THESE FAMILIAR STRANGERS

Despite Hack's accurate depiction of it, the sight of the deserted beach had Echo's stomach cramp into a knot. In a beat, he reached for his goggles and slid the night-vision lenses into position but his narrowed eyes swept over his green-tinted surroundings to the same nerve-wracking result. There wasn't a soul in sight and the sounds of nature boiled down to the ocean's gentle laps of the isle's shore.

It was quiet. Too quiet. Still the troubling observation held no sway on his resolve.

In less than five minutes, they reached the entry to an equally unguarded trapdoor (minus any actual trap). The door, once buried under a flimsy layer of sand, opened on a dark underground passage with little more than a squeak of its rusty hinges. No trap, no alarm, no automatic lock down or the perfectly reasonable (in his opinion) collapse of the tunnel it invited just about anyone to explore.

Did Diamond End's owner have this much faith in Silver Guard? In the marines? It was an unsettling prospect.

Weariness clogged the dark passage, tension increasing with every uneventful second spend in the trap-less space.

"There's a limit to blind faith," Echo grumbled to himself.

A questioning hum rose at the front. "Did you say something?" Koala asked.

"Yes, this is suspicious as fuck."

"It is rather suspicious indeed," Hack concurred, his words the last ones spoken until they reached the end of the tunnel where the back of a mahogany—…Bookcase? Breakfront?...—Where the back of a thick wooden panel blocked the exit, its massive stance one of immovable resolve. This was a secret door built to test the seas' fool-hardiest thieves. Or it would be, if Koala didn't find the most ill-concealed lever in the history of ill-concealed anything after a bare ten seconds.

Was he being ungrateful? Maybe he should thank his lucky star instead of bitching about the ease of their entry, but fuck if the lack of a proper obstacle didn't set him on edge.

Echo was tempted to engulf the mansion with his observation haki—just a second, a tiny peak to confirm Cleo's presence and get a feel of his surroundings—but in its condition, even a read of his circumstantial allies would put him straight out of commission.

"Ready to walk into the most obvious trap ever?" Sabo asked without a hint of worry. If anything he sounded excited, which Echo came to accept as the blonds ill-adjusted response to danger.

Hack smashed a fist into his palm. "Bring it on," he said, and with an unexpectedly sharp smile of her own, Koala pulled on the lever.

The imposing bookcase swung open on a richly furnished library dominated by a giant fresco that spoke of its owner's high education and their apparent interest in sea-creatures.

"Ready?" Koala asked.

"After you," Echo said and followed her through the secret opening only to arrive in an entirely different room. His body tensed in alarm, but before he could react, the bookcase slammed shut and morphed into a solid wall.

Echo's agitated eyes darted over the familiar space, taking in the perfect replica of his toddler chambers from the grotesque drawings glued with a chaotic sense of order to the pale green walls to the tens of animal plushies obscuring the king-sized bed's headboard.

"Koala?" he whispered with little conviction and startled at the sound of his high-pitched voice.

What the fuck... Why do I sound so young?

Echo snapped his head toward the closet and gaped at the frail boy he found staring in the mirror.

Calm down, he told himself when his heart went racing. He couldn't afford to panic, not when the longevity of the drug that kept him functional was directly linked to his heart-rate.

It didn't matter that he'd shrunk to his awkward four-years old self, or that he'd landed inside... wherever this place was, he still had thirty minutes left before paralyzing toxins flooded his system, forty if he could keep his pumping organ under control. There was no time to waste, no time to panic, and so he trotted toward his old bedroom's door and careened into the hallway where he bounced off a pair of impossibly long legs. Gravity and a distinct lack of balance sent him tumbling back, but pale spindly fingers steadied his clumsy form.

"And where are you running off to this time?"

Echo gaped at his grinning father, his sire so disconcertingly happy compared to the tired man he remembered slipping a note inside Echo's pocket some eight years ago, his smile back then a sad and knowing one.

Echo's relationship with his father was... It was complicated, but faced with the urgency of the situation, he wondered if this iteration of Albrecht Constantin could help him.

"Where's the exit—"

"Your mother's looking for you. She has a surprise."

Echo's blood ran cold. Those words... They were the exact same words as then…

"Dahlia's been feeling down lately. Think you could help her smile?"

In another life, Echo had answered with an enthusiastic nod and a beaming smile. Here he remained petrified.

