Alyssa Redd's Arc

Chapter 14 of 15

Alyssa woke on a stone floor. The chapel was gone. She lay in a round room cut into rock. Rope carvings ran up the walls to a huge anchor above a low arch. Marla was not there. The brass cylinder was not there. A stack of worn books sat by her hand. She sat up. Her head felt clean and light, like a room after someone had swept it. That scared her more than pain. A woman sat across from her on the step. Small. Gray tunic. A hospital band still on her wrist. She was looking at Alyssa the way a nurse looks at a chart. "You're awake," the woman said. "I'm Rebecca. I was the first one they put in that chair." Alyssa's hand went to her cheek. The tattoo was still there. The teardrop under the heart. Something, at least, was hers. "Where is Marla." "Safe. Above us. The robed man kept his word about that." Rebecca did not soften it. "He brought you here because I asked him to. You need to read those before you decide." Alyssa looked at the stack. The top book was thin, the spine cracked. She opened it. Her own handwriting. Firetruck red ink in the margins. A date twelve years old. They told me I hold it together. I ran. I am writing this so next time I know. She opened the next. Different pen. Same hand. Same first line, almost. I ran again. If you are reading this you ran too. Do not trust the ship. Do not trust Earth stories. You are the anchor. Six books. Six times. Her stomach turned. "What is an anchor," Alyssa said. "A person the system ties to." Rebecca's voice stayed flat. "Shrumella needs one alive and bonded or it comes apart. They took your family because your blood holds. Mine didn't. Yours does. Every time you wake up and learn it, you run. They wipe you and start again." "And you." "I stayed. Nothing happened to me. People near me stopped falling apart. That's all I know." Alyssa stood. The arch under the anchor led down. She could feel the pull of it in her teeth, the way she felt a bad wire in a wall. "If I walk through there I don't come back to Earth." "You come back to yourself. Every time. That's the trade." Alyssa thought of Marla above her, sleeping, not knowing. She thought of a grocery store on Earth that kept throwing her out. She thought of the girl in the first journal, twelve years ago, writing so a stranger with her face could find the thread. She picked up the journals. She tucked them under her arm. "Tell him I'll go in," she said. "But I keep these. And I keep her." Rebecca nodded once and stood to lead her down.