---
-Melissa POV-
I don't know how long I stood there looking at that umbrella.
Long enough for the water around my ankles to go completely still again. Long enough for a cloud to drift all the way across one of the empty window frames and out the other side. Long enough to notice that my hands were shaking.
That was the first thing that was wrong.
My hands didn't shake. Not since the first morning. They'd held a pistol steady at arm's length, caught a full magazine out of the air, set screws the size of a grain of rice. The only time I'd ever felt them tremble was on the third night of building Chris, and that was plain exhaustion, four days of no sleep catching up with them. They'd never shaken when I was scared. Never when something hurt. That was the calm's doing. It had always been there underneath, steady as a floor, keeping them still.
They were shaking now.
And the calm wasn't underneath anymore.
. . .
It took me a moment to understand what I was feeling, because I'd never felt it like this before.
Out there, in the body, the calm had always been inside me. Part of my hands, my feet, my breathing. Something I felt the way you feel your own pulse: there, constant, easy to forget.
In here, there was no body. Just me. And without the body wrapped around it, the calm wasn't inside me anymore.
It was beside me.
Close. Closer than anyone standing next to me could ever be. Pressed right up against the edges of me, so tightly that I couldn't tell where it stopped and I started. But separate, somehow. A second heartbeat, a little out of step with my own.
It was mine. I knew that. It wasn't someone else. It was a part of me that I'd only ever felt from the inside, and now, for the first time, I was feeling it from next to it.
And it wasn't calm.
It was staring at that umbrella the same way I was. And something in it was rising. Not panic. I knew what the calm felt like when it got sharp, when there was a threat, when it was time to move. This wasn't that.
This was like standing at the door of a house you used to live in. Seeing a coat still hanging on the hook. Knowing whose it was.
My eyes were stinging.
'Why?' I asked it, and myself, and nobody. 'It's an umbrella. It's just an umbrella. I've never even been here.'
It didn't answer. It never did.
But it didn't calm down, either.
. . .
That was when I heard the snore.
It was very small. Very soft. A tiny, contented little snrrk, the kind a kitten makes when it's dreaming about something delicious.
It came from behind the teacher's desk.
I stopped breathing.
Slowly, very slowly, the way you'd move around a sleeping animal, I took a step through the water. Then another. The ripples spread out ahead of me and lapped against the desk legs. I came around the side of it, past the umbrella, and looked down.
There was a girl curled up on the floor behind the teacher's desk.
She was small. Smaller than me. Smaller than Chris. She was lying on her side with one arm tucked under her head for a pillow and her knees pulled up, in a white sailor uniform with a big ribbon at the collar, and the shallow water didn't seem to touch her at all. Her hair was short and pale blue, almost violet at the ends, with a little braid on one side and long bangs fallen across her face. A big white bow sat crooked on her headband. Over her head, a thin blue ring hovered and glowed, like the light on a computer that's been left on overnight.
She was smiling in her sleep.
I knew who she looked like. I'd always known. Anyone who'd played the game long enough knew. Players had been pointing it out for years, in forum threads and fan art and long, excited videos: the pale blue hair, the bangs falling over the left eye, the little braid tied off to one side. Every time the GSC President showed up for even a second, in a flashback or a single frame of a trailer, somebody would say wait, doesn't she look exactly like...
It had always been a theory. A fun one. Something to argue about at lunch.
But I'd seen the President now. Not on a screen. In a dream so vivid I could still feel the warm light of that sunset hallway on my face. Long blue hair. A braid on the left. A small, tired smile.
And here, curled up asleep in the water in front of me, was the same face. Smaller. Rounder. Younger. But the same.
It wasn't a theory anymore. It was just true. It was sitting right there, close enough to touch.
"...Mm..." she mumbled. "...Five more minutes... Sensei..."
And the calm beside me broke.
. . .
I don't have another word for it.
It didn't go still. It didn't go sharp. It just broke, all at once, like a dam giving way. Something huge and warm and terrible came pouring out of it and straight into me, and I couldn't hold it back, because I'd never had to hold back the calm before. The calm was what did the holding.
It was relief. It was grief. It was there you are and I'm sorry and you're okay, you're okay, you're okay, all tangled together so tightly I couldn't pull one thread out from the others.