"Tell you what, when I'm done with my meeting, the three of us can go to Sabadoy Park," his not-father recited like an automaton. The man (Illusion? Ghost? Cyborg?) fell quiet for all of three seconds before he chortled like a mad-man. "Yes, yes, you can have a candy-apple," the Constantin impersonator said with a humorous chuckle before he continued on his way, a demure Leny trailing behind him like the broken shell of a man Echo had failed to recognize him as.

He recoiled at the gaunt man's approach, but the lip-wired slave passed him by without a glance. Still, Echo tracked his progress with weary eyes, and only once he was certain the slave wouldn't turn and pounce, did he sprint toward the stairs.

There was no measure of enthusiasm in his steps, not a trace of his four years old self's naïve eagerness; to tell the truth, every cell in his body begged him to flee, but the thought of his daughter kept him racing down the staircase.

By the time he reached the entry to his mother's quarters, Echo had grown used to his new (old?) body's clumsy footing, but his heart and lungs were sadly untrained, the first one beating like a drummer against his rib-cage while the second left him wheezing like a life-long smoker against the door.

Half a minute later, once his lungs stopped threatening collapse, Echo rose on this tip-toes and pulled on the handle.

"Breath. Imagine you're blowing out a candle. Take a deep inhale... and blow."

Echo squeezed his eyes shut. He wished more than anything that he could avoid the gruesome act about to play out, but he couldn't, not when logic dictated the exit be behind this door. This, their entire excursion, it was all a trap, and the more he thought about it, the more obvious it was that Cleo'd been kidnapped to lure him here. If this was true and not the fruit of his over-active paranoia, then it only made sense that the key to the exit would be hidden inside his worst memory.

He didn't want to relive this, no sane man would, but he would, over and over if he must. For his daughter. Head full of nothing but the memory of her mischievous smile, Echo walked into the ravaged room.

"Mother!" he'd exclaimed twenty years ago and rushed to the kneeling woman with the blind trust of an over-protected child.

But Echo was a child no more, thus he advanced with a weariness befitting the décor.

The parlor, once a mix of plump armchairs and colorful flower vases, was in shambles. Flowers he'd thought eternal had all withered into a brown putrid mess that mingled with the shattered glass gleaming on the floor, and seated in the middle of the havoc was his mother, lit body curled onto herself.

"Mother?" he asked, his voice no less hesitant than that day.

From pale memories, Echo had forged the image of a tall, strong and regal lady, but seeing the whimpering woman peering up at him with puffy red eyes, he couldn't help but wonder: had she always been this small?

"Echo?" She lifted her bloody arms in invitation. "It's alright... Come here, baby-bird."

Thick red rivulets trailed down her arms and dripped into a spreading puddle.

Echo averted his gaze. "Where's the exit?"

"Come see mommy."

And he had, back then, so very eager to feel the warmth of her embrace he hadn't even flinched when she'd gripped his left arm and told him they were returning to—

"Let's return to Baltigo," she said in a soothing voice.

"You'll love it there," she'd said and stabbed his thin, frail wrist with a long shard of glass.

"You'll love it there... Shhh," the nightmarish figure cooed at an illusion of her own. "Soon there will be no more pain, no more suffering..."

Cool, wet drops trailed down Echo's cheeks. "Mom," he said in a broken voice, "Mom, where—" He swallowed. "Where's the exit?"

Amber met amber.

"Come here, baby-bird."

His mother— No, this wasn't his mother. His mother was long dead, consumed by the madness of her collared existence. This was an articulated puppet, and unlike his mother some twenty years back, it was rising off the ground.

"Come see mommy." She staggered toward him, a long piece of glass clutched between bloody fingers. "Let's return to Baltigo."

"You're not my mother," Echo whispered. "You're not my mother."

"You'll love it there..."

Echo took an involuntary step back, scarcely avoiding a stab of her make-shift blade before he crouched low and swept her off her feet.

His mother's back crashed with a sickening crack against the marble floor.

"Shhh," they soothed in sync.

"Soon there will be no more pain, no more suffering," she repeated before she snapped her glassy eyes up to his. "Come here, baby-bird." Echo crawled forth. "Come see mommy."

"I'm here," he croaked and softly brushed the twin drops that had landed on her cheeks. "I'm right here."

"Let's return to Baltigo... You'll love it there."

Echo smiled a soft, sad smile, and right when she lifted her arm to stab him, he grabbed a hold of her wrist and directed the makeshift blade to her throat.

The figure beneath him gurgled. "Soon... there... will..."

"I'm sorry I couldn't bring you home, mom..."

"Let's... return..."

Light fled her crazed eyes, and with it, the scenery shifted to a dark and empty room, her cooling body replaced by the rough cotton of a life-sized doll; His own, back to its adult form.