Background music suggestion: Virgin Steele: Emalaith
Chapter 15: An Echo of a Soul
Emalaith dies alone in the night,
a kiss on the wind she leaves me
Out in the fields where everything dies,
will we be lost forever?
From death and darkness love was born,
and love survived
and created Light.
-Virgin Steele: Emalaith
...
It was the following afternoon. Erik had flown them through European night skies.
"I found something," Gudrun said.
After arriving at the Romanian base she had immediately began to go through the data. The others had rested for some time. Now all the agents had gathered around her laptop.
"I've analyzed the discussion with Bargala. There was that moment when an anomaly occurred."
She played the 'E-e-e-e' sound.
"Well...something strange followed."
She played the rumbling sound.
"I isolated that part, cleaned it and altered the pitch and the length, and cleaned it even more...And it is the strangest thing."
Gudrun played the audio. It sounded like...someone grunting for about thirty seconds.
"Play it again," Erik immediately asked.
Gudrun ended up playing the audio quite a few times. Erik was now right next to her, just staring at the visualization of the audio file. The room was silent. Ian, Jo and Erik all looked tense and the atmosphere was most uneasy.
"I believe it is a female voice...and I could swear there are words in there," Gudrun finally broke the silence.
"Yes, I believe it's a female voice" Ian said.
"Can you now tell us what is wrong?" Mitsuko asked looking at the senior agents.
"That voice belongs to someone we knew," Jo said quietly.
"Agent Blowfish."
"But she's..." Mitsuko began the sentence immediately cutting it off.
"Is there anything else you can tell? What does she say?" Ian asked anxiously.
"The voice is synthesized, artificial...Even that odd part. But I haven't been able to make out of the words."
"I'll help you," Erik said.
...
"We could make out the words now...Or he could," Gudrun said glancing at Erik sideways.
"They are coordinates."
Gudrun pointed at the location on her screen.
"It is in Sahara, in the middle of the desert. I tried to find satellite imagery but it's blurred in that part. But there's definitely something there."
...
Ian, Jo and Erik were sitting in the living room in the early hours. All of them still seemed shocked, not knowing what to think, or say. Erik had basically been quiet after helping Gudrun solve the message. Tomorrow they would start planning. It just felt impossible now.
"She has to be there. In some way," Erik finally said.
Ian had told them of his encounter with the Agent who had initially saved him from the training facility. He had been in one of SCEPTRE's computers, apparently as some representation of his mind. So they could definitely do things like this.
...
Erik couldn't sleep as he could still hear his name, the way she had grunted it at the beginning of the message.
Bargala...Echo.
Perhaps it had been only that.
An echo of a soul.
…