None of it was about anything I remembered.
All of it felt like mine.
My knees went weak. I caught the edge of the teacher's desk with one hand. The tears came before I could stop them, hot and fast and completely silent, running down my face and soaking into the edge of my mask. I pressed my free hand over my mouth so I wouldn't make a sound, so I wouldn't wake her, and stood there in the water and cried for something I couldn't remember losing.
'This isn't mine,' I thought, with the small part of me that could still think. 'This isn't mine. I've never met her. I only ever saw her through a screen.'
And something beside me, very quietly, disagreed.
That scared me more than the crying did.
. . .
I didn't know what to do with it. So I did the only thing I could. I held onto it.
Not pushing it away. Not shoving it in the later pile. Just holding it, the way you'd hold someone who was shaking, until the worst of it passed. It took a while. The calm didn't settle, exactly. But it stopped pouring. It drew back to its place beside me, trembling, raw, like someone who'd cried until they were empty and was now just sitting there, breathing.
I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. I breathed. In. Out. The way I'd taught Abigale at the range.
'Okay,' I told it, gently. 'Okay. I've got you. Whatever this is, I've got you.'
For the first time since I'd woken up in Kivotos, I was the one keeping the calm steady.
It was a very strange feeling.
. . .
She woke up about a minute later.
Not because of me. I'd been perfectly quiet. She just stretched, the way little kids stretch in the morning, arms straight up over her head and toes pointed, with a long squeaky yawn. Then she sat up, rubbed one eye with the back of her hand, and blinked around at the classroom.
"Mmn... Was that a nap? I think that was a nap..." She yawned again. "Arona wasn't sleeping. Arona was in standby mode. That's different. That's very different..."
Then she looked up.
And saw me.
We looked at each other for a long, long moment. A small blue-haired girl sitting in the water behind a desk, and a girl in a black ninja suit with gold eyes and a wet mask, standing over her.
Her eyes went very wide. One blue pupil, one violet.
"...Sensei?" she said, uncertainly.
Then her eyes went even wider, and the ring over her head jolted into a burst of jagged, pale blue spikes.
I knew that one. Shocked.
"You're not Sensei!" She scrambled backward so fast she bumped into the desk. "You're... you're a... there's a NINJA in the Shittim Chest!"
. . .
My body moved before I did.
It was reflex. Pure and simple. A shout, a sudden movement, a threat that wasn't really a threat. My hand came up and my eyes flicked to the side, and the Storage window flared open at the edge of my vision, ready to give me whatever I needed.
It opened.
Just like that. Rows and rows of squares, glowing faintly gold, every one exactly where I'd left it. Peaches. Medical kits. Hair dye remover. The lonely blueprint. A sticky note from Eli and Abigale.
I stared at it.
My body was in a basement, somewhere very far away. Whatever was standing here in this classroom, it wasn't flesh and blood. And Storage had come with me anyway, as easily as my own name.
'It was never in the body,' I realized, slowly. 'It's in me. Wherever I go.'
I didn't know whether that was comforting or terrifying. I set it carefully aside, somewhere I'd keep seeing it, and closed the window before I accidentally pulled out a rifle in front of a frightened little girl.
. . .
"Wait, wait," I said quickly, holding both hands up, palms out. "I'm not going to hurt you. I promise. I'm not a bad ninja. I'm... I'm not even really a ninja. It's just a suit."
The girl peeked at me over the edge of the desk, eyes narrowed.
"That's exactly what a ninja would say," she said.
"...That's fair."
"How did you get in here?" She stood up, fast, planting her fists on her hips, which would have been a lot more intimidating if the top of the teacher's desk hadn't come up past her waist. "Nobody's supposed to be able to get in here! Only Sensei! Arona is a super high-performance AI, and Arona's security is perfect! Absolutely perfect!" She paused. "...Did you hack Arona?"
"No," I said. "I didn't touch anything. I promise. The tablet just turned on. I was trying to close the drawer."
"It just turned on?" She frowned. "By itself?"
"By itself."
"That's impossible." Her frown deepened. "That's impossible, because Arona was asleep. In standby mode! And if Arona was in standby mode, then Arona couldn't have turned it on. So somebody else turned it on, and the only somebody here is you."
