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2139 

“MR-113-02,” Sally Mumford said aloud. “Engaging.”

The machine wound up toward full function, then popped. A thin twist of smoke went to the ceiling. In the tray compartment, nothing but a spot of ash.

“Another containment coupling to fit,” she said under her breath.

Time to open that red.

She grabbed the opener, uncorked the bottle, poured, pushed the notes aside, and left the mess. Another failed run.

She slept the way she always did after a failed run.

Everyone has felt the exact moment a room changes, even when nothing has moved: that quiet, uninvited shift, like a change in pressure and tone that slowly fades.

For one last ordinary morning, Sally Mumford still believed the rules she spent her nights dismantling would hold until she was ready.

Sally sat curled up in her sun lounge, a half-finished mug of coffee cooling on the glass table beside her. The morning light streamed through the large windows, casting long golden beams across the room, but she barely noticed it. A strange, heavy feeling had settled over her since she woke.

The table in front of her was a mess from the night before: a near-empty bottle of Mississippi Red, a half-drunk glass still stained with dark red residue, crumpled notes, printed research papers, and her tablet glowing faintly with open files on molecular restructuring and quark-level experiments. Highlighters, empty energy bar wrappers, and a stack of textbooks on genetic engineering completed the chaotic scene. Half-buried under one of the textbooks was an old, well-worn volume on pre-flood stage magicians: Houdini, Shin Lim, and the almost-forgotten performers who had once made entire theatres believe the impossible. On top of some of the papers lay a photograph of a lake that had come from the box file her dad had brought the weekend before. It contained all her grandfather’s personal effects.

She decided to refresh the coffee that had gone cold.

As she stood and started to walk toward the kitchen she passed the bench. She reached to wipe away the debris.

Ash, and then a hardness that was not ash.

She picked it out.

The vision struck without warning.

A sudden jolt of pain raced into her head. She gasped and gripped the table.

She was standing in darkness that was not darkness. A vast, silent expanse stretched in every direction, filled with slow-moving threads of light that twisted and folded in on themselves like living equations. In the distance a great ship burned against a black sky, breaking apart in a silent bloom of fire. A girl’s scream tore through the void.

The darkness shifted.

She was on an old ship in rough seas. Everyone around her wore period clothes. A teenage girl, about sixteen, stood at the rail staring out at the ocean. In the distance the same explosion bloomed with blinding light. The girl suddenly turned, looked straight at Sally, and shouted desperately:

“Angelica!”

The word tore through the storm like a cry for help.

Sally cried out and jolted back to reality.

“Angelica!” she shouted back, still half-trapped in the vision.

The vision released her.

She was back in the sun lounge, heart pounding, a film of sweat on her. The sliver was still in her fingers. She almost dropped it.

She fumbled it into the sample bezel and dragged the chain over her head because she could not think what else to do with a thing that had just torn a hole in the morning.

“Are you okay, Sally?” came the calm, authoritative female voice. “Something just happened to you. I have logged your vitals.”

Angelica was Sally’s house AI.

“What happened, Sally?”

Sally swallowed.

“I really don’t know, Angelica.”

She stayed very still for several seconds, waiting for the residual tremor in her hands to ease.

“You have an incoming call on your secured personal frequency,” Angelica announced. “Caller ID displayed.”

Sally glanced at the clear screen. It was Jonathan, her best friend from university, an astronomer working as a technician. He had arrived on campus just a year and a half ago, and they had instantly clicked. Like her, he was a member of a secret group called Disclosure, looking into the existence of Extraterrestrial life on Earth.

“Angelica, connect on the house secure channel please.”

“Hey, Jay! Angelica, open all sun blinds.”

The blinds rose one by one, flooding the room with warm sunlight as Sally settled onto her large, comfy sofa.

“Good morning, gorgeous,” came Jonathan’s bubbly voice. “Bit too much wine last night?”

Sally took a deep breath.

“Um, yeah. I guess.” Her brain was fuzzy. He wasn’t listening. He was excited.

