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were monitoring him—it was a close call.”
    â€œSo let’s bring him back,” I said, rising to my feet.
    â€œIt’s not safe for him here. Not while the Consort exists.”
    â€œThen I’ll go to him.”
    â€œAnd join the Free Walkers?”
    Becoming a Free Walker meant living in Echoes, hidingfrom the Consort, leaving behind my family and Eliot and the plans we’d made. If I joined the Free Walkers, I wouldn’t just be a troublemaker. I’d be a criminal, and I’d spend the rest of my life running.
    â€œYou make it sound like it’s all or nothing.”
    â€œThere’s no middle ground here, Del. Either you’re ours, or theirs.”
    â€œWhy don’t you tell people about cauterization?” I asked. “The Consort’s convinced you want to destroy the Key World because you won’t cleave. If you explain—”
    â€œYou think they don’t know? The Consort knows all about cauterization, and it’s only made them more desperate to stop us.” Her gaze bored into me. “Tell me why the Consort cleaves.”
    â€œTo protect the Key World from Echoes,” I said automatically, a response drilled into me from my earliest days.
    â€œWhy else?”
    I thought back to all the textbooks I’d skimmed. “To harvest their energy and bolster the Key World.”
    â€œExactly. They want to capture as much of the energy as they can, and they get it at the expense of the Echoes. Cauterization would cut off the supply.”
    â€œThen why cauterize? If we need that energy, why wouldn’t we continue cleavings?”
    â€œBecause the Echoes need it more. They need it to live.”
    I looked at her blankly. “But they’re not—”
    â€œEchoes aren’t merely copies of Originals. You know that better than anyone.”
    I thought of Simon, of all the versions of him I’d met, each distinct and vivid and whole. “I know. They’re real.”
    â€œThey’re more than real. They’re alive. The Consort knows it, just as they know cleaving—the great and sacred duty of the Walkers—is murder.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    S OME SONGS YOU LOVE FROM the instant you hear them. Six notes in, part of you rises up and says yes . Before the melody’s complete, before you’ve heard the lyrics or the bridge, something within you recognizes it as part of your soul, as if it’s been waiting for you all this time.
    Ms. Powell’s words were like the chords to a song I’d always known but never heard. Still, the logical part of my brain resisted.
    â€œEchoes aren’t alive. They don’t exist until their world has formed. They can’t survive unless they’re tethered to an Original. When we cleave, they don’t even notice they’re unraveling.”
    â€œWith cauterization, they don’t unravel. Once the strings are knotted, the Echoes are as alive as you and me.”
    â€œThat doesn’t make sense.” I didn’t doubt Simon’s Echoes were real. I’d watched one of them cleave, and the horror of the moment had stayed with me. But real and alive were different . Alive meant independent. It meant Simon’s Echoes could survive without him.
    It meant I hadn’t just cleaved Simon’s Echo in the park that day. I’d killed him.
    â€œWhen we cleave, they unravel. When we cauterize, theylive. Even if their Original dies, a cauterized Echo can maintain their signal and live out a natural lifespan,” Ms. Powell said.
    A horrible thought struck. “Is Simon dead? I can hear his Echoes, but if he was in Train World . . .”
    â€œSimon’s alive. We pulled him out of Train World before we cauterized it, I promise you.”
    Relief washed over me, but only for an instant. “Wait. Are you saying the Consort’s been slaughtering Echoes? For years and years? My parents? Addie? Me?”
    Every Echo