"I really didn't..."
"Hold on." She held up one finger. "Arona is checking."
. . .
She closed her eyes.
Above her head, the little blue ring flickered. A faint shimmer of light ran over her, top to bottom, like a scanner. Somewhere in the air around us, very faintly, I heard something that sounded like a hard drive spinning up.
Then her eyes snapped open, and she looked at me, and her expression changed completely.
It wasn't suspicion anymore. It was confusion. Real, deep, honest confusion, the kind that crinkles your whole face up.
"Huh?" she said.
"What?"
"No, that's... huh." She tilted her head to one side. Then to the other side. She stared at me like I was a math problem that kept giving her a different answer every time she checked it. "Arona's records say Arona has never met you. Not once. Not ever. You're not in any of Arona's files. You're not registered. You don't have a fingerprint on record. You're nobody."
"Okay," I said carefully.
"But..." She took a small step toward me through the water. Then another. She was looking up at my face, at my eyes, with her head still tilted. "But it feels like I've met you."
The calm beside me went very still.
"That doesn't make any sense," she went on, mostly to herself. Her hands were twisting together in front of her. "Arona's records are never wrong. Never! ...Almost never. Probably. But it feels like... like when you walk into a room and you know you've been there before, even though you've never been there. Do you know that feeling? It's like that. It's exactly like that. Have we met?"
"No," I said quietly. "We haven't."
"Are you sure?"
I thought about a screen. A little blue-haired girl sitting on the edge of a desk, swinging her legs. Mel-Sensei! Welcome back! Every morning. For years.
"...I'm sure," I said.
She looked at me for a long moment, frowning, her lips pressed together.
"Arona doesn't believe you," she said. "But Arona can't prove it. And that's very annoying."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. It came out wet and shaky, because I still hadn't fully stopped crying, and she noticed. Her frown wobbled.
"Are you... crying?" she asked. "Did Arona make you cry? Arona didn't mean to! Arona was just being suspicious! Being suspicious is part of Arona's security protocols!"
"No, no," I said, wiping my eyes again. "It's not you. Well. It is. But not in a bad way. I'm just... it's been a really long night."
She didn't look convinced. But she stopped backing away.
It reminded me of something. Someone. A girl with blue twin tails and a calculator, walking beside me down a long white hallway at Millennium, saying, quietly, it feels as though I've known you for a long time.
Yuuka had said it once, softly, and then never brought it up again.
This one, I was fairly sure, was going to bring it up every thirty seconds.
. . .
"So," she said, crossing her arms. "If you didn't hack Arona, and you're not Sensei, then who are you, and why are you in Sensei's basement in the middle of the night dressed like a ninja?"
All very good questions. I didn't have a good answer for any of them.
So I did what I always did when I needed a minute to think. I reached for Storage.
'Something nice,' I thought. 'A peace offering. Something sweet. She loves sweets.'
My hand closed on the first thing it found, and I pulled it out without looking.
It was a small carton. Pink. Cold to the touch, beaded with tiny drops of condensation. A cartoon strawberry on the front, smiling.
Strawberry Milk.
I froze.
I hadn't known I had that. I'd scrolled through Storage more times than I could count since the first morning. Peaches, yes. Medical kits, yes. Hair dye remover in absurd quantities, yes. But I'd never noticed this square. And when I glanced at the window, there it was, tucked into a corner I'd never looked at closely: Strawberry Milk x1,742.
One thousand, seven hundred and forty-two cartons of strawberry milk.
I read the number twice. It did not get smaller. That wasn't a snack. That was a supply chain.
Kept by a girl who, apparently, didn't even like strawberry milk, because this body had never once wanted any.
The calm beside me went quiet in a way that felt almost guilty.
'No,' I thought. 'No, no, no. If I give her this, she's going to know. She's going to ask how I knew.'
I shoved it back into Storage so fast my hand blurred, grabbed the next thing, and pulled it out.
A can of peaches.
I held it out to her with what I hoped was a perfectly normal smile.
"Do you," I said, "like... peaches?"
. . .
She didn't look at the peaches.