“I’m calling about last night’s meeting. I found some interesting material on the Triangular Alliance, plus an old 2016 newspaper clipping about the Alpha Centauri system. There’s also a suspicious string of astronomers who studied that system and died mysteriously in the early 21st century.” His voice rose with excitement. “Oh, and there was a new guy at the meeting. This could be big, Sal. Things are starting to unravel. I’m going to ask the university if I can use the 40-inch refractor.”

“When do you want to meet? I’m on campus this afternoon for a lecture. Ten past three at the usual spot?”

“Perfect. See you then, Hon. Love you!” he said, and the call ended.

Sally leaned back, staring at the ceiling. While Jonathan chased stars and government cover-ups in the skies, her own forbidden research went much deeper, into the quark level.

Officially, rewriting matter at the quark layer was theory, and not a theory you published. In her private work she had pushed past the paper models. She had not told her mentors. She had not told the technicians who watched every practical. Something in the numbers did not add up, and she was determined to find out what the authorities were so desperate to keep hidden.

Jonathan looked out for Sally whenever he could. He was her best friend.

Shower, she thought, and went.

“Usual breakfast after?” Angelica asked.

“Yes, please.”

She lobbed her pink and black pyjamas unceremoniously into the washing basket, washed, dressed, and was back in the sun lounge before the bagel had cooled.

“Thanks.” Sally wrapped her damp hair in a towel, twisting it into a quick pineapple knot on top of her head, and padded toward the kitchen.

“Angelica, what’s my schedule today?”

“You have a two-hour lecture at the university at 1 p.m., followed by student tutorials at 6 and 7 p.m.”

Sally held a PhD in archaeology and linguistics. Now she was studying genetic engineering and molecular reconstruction. Between Disclosure meetings and teaching, her own study time had almost disappeared.

Sally looked again at the picture from the box file. It was of her grandfather and two other women: one she recognised as her grandmother, but she had no idea who the other was.

Her trip to the store was quick and uneventful. On returning she walked up the path to the front entrance and placed her eye against the control panel by the side of the door.

“Welcome home Sally Mumford!” said Angelica.

“Where’s Tibsy?”

“Tibsy is outside.”

A few moments later Sally heard the cat flap go and Tibsy bolted past her down the hall.

She placed the brown paper bag on the kitchen table and began to empty the contents. Her brief excursion to the store had taken her mind off the vision and she was starting to think about her lecture and her meet with Jonathan.

Quite suddenly, a chill ran through her body that made her shiver. The paper receipt from the store on the edge of the kitchen table blew upwards as if caught in a draught; her eyes darted to it and flickered like time had somehow slowed. All her senses focused as it dropped gently to the floor in slow motion and she acutely registered the subtle sound of it landing. She stood motionless for a few seconds, staring.

“Angelica, are there any windows open in the house?”

“There are no windows open in the house!”

The hairs on Sally’s arms lifted. A cold tingle ran up her spine and settled at the base of her skull. She moved around the kitchen table and down the short corridor into the sun lounge.

Tibsy was on the corner chair, methodically cleaning one paw. He glanced up as she entered, then froze mid-lick.

The silence in the room was wrong, too complete, as if the air itself had stopped moving.

A faint breeze slipped past her from behind and into the sun-drenched room. Goosebumps rose hard across her skin. Nausea followed.

Then the girl from the vision filled her mind’s eye, her face rushing forward, expanding, passing straight through her.

Sally stepped back with a sharp gasp.

Tibsy froze on the chair, then arched high, fur standing on end.

The girl’s face flashed through Sally’s mind repeatedly. Her head swam.

Tibsy hissed, a raw, open-mouthed sound directed at empty air and bolted from the room.

Sally’s heart slammed against her ribs. The air in the sun lounge turned sharply, unnaturally cold.

“Unexplained drop in temperature, would you like me to regulate?”

Angelica’s voice sounded distant, almost unreal.

Sally staggered toward the glass desk in the centre of the room, reaching out to steady herself.

The conviction that someone was standing behind her struck hard and sudden. She spun around, eyes searching every corner. The room was empty.

