Alyssa Redd's Arc

Chapter 6 of 15

The ship hit the beach hard and skidded. Alyssa's helmet cracked against the yoke. When she opened her eyes, the panel was dark and Marla was already unbuckling. Outside the glass, a gray shore stretched toward flat water. The sky was the wrong color for anything Alyssa had ever seen. She popped the hatch. Air rushed in. Her suit chest-panel flashed green. She pulled her helmet off. It smelled like salt and rain. Marla climbed out behind her and stopped. "Alyssa." Ten paces from the ship, someone had built a small pile of stones. On top of the pile sat a metal box, dry, clean, no rust. Beside it, pressed into the wet sand, was a boot print. Fresh. Smaller than Alyssa's. Alyssa knelt and opened the box. Inside were three things. A folded page of Shrumella civic paper. A nav crystal shard, cloudy and old. And a photograph, creased, of a woman with dark brown hair and a black heart drawn under one eye in ink. Marla looked over her shoulder. "That's you." "It's not me." Alyssa turned the photo. On the back, in careful handwriting: For the girl who comes back. She read it twice. Her hands were steady now in a way she didn't like. "Someone knew I was coming. Before I knew." She unfolded the civic paper. It was a shift roster from the civic hall archive, dated forty years before her birth. One name was circled. Redd. Marla crouched beside her. "Your family worked in the archive." "My grandmother said her mother cleaned floors." Alyssa touched the circled name. "She lied. Or she was lied to." She looked up at the empty beach. The boot print led away from the stones, up toward a line of low dunes, and stopped where the sand turned to grass. Whoever left the box was gone. But not long gone. Marla stood. "They're watching us." "Probably." Alyssa closed the box and held it against her chest. The nav crystal in her pocket had gone quiet. The one in the box had not been grown by Noel. It was older. Someone had been seeding this shore with pieces of her story before she was born. Earth had not been waiting for a stranger. It had been waiting for her. She stood up. The tide was coming in and would take the boot print soon. She let it. She had what she needed. Her ancestors had not been from nowhere. They had been from here, and someone here had been keeping their place. "We move," Alyssa said. She started up the dune. Marla followed. The box was heavy against her ribs. Behind them, water reached the stones and knocked the top one down. Alyssa did not look back. Whoever had left the photograph was ahead of her now, and she meant to find them before they found her again.