She was staring at my other hand. The empty one. Where, for about a third of a second, a little pink carton had been.
"...What was that," she said.
"What was what?"
"That!" She pointed. "The pink thing! Just now! It was pink, and it had a strawberry on it, and it was in your hand, and then it WASN'T in your hand!"
"I don't know what you..."
"That was strawberry milk!" Her eyes had gone enormous. They were practically sparkling. "That was STRAWBERRY MILK! Arona saw it! Arona saw it with Arona's own super high-performance eyes! Give it back!"
"It's not yours to give back..."
"Give it to Arona anyway!"
I looked at her. At her shining eyes and her hands clasped together in front of her chest and her whole small body leaning toward me like a sunflower toward the sun.
I sighed. I put the peaches back in Storage, took out the strawberry milk, and handed it over.
She took it in both hands like it was made of glass. She stuck the little straw in with great ceremony. She took one long sip.
Then her whole face melted, and the ring over her head popped, very softly, into a little crown of floating pink hearts.
"Mmmmmmn," she said, with her eyes closed. "That's... that's the good kind. That's the really good kind."
The calm beside me made a sound I'd never heard it make. Something very small and very soft, like someone smiling with their whole chest.
. . .
It lasted about five seconds.
Then her eyes snapped open over the top of the carton, sharp and suspicious again. The hearts over her head flickered, wavered and turned into a ring of small orange spikes, which on anyone else would have been very threatening.
"Wait," she said, around the straw. "How did you know Arona likes strawberry milk?"
'There it is.'
"I didn't," I said.
"You did! You pulled it out first! Before the peaches! And then you put it back really fast, like you didn't want Arona to see!" She took another sip, still glaring. "That's very suspicious behavior. That's suspicious ninja behavior."
My mind raced.
'Think. Think, Mel. You're an office worker. You've lied your way out of plenty of meetings. You can lie your way out of this.'
My eyes went around the classroom, desperately. Tipped chairs. Empty window frames. Water. The teacher's desk.
And there, half hidden under the edge of the desk, floating gently in the water near where she'd been sleeping, was something small, and pink, and crumpled.
An empty strawberry milk carton.
I could have kissed it.
"That," I said, pointing at it with enormous confidence. "I saw that. When I came in. Right next to you, while you were asleep. I figured anyone who falls asleep next to an empty carton of strawberry milk probably likes strawberry milk."
She looked down at the empty carton.
She looked back up at me.
She looked down at the empty carton again.
"...Oh," she said. "Oh! That's... Arona must have dropped that." She went a little pink. "Arona was not drinking strawberry milk during standby mode. That carton is from... a long time ago. Before."
She looked at me again, slowly.
"That's actually very good detective work," she admitted.
"Thank you," I said, and tried very hard not to collapse with relief.
She bought it.
She actually bought it.
The calm beside me was doing something that, if it had had a face, would have been helpless laughter.
. . .
Somewhere around the bottom of the carton, she remembered she'd never gotten an answer to her question.
"You still didn't say who you are," she said, slurping the last of it. "Arona told you Arona's name. Well. Arona said Arona a lot. So you probably figured it out. But you didn't tell Arona yours."
I opened my mouth.
And stopped.
Last time I'd stood in front of someone and been asked my name, it had been in a little apartment over a noodle shop, with a frightened girl in a helmet looking up at me. I'd hesitated then, too. Because once you tell someone your name, you can't take it back.
But this was different. This wasn't just someone.
'If I tell her my name,' I thought, 'Sensei's going to be standing right here someday. And she's going to know it.'
The calm beside me waited. Patient. Trembling, a little.
So I did the only thing that felt right. I reached up, hooked my fingers into the edge of the mask, still damp from crying, and pulled it down.
Abigale had learned, a little at a time, to leave her helmet on the hook by the door when I was around. Eli had pulled her mask down the rest of the way herself, the night she signed. That was how it worked, with the people who mattered. Sooner or later, you showed them your face.
Arona's eyes went over it slowly. My nose. My mouth. My gold eyes, probably still red around the edges. Her head tilted, the way it had before, and her lips moved without making any sound, like someone checking a face against a list in their head.