Then the tears came without warning, sharp and uncontrollable, as if something inside her chest had torn open. The nausea deepened into a heavy, plunging sensation. She swayed where she stood, the room beginning to tilt. Her throat closed; she tried to swallow and failed.

Darkness engulfed her; a twisting tunnel of blackness that narrowed steadily as her heartbeat slowed and faded.

She staggered forward, tears streaming.

Panic took her completely as her breath locked in her chest and stopped.

The darkness became complete, her body went limp, and she felt the breeze pass over her face as she slumped to the floor.

She plunged downward, the world dropping away, and then she hit water. It closed over her head. She sank, lungs locked, unable to draw breath.

As she sank, a memory began to surface.

She was nine again, kneeling in dry earth, the small flint tool cool and perfect in her palm as the ground seemed to fall away beneath her.

She gasped and thrashed, lungs burning, but found no air.

The darkness below pulled harder. She was slipping toward it. Memories kept coming, bright and rapid against the black.

Then a small figure appeared before her, luminous and still. Long blonde hair drifted around her shoulders, only partly concealing the delicate wings that rose from her back. In that moment, Sally could only think: angel.

The angel reached out and smiled with impossible gentleness.

Everything about her was subtly wrong for a human being: the proportions, the light under the skin, the stillness. She whispered in an unknown tongue. Sally did not recognise a single word, yet the meaning settled in her chest with absolute clarity.

The hour is late.

Her parents stood before her, wearing the same formal clothes they had worn at her graduation. They smiled, and the terror in her began to ease. A calm settled over her, heavy and gentle at once. She stopped fighting the dark.

A faint voice reached her from far away.

“Breathe.”

She sank closer to the black.

“Breathe.”

The voice was clearer now, and familiar.

“Breathe!”

Recognition cut through the dark. Jonathan.

“BREATHE!”

Something in her answered. The memories vanished. A force like a hand drove into her back and hurled her upward, fast, faster, toward the light. She broke the surface and air flooded her lungs.

“WARNING! Sally Mumford, your vital signs are critical, an AI paramedic has been called, remain calm, WARNING!”

She woke like a heart patient being resuscitated with a defibrillator and inhaled so hard she wheezed like a whistle. Tibsy was by her side and rubbed his head against hers.

She lay on the sun lounge floor until her heart found a beat she could use. The paramedic alert pulsed somewhere behind Angelica’s voice. She told her to cancel it.

Getting up took more than it should have. The glass desk. The doorway. The kitchen chair. The bag was still on the table where she had set it down. The receipt had not moved from the floor.

“Your vital signs remain elevated,” Angelica said. “Do you require assistance?”

“No.”

The sliver at her throat was warm. She left it there. She could still feel the black water if she closed her eyes, so she did not close them.

The buzzer made her flinch.

“David Morales is here.”

He came only as far as the kitchen. He did not sit. He stood by the table with the receipt between them, still in the shirt he wore for lectures, and something in his face was already wrong.

“There’s no easy way to say this. Jonathan is dead. It happened around half past ten this morning. He fell from one of the tech lab windows. They’re treating it as an accident for now.”

The room threatened to tilt again.

“Jay?”

He nodded.

“I came as soon as I could. You shouldn’t be alone with this, but I can’t stay. Take the rest of the day off. I’ll cover your lecture.”

He squeezed her shoulder, awkward and brief, and left.

The door sealed.

Sally sat very still. Then she looked at the receipt.

“Angelica. The time I put the bag on the table.”

“10:32:43.”

After a while the photograph pulled her back to the other table. Her grandparents and the woman she could not name.

The vision took her without warning. This time she was not watching from outside. She was looking out through someone else’s eyes at the water’s edge: the light, the trees, the ground underfoot.

Then it was gone.

The receipt was still on the floor.

The journey to Fort Smith took two hours. For once, Sally let Angelica drive.

As the Cayman pulled up to the old church, her stomach tightened. She had only known Jonathan for eighteen months. She was a friend, not family, not a partner, and the packed church made that painfully clear.

The service passed like countryside seen from a fast train. She stood, sat, sang, and felt almost nothing.

