There were two men standing there. Both wearing long coats. Cloudville gangsters. Twitchy and skinny and wind-blown.
    ‘We heard some screams,’ said the tallest one. They looked out of their heads on everglows. Suddenly one of them recognized Uncle Alex.
    ‘If it isn’t the Devil himself! Lord of the Universe. So, how goes the work, King Satan?’
    ‘Audrey,’ said Uncle Alex. ‘Get in the car. Now. Run.’
    But I didn’t. I felt responsible. My scream had alerted them, after all. ‘Please, leave us alone.’
    A second later and I was being grabbed around the neck. ‘OK, rich girl, don’t do anything stupid. We don’t want to kill you. We just want a good price for you. You understand? It’s just twenty-second-century capitalism. Anything goes, right? We’re all products, yeah?’
    I had a stun-stick pressed against my neck, ready to be triggered if I resisted. But Uncle Alex was quick.
    And he had lied.
    He hadn’t left the positron in the car. He was holding it in front of him, and within a second the other man had vanished into nonexistence, his matter converted into antimatter. And I was quick too. I elbowed the man who was holding me hard in the gut, and stepped away, leaving Uncle Alex clear to shoot him too, which he did.
    So. Two deaths in two seconds.
    ‘Quick!’ Uncle Alex said, looking down the alleyway for anyone else who might have been watching. ‘The car!’
    Someone else
was
watching. Only this wasn’t a human. It wasn’t even an Echo. It was a hulk of old rusted metal, more than three metres tall, with one functional eye – the left one – glowing a dull red in the dark. It had faded identification on its chest: CAL-300. It must have been an old second-hand securidroid – once used by the police or a private security firm but now programmed to protect the two men whose lives had just ended, but I could only see it as a big evil robot thing.
    ‘
Stop there! You have committed a crime.
’
    ‘No,’ said Uncle Alex. ‘We haven’t. We acted in self-defence.’
    ‘Shoot it!’ I told Uncle Alex.
    But he fired and missed, and the giant creaking robot let off a laser shot that burned the positron right out of Uncle Alex’s hand; then another, though it was slowing.
    ‘
Stop . . . you have . . . violated . . .
’
    ‘Come on! It’s malfunctioning,’ said Uncle Alex, running again. CAL-300 followed us, metal limbs and joints moaning through the wind and rain.
    And so I ran, I ran fast, but then the platform shook as CAL-300 fell down with its inhuman weight. The trembling, and that temporary distraction, caused me to slip on the wet platform, sliding until my legs were over the side. Then further. Until there was nothing between me and death except a thousand-metre drop. I grabbed one of the metal posts of the unfinished fence.
    Below me, all around, the city glowed in the rain like firefly larvae. Skyscrapers and boats and illuminated magrails and hovering office blocks. Holo-ads flickered like the ghost I could very soon become.
    I could have let go. It would have been the simplest way. Just letting go. Whatever I landed on from that height would have killed me in less than a second. Easy. No more pain. No more grief. No more memories of Mum and Dad. (Memories were overrated. Memories were just future sadness stored away.)
    But life is a stubborn thing.
    ‘Help!’ I screamed. ‘Help!’
    The post was wet. It was tricky to grip, my palms kept shifting, but I kept my fingers locked. My wrists hurt so much that I thought my hands would tear off.
    It would be so easy, so easy, so easy
 . . .
    The wind got angrier.
    How long was this? A second? Two? Three? It might as well have been hours.
    A song came into my head. A song! On the verge of death and