"Arona has definitely seen that face before," she said slowly. Then, immediately: "Arona has definitely NOT seen that face before. Arona has no records of that face." She frowned harder. "Arona's face recognition is having a very confusing day."
"Mel," I said softly. "My name's Mel."
. . .
"Mel," she repeated.
She said it slowly, like she was tasting it. Turning it over. Her head tilted again.
"Mel," she said again. "Mel..."
Something was happening in her face. I saw it start, the way you see a word on the tip of someone's tongue. Her lips were already shaping the next sound before she'd decided to make it.
"Mel-..." she said.
And stopped.
Her mouth was still open. Her eyes had gone wide and puzzled and a little bit lost, as if she'd reached for something on a shelf she'd known was there her whole life, and closed her hand on nothing at all.
She didn't say the rest.
But I heard it anyway. I'd heard it every single morning for years, in a bright, cheerful voice, from a little girl on a phone screen.
Mel-Sensei.
My breath stopped. Beside me, the calm stopped too. Neither of us moved. Neither of us breathed. For one long, endless second, the whole bright, broken classroom was absolutely silent except for the water.
Then she shook her head, hard, like someone shaking water out of her ears.
"...Mel," she said again, firmly. Just that. "That's a nice name. That's a short name. It's very efficient." She frowned. "Arona doesn't know why Arona almost said something else after it. That's weird. Arona's language processing is perfect."
"It's okay," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "It's a short name. People always want to add something to it."
"Hmm," she said, still frowning at nothing.
Then she held out her hand, very formally, like she'd seen it done in a business meeting.
"Arona," she said. "Super high-performance AI and system manager of the Shittim Chest. It's nice to meet you, Mel."
I took her hand. It was small and warm and completely real.
"It's nice to meet you too, Arona," I said.
And I meant it more than I'd meant anything in my life.
. . .
We sat on the edge of the teacher's desk after that, side by side, with our feet dangling over the water. She'd decided I probably wasn't dangerous, on account of the strawberry milk. I'd decided my legs weren't going to hold me up much longer anyway.
"So," Arona said, swinging her feet. "Why ARE you in Sensei's basement?"
I thought about how to answer that. All the true answers sounded insane. I came from another world where you were a character in a game.I've been preparing for weeks for a man who hasn't arrived yet.My soul has a filing cabinet in it and something inside me just cried over your umbrella.
"I'm a helper," I said finally.
"A helper?"
"A secret one." I looked out at the sky through the empty window frames. "Something bad happened in Kivotos. Someone important disappeared. And things are going to get worse for a while. But someone's coming to help. Your Sensei. And I want to help him help. Quietly. From the shadows. Without anyone knowing I'm there."
Arona stared at me.
"A secret helper," she breathed. "Like a superhero."
"I wouldn't say superhero..."
"A SUPERHERO," Arona said, with total conviction. "A ninja superhero. Arona has heard of these. Arona has seen documentaries."
"I don't think those were documentaries."
"They were very convincing documentaries."
. . .
"Sensei's coming, then?" she asked, a little later. Her feet had stopped swinging. "For sure?"
She said it very lightly. Like it didn't matter. Like she was just checking the weather.
It didn't sound light at all. It sounded like a forecast that had promised clear skies all day, right up until the next minute, when it announced a typhoon.
"Arona's been waiting," she went on, looking down at the water. "Arona's supposed to wait. That's Arona's job. Arona's supposed to be here when Sensei comes, and help Sensei, and Arona's very, very good at waiting." She was quiet for a moment. Above her, the little blue ring had gone darker, and something hung from the bottom of it, slow and heavy, like a single drop of water that hadn't decided to fall yet. "But Arona doesn't know how long. Nobody told Arona how long."
I looked at her. A small girl in a broken classroom in the middle of an endless sky, waiting for someone she'd never met.
I knew exactly how she felt.
"He's coming," I said. "I promise."
"How do you know?"
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. There was no answer I could give her that wouldn't open a dozen more questions.
"I just do," I said finally. "Same way you knew you'd met me."
Arona thought about that for a long moment. Then she nodded, slowly, as if that made perfect sense.
"Okay," she said. "Arona believes you."
. . .
"Can I ask you a favor?" I said.
