A/N: Two chapters in two days! Amazing!
Enjoy the chapter!
She opened her eyes. "Jethro? Jethro! Oh, good! And I haven't got an echo, either!"
"Are you alright?"
"I'll be fine."
"Do you remember anything?"
"I remember all of it. You were very brave, Jethro."
He tried not to blush "Erm... thanks. What... sorry, what do you think?"
The Doctor sighed. "I know that it's psychic. That was clear when it said the people on the other bus weren't strong enough, but I was. Time Lords are telepathic creatures, a thousand times more than humans. And a telepathic link of that strength... with a human... could accidentally cause the human to do something like rip open the tour bus door, easily."
Jethro paused. "What is that thing, then?"
"It said humans had a name for it. Are you good at history?"
"Good enough…"
"Think. It would probably be in the form of a person, a person who copied what everyone else said- only copied, since humans don't have the telepathic capability to let it go farther in the process. Maybe that person wasn't always like that."
Jethro's eyes widened. "Like Echo."
"Yeah, like an echo, that's what it was doing before, pretending to-"
"No, I mean Echo Echo."
"What?"
"I mean, it's a myth, but.."
"There's more truth in myths than you'd like to know."
"Well, okay, so in the old Greek myths from Earth, there's a girl- a nymph- named Echo, and she's really pretty, and I can't quite remember why, but Hera- the queen of the gods, you know- curses her so that she'll always have to repeat everything anyone says, and she can't say anything herself, and then she falls in love with a human named Narcissus but she can't tell him and he's in love with himself and he sees his own reflection and falls in love with it and he says 'I love you' to it and so she can repeat it back to him but he doesn't hear and he starves to death or something from pining for his reflection and she kills herself maybe but I think her spirit haunts caves and repeats back what people say and that's where the word 'echo' came from."
"Right. So, say instead of being cursed by a goddess, Echo was inhabited by this alien. A consciousness never dies. It could easily survive to the 27th century."
"That makes sense." He hesitated. "So... what, it possesses someone then forms a telepathic link to someone else? Why?"
"It said it was lonely, didn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean when it inhabited Skye Silvestry, it... stole my voice, let's say, and it tried to convince everyone that it was Skye. If you were lonely, really, really lonely, and you'd always been alone, and you had the chance to become someone who had a life, who could make friends, wouldn't you do it?"
"Not if I'd have to kill people!"
"See, but Echo doesn't think like that. Its only thought is that it's lonely and it wants a voice, and Skye Silvestry and I were its key to that."
"Why did it kill people? Like, the drivers."
"'I did not know,' remember? It doesn't have a body; it isn't affected by the sun. Before us, it had never had access to corporeal beings on Midnight. Before, when it had seen humans, their lives revolved around the sun. It would have had no way of knowing that this sun kills. It would have taken off the driver's compartment as a way in, with no idea that the drivers would die."
"But it did know that you would die if… we threw you out. Why did it want to kill you? And, I mean, why does it even copy people? How does it steal your voice?"
"That's a really good question. Okay, okay, what does it do?" she asked, more to herself than to Jethro. "It… it inhabits; it learns; it copies everyone- assimilates; it selects a… victim… based on telepathic ability; it… impersonates the victim; it… what? Controls them? Becomes them? Steals their voice? Their mind? Psychically transfers its inability to them? I don't know. What else? What else what else what else? From- from the Echo story, I would assume that it naturally forms this sort of psychic links with everyone around it, it doesn't have a choice. But then it… it selects one, it only copies one, it only controls… one. Why?"
"To strengthen the bond? Like, concentrate the telepathic energy from all the other bonds into one bond? So that it can use that person?"
The Doctor looked at him. "You know what? I think you're right."
"But why did it try to kill you? If the link gives it a voice, wouldn't killing you destroy the link and ruin everything?"
"I can explain that, actually. Imagine… imagine a rope, and I'm holding one end and Echo is holding the other, and we're running- or, I'm running and Echo isn't. As I move, I pull Echo along, but it's still behind me, and I control how fast we go and what direction- or rather, I talk and Echo repeats after me, and I have control over what we say. Now imagine that as I run, Echo gains momentum, until we're running together- or speaking at the same time- and I still have control. Echo continues to use me to give it more power until it pulls ahead, and now it's in control- speaking before me and controlling what we say. Does that make sense?"
"I… think so."
"Good. So if, as you so cleverly pointed out, I died and the link was destroyed, or let's say someone cut the rope, while I was pulling Echo along, what would happen?"
"Um, it would stop moving, because it was dependent on you to pull it?"
"Exactly. But what if that happened when it was in control and dragging me along?"
"Ohh. It would just keep running, right?"
"Right. So at the point when Echo is in control, killing me simply rids it of an unneeded part, maybe even makes things easier for it, not having to use that much energy. Once it's in control, it doesn't need me."
A/N: Long chapter today!
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