Alyssa Redd's Arc

Chapter 15 of 15

Rebecca led Alyssa down a narrow stair into the arch room. The anchor above the door was cut deep into the stone. Ropes carved into the walls twisted toward it. Alyssa held the journals tight against her ribs. Her own words in her own hand, six times over. She had read enough to know the pattern. Every past self had walked up to this arch and broken. "You've read what happens," Rebecca said. "The bond opens the memories all at once. Twelve years, four wipes, every face they took from you. Your mind is a small room. They pour a river into it." "How did you survive it." "I wasn't the anchor. I only sat near one." Alyssa set the journals on the step and knelt. She opened the thinnest one, then the next, then the next. Her old handwriting spread across the floor like a map. In the margin of the fourth book she found a diagram she had drawn to herself. A valve. A choke point. Slow the flow. She had always seen how systems failed. She had never thought of her own head as a system before. She went back through each book and pulled the marked pages. A word on one. A date on another. A name circled twice. She lined them on the stone in order. Each page was a step. Read one, breathe, close the eyes, wait. Then the next. A staircase down instead of a cliff. "You're building a gate," Rebecca said. "I'm building a drip." Alyssa stood and walked to the arch. She pressed her palm flat to the carved rope. The stone was warm. She felt the pull she had felt before, sharp behind her teeth. She did not let it take her. She read the first page aloud. A street she had lived on. She waited until the street sat still in her head. Then the next page. A brother's name. She waited again. The memories came, but slow. A kitchen. A hand on her shoulder. A room with a chair and a light. A woman signing a form. Her mother's face, then her father's. She swayed. Rebecca caught her elbow and let go. An hour passed, maybe two. When Alyssa lowered her hand from the stone, she was still herself. She knew what they had taken. She knew every name. She picked up the journals and closed them one by one. "It worked," Rebecca said. She sounded surprised. "It held." Alyssa's voice was rough. "But I'm bonded now. Shrumella can feel me. Whatever's up there hunting me can feel me too." Rebecca went pale. Above them, faint through the rock, a low tone began to sound. Not a bell. A signal. Something had locked on. "They know where you are," Rebecca said. Alyssa tucked the journals under her arm and started up the stair toward Marla.