Two weeks later the Consultant wandered into the intensive care unit where Victor Adams lay in bed. He was connected to several machines by various wires and tubes. His face was masked and his hands were swathed in bandages. A nurse was sitting by his side. The doctor spoke directly to his patient, asking how he felt now he had returned to the land of the living?

“Can you uncover my eyes so I can see again?”

‘Steady on old chap you’ve been very ill, we nearly lost you and by rights you should have been a goner!” The surgeon chuckled at his own attempt at levity.

Victor groaned and asked for a drink. The nurse put a beaker to his mouth and then the doctor carefully removed the eye mask. His patient ‘s eyes looked unusually clear and bright and stared back at him with hypnotically. The surgeon shook his head in disbelief “Well they seem okay…quite remarkable!” Next he had the nurse carefully removing the bandages from Victor’s damaged hands and they both gasped in amazement at the transformation. Left and right hands were restored to perfection.

Over the next few days Victor Adams underwent several tests. His voice was recorded and played back to him in the presence of his parents. They were delighted he now had twenty-twenty vision without glasses and seemed fitter than ever before. However they were in agreement that his voice had changed, it had gone an octave deeper and sometimes when he spoke there was a strange unearthly echo.

The doctor explained that early on Victor had been talking in his sleep and appeared to be jabbering in a foreign language, several languages in fact. Mrs. Adams butted in that Victor had a nervous stutter and had never learned anything but English. The stutter had now gone. During the following month as Victor Adams returned home to convalesce he went swimming in the lake on the home estate. He had never been able to swim before but he now found he had a liking for outdoor pursuits. He could miraculously play the piano like a concert maestro and he enquired who had been among the people sadly vaporised in the bomb blast. Eventually he learned they had been a multi talented group of hero’s at an award ceremony and he had somehow locked into the echo’s of their lives as he’d touched and absorbed the dust of shattered souls. The British government had already reached the same startling conclusion and decided that Victor Adams was henceforth to be known only as the ‘Echo Man’ and to be put to use as a valuable counterspy.

End.