Arona perked up immediately. "A favor for a superhero?"
"Sure. Let's go with that." I took a breath. "Don't tell anyone I was here. Not the General Student Council. Not anyone. Not even Sensei."
Her face fell. "Not even Sensei?"
"Not yet," I said. "Someday, maybe. But a secret helper isn't very secret if everybody knows about her. If people find out I'm watching over things, they'll start looking for me. And then I won't be able to help anymore."
Arona frowned hard, swinging her feet. "Arona isn't supposed to keep secrets from Sensei. Arona is Sensei's system manager. That's the whole point of Arona."
"I know," I said. "So let's make a deal."
She perked up instantly. "A deal?"
"You keep our meeting a secret," I said. "And in exchange, I'll help Sensei. As much as I possibly can. Every single time he needs it. Even when he doesn't know it's me."
I'd been going to do that anyway. I would have done it if she'd told everyone in Kivotos. But she didn't need to know that.
Arona considered this with enormous seriousness.
"That's a very good deal," she said slowly. "That's a very, very good deal for Sensei."
"It is."
"And Arona just has to keep a secret?"
"Just one."
"Arona is SO good at secrets," Arona said, beaming. "Arona is the best at secrets. Deal!" Her halo burst into a spray of bright green stars.
She held out her hand again. We shook on it.
I had never, in my entire life, been less sure that someone was going to keep a secret. And somehow, I didn't mind at all.
. . .
"Ooh! Ooh!" Arona bounced on the edge of the desk. "But if Mel is a secret helper, and Arona is helping a secret helper, then Arona needs a way to talk to Mel! In case Sensei needs secret help! Or in case Arona does!"
"I... guess that makes sense?"
"Does Mel have a phone?"
I pulled the turtle phone out of Storage. I'd had it less than two days. It still only had one number saved in it: the noodle shop's landline, so Eli could yell at me if I was late. And it wasn't going to last long before I had to get another.
"I have a phone," I said.
"Give Arona the number!"
I told her.
And even as I said it, I knew it wouldn't stay her number for long. Burner phones don't last. That's the whole point of them. Sooner or later this one would go into a bucket of water, and I'd go back to the turtle, and the number would change. And then I'd have to send her the new one. And the one after that. And the one after that. Every single time.
'Unless,' a thought whispered, 'you build your own.'
A phone nobody could trace, because nobody else in Kivotos had ever made one like it. My hands liked that idea a great deal.
I added it to the Planning Board in my head. NEW PHONE (MY OWN). Right under NEW PHONE. (Done. A turtle.)
Arona closed her eyes, and her halo flickered, and there was that faint hard-drive whir in the air again.
"Saved," she said. Then she opened her eyes, and her face went very serious, the way small kids' faces go serious when they're about to do something very important. "Arona is putting it somewhere special. Somewhere deep. The deepest, hardest-to-get-to part of the whole Shittim Chest. Where nobody else can look. Not the General Student Council. Not hackers. Not anybody." She hesitated. "Not even Sensei. Because it's a secret. And Arona promised."
"Only you and me?" I asked.
"Only Arona and Mel," she said firmly.
She stared down at the water for a moment, at her own reflection.
"Arona's never had a number saved there before," she said quietly. "Arona's never had anybody to save. Just Sensei. And Sensei isn't here yet."
She looked up at me.
"Does that make Mel Arona's friend?" she asked. "Arona's first friend?"
Beside me, the calm felt like something cracking open.
"Yeah," I said. My voice wobbled. I let it. "Yeah. I'd like that."
Arona grinned so wide her whole face scrunched up, and her halo exploded into pink hearts. Not a little crown of them, this time. Dozens. They spilled out and up and around her head, bobbing in the air like balloons.
"Arona has a FRIEND," she announced to the sky.
The sky didn't answer. But it looked, I thought, a little bluer. And it had a lot more hearts in it.
. . .
"Arona?" I said, later. "Can I ask you something? Before I go?"
"Mm-hm."
"The tablet. It turned on by itself. You said you were asleep. Do you know why it happened?"
Arona's face scrunched up again.
