Aven burst out of the archive room, boots sliding on the slick marble floor. The blueprints crackled in his arms, old paper threatening to tear as he clutched them to his chest. Behind him, the shrieks of the echoes tore through the hall, a chorus of broken radio static and distorted screams.
He didn't stop to look back.
A corridor opened ahead, lined with shattered display cases. Neon lights sparked overhead, casting brief flashes of color onto crumbling walls. Aven sprinted through the chaos, lungs burning, his mind locked on a single thought: find Rhea, escape, destroy the museum's heart once and for all.
A crash echoed behind him. He risked a glance back and saw a tide of echoes flooding the hallway, their glitching bodies merging and splitting, melting into dark mist that coiled along the walls and ceiling.
Aven turned a corner and nearly slammed into a barricade of overturned shelves. He scrambled over them, wincing as splinters tore into his hands, then dropped onto the other side. For a moment he was alone, the echoes' howls muffled by the wreckage.
He sucked in ragged breaths, clutching the blueprints. His eyes darted around, searching for a sign of Rhea. Instead he spotted a door marked MAINTENANCE ACCESS, its keypad flickering with dying red light.
He yanked the handle. Locked.
A hiss from the shadows. He spun, raising the rolled blueprints like a club.
But it was Rhea, limping out of the dark, blood dripping from a gash on her shoulder. Her crystal device was cracked, flickering weakly in her hand.
"Aven," she gasped. "You have it?"
He nodded, thrusting the blueprints at her. "What now?" he panted.
Rhea skimmed the pages, eyes scanning quickly. "The old framework… the pressure nodes… here." She jabbed a finger at a point marked CONTROL TOWER. "If we collapse this node, the museum's timeline web will unravel. But we need to reach it fast."
A loud crack behind them. The echoes were tearing through the barricade.
Rhea grabbed his wrist. "Come on!"
She keyed in a code on the maintenance door. It hissed open, revealing a narrow service tunnel lit by dim emergency lights. They dove inside, slamming the door shut as echoes slammed into it from the other side, clawing and shrieking.
The tunnel was tight and stank of rust and mold. Pipes lined the ceiling, dripping foul water onto the cracked concrete floor. Rhea led the way, her limp slowing her down, but her grip on his hand never faltered.
"What if destroying the node doesn't work?" Aven asked breathlessly.
Rhea shot him a tired smile. "Then we try something else. Anything. We don't stop until this place dies."
Ahead, a faint green light marked another door. Rhea shoved it open, and they stumbled out onto a catwalk overlooking a massive chamber. Below them sprawled the museum's inner machinery—a labyrinth of cables, servers, and glowing nodes pulsing with neon light.
"The control tower," Rhea whispered. "It's in the center."
Aven followed her gaze. In the middle of the chamber rose a tall column of metal and glass, humming with static. Bundles of cables fed into it from every direction, flickering with images of ruined futures and glitching silhouettes.
"How do we destroy it?" he breathed.
Rhea tore the cracked crystal device from her belt, flipping a switch on its side. A faint whine rose from within, like a building charge.
"We overload the power core," she said. "Then we run."
A crash echoed above them. They looked up. On the catwalk overhead, echoes poured in, spilling like liquid shadow onto the metal grates.
"Go!" Rhea screamed.
They sprinted along the catwalk, the echoes shrieking behind them. The metal rattled under their feet, groaning with every step. Sparks rained down from the ceiling as power conduits ruptured under the echoes' assault.
Rhea leapt onto a maintenance ladder, sliding down toward the control tower's base. Aven followed, barely keeping his grip on the slick rungs.
They hit the ground running, weaving between towering server stacks and hissing pipes. The tower loomed above them, its glass skin flickering with ghostly faces that seemed to watch them, mouths opening in silent screams.
Rhea slammed the crystal device into a control panel at the tower's base. Sparks exploded, lighting her face with blue fire.
"Keep them off me!" she shouted.
Aven turned, raising a broken pipe he'd grabbed as the first echoes lunged out of the dark. He swung wildly, smashing into glitching bodies, their forms dissolving into static with each hit. But more kept coming, clawing at him, whispering fragments of dead futures into his ears.
Rhea gritted her teeth, twisting wires and punching commands into the panel. The tower began to hum, the neon light flickering faster, casting manic shadows across the chamber.
"Hurry!" Aven shouted, shoving an echo away. It hissed and lunged again, teeth flashing with black static.
Rhea screamed as the crystal device burst in her hands, shards of blue energy crackling through the tower. The hum rose to a shriek, the neon veins splintering and sparking.
"Run!" she gasped.
Aven grabbed her arm, dragging her away as the tower convulsed. The echoes shrieked in fury, their bodies melting into puddles of black mist as the chamber quaked.
The last thing Aven saw was the tower splitting open, spewing neon fire into the air, before the blast knocked them both into darkness.