It only took five minutes to drive to the wake. As Sally walked toward the entrance, she saw Zoey and Maddison already waiting near the steps.

“Hey Sally, how you doing, hon?” Zoey pulled her into a hug before she could answer.

Sally held on a second longer than she meant to.

“There he is!” Maddison was already moving toward the car lot.

“Who?” Sally asked.

Zoey’s mouth tightened. “Bruce. She brought him to the last meeting.

Apparently, he’s ‘into science.’”

Sally looked after Maddison, but before she could ask anything more, a man stepped in.

“Hi, Sally, isn’t it? I’m Jonathan’s father, Teddy.” He shook her hand and put an arm around her with the careful warmth of someone who had been greeting people all afternoon. “Please come and meet my wife.”

“I’ll catch you later,” Zoey said, and went to catch Maddison.

The reception hall was already filling. Glasses, low voices, the smell of coffee and lilies. Sally felt out of place among them, as if she had walked into a life she had only been allowed to see from the edge.

“Sally, this is my wife, Lillian. Darling, this is Sally from Jay’s university.”

Lillian’s eyes were swollen. “Jay spoke of you fondly. Thank you for coming.”

Sally managed a nod. “He was… he was a good friend.”

It sounded thin even to her.

Lillian turned to the woman beside her. “This is Sadie. Jay’s high school girlfriend.”

Sadie took Sally’s hand. “I was hoping we’d meet over a beer with him, not like this. I’m so sorry. He was wonderful. And I know how much he loved you.”

The word hung there.

Sally felt her face change before she could stop it.

Sadie scrunched her eyes, “You do know how much he was in love with you?”

For a moment she could not answer. Loved her? Jay had said it easily, the way he said everything. She had never let herself hear it like that.

“I…” She swallowed. “Excuse me. I really need some air.”

She made for the door before anyone could stop her. The hall noise fell away behind her, but the words did not.

Outside, she looked for a low wall, a corner, anywhere she could sit without being spoken to.

She did not get that far.

“Sally, come and meet Bruce.”

Maddison caught her before she reached the quiet.

The man with her was sharp-suited and clean-cut, handsome in a way that did not quite fit the afternoon. He was already watching Sally.

“I’m not really…” Sally began.

“It’ll only take a second.” Maddison smiled too brightly. “Sally, this is Bruce, Bruce - Sally. He came to our last meeting.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Sally said.

“No, the pleasure is all mine, Sally Mumford. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

His handshake was firm, unhurried. “Jonathan spoke of you at the meeting.”

That landed. Jay had spoken to him, and about her.

Maddison spotted Zoey inside with drinks. “I’ll give her a hand.” She was gone before Sally could stop her.

Bruce smiled as if they already shared something.

“Tough day.”

“Yes.”

He glanced toward the hall, then back to her. “Jay told me what he’d discovered.”

Sally went still. The last phone call came back at once: the excitement in his voice, the Triangular Alliance, the old astronomers, it’s all starting to unravel.

“He said not to share it with anyone but you,” Bruce said. “The girls are coming back. Why don’t we meet Monday night? You busy?”

There was only one way to find out.

“No, I’m free on Monday.”

“The roadside bar on Route 40. About seven. You know it?”

“Yes, I know it.”

Zoey and Maddison came back with drinks. Bruce pulled Maddison in and kissed her in a way that would make her mom blush.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get something inside.”

He led Maddison away.

Zoey sat down beside Sally and followed them with her eyes.

“He seems nice,” Sally said.

Zoey shuddered. “I don’t know, hon. He gives me the creeps.”

Sally watched the doorway they had gone through. “How much did Jay actually say at the last meeting?”

“Not much. The usual Alliance stuff. Something about the university refractor, but he didn’t go into detail.”

That was enough. If Jay had told Bruce more than that, then Bruce was already closer to Jay’s secret than he should be.

“I should go,” Sally said. “I’m shattered.”

Zoey hugged her tightly.

Five minutes later she was on the road back to Little Rock, Monday night already waiting for her.