"Arona checked," she said. "Arona checked when Mel first got here. There's a log entry. There's always a log entry when the Chest wakes up. It says who turned it on, and when, and why." She frowned. "But this one is weird."
"Weird how?"
She closed her eyes. The air shimmered in front of her, and a little floating panel appeared in it, glowing blue, covered in tiny lines of text. Most of them were ordinary. Dates. Times. STANDBY.STANDBY.STANDBY.
And at the very bottom, the newest line.
ACTIVATION: [ ##&%!@?? ]. USER: [ ::UNREADABLE:: ]. REASON: [ ?]
The letters crawled. They twisted and blurred under my eyes the same way the symbols had crawled over the AL-1S blueprint in the factory. As if something had pressed its hand over the page.
"Arona can't read it," Arona said, sounding genuinely troubled. "Arona can read everything. But Arona can't read that."
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I filed it next to the footprints, and the stairs, and the strawberry milk, and the thing beside me that wasn't calm anymore. All of it, at arm's length. Every piece.
"It's okay," I told her. "We'll figure it out."
"Together?"
"Together."
. . .
"You should go," Arona said eventually. She sounded reluctant about it. "Your body's still outside, you know. Just standing there. It's probably getting stiff."
"My body's... still outside?"
"Of course!" She looked at me like I'd asked if water was wet. "The Shittim Chest is an interface! Only the you part comes inside. The rest of you stays out there and stares at the screen. Sensei will do it too. It's very normal." She paused. "Probably it's a little weird to watch."
I imagined it. Me, in a ninja suit, standing frozen in a dark basement in front of an open drawer, staring at a tablet like a sleepwalker.
'Thank goodness I put sensors on every door,' I thought. 'And thank goodness none of them are in that room.'
"How do I leave?" I asked.
"Just blink," Arona said. "Like waking up. Close your eyes and mean it."
I slid down off the edge of the desk, into the water. Arona hopped down after me and went to stand by the teacher's desk, next to her umbrella. She picked it up and held it in both hands, the way you'd hold something to keep your hands busy.
"Mel," she said. "Will you come back?"
"Someday," I said. "If I can."
"Promise?"
I looked at her. The little blue ring over her head. The umbrella in her hands. The empty classroom in the middle of the sky, where she'd been waiting all by herself.
"I promise," I said.
She smiled. A small smile. A real one.
"Then..." She took a breath, and her mouth opened, and the words started to come out before she'd decided on them. "Welcome b-..."
She stopped.
She blinked. She looked very confused.
"...Bye!" she said quickly instead. "Bye, Mel! Arona means bye!"
I didn't trust my voice. So I just smiled at her, and lifted my hand, and closed my eyes.
And meant it.
---
I blinked.
Then I blinked again, and I was back.
. . .
The basement was cold and dark and smelled like fresh concrete. My legs were stiff. My neck ached from looking down. My hand was still raised a little above the open drawer, exactly where I'd left it, and the tablet's screen under it was already fading, from blue to gray to black.
Then it was just a tablet again. Slim. Plain. A little scuffed at the corners.
I checked the turtle phone. Four minutes had passed since I'd opened the drawer.
Four minutes.
It had felt like hours.
I stood there and breathed for a while. My hands were steady again. The calm was back where it belonged, underneath, inside, part of my hands and my feet and my breathing.
But it didn't feel the same.
It didn't feel like the body's anymore. It didn't feel like something I'd inherited along with the hands and the reflexes and the stash of strawberry milk. It felt like me. A part of me I'd only just met. Still trembling, a little, deep down, the way you tremble after you've cried until you're empty.
'Hey,' I told it quietly. 'You okay?'
Nothing. No words. Just the faint, steady weight of it.
And then it settled against me, a little, the way a tired kid leans against your side.
. . .
I closed the drawer, very gently.
I locked the door behind me with the third kind of lock pick, and checked it twice.
Then I walked back down the corridor beside the footprints, not on them, and climbed the stairs, and stepped around the third stair from the bottom of the flight without thinking about it, and went out the roof the same way I'd come in.
---
The sky was going gray when I got back to the noodle shop.
I came in the back door as quietly as I could. I didn't need to bother. Eli and Abigale were both asleep at the counter, side by side, Eli with her head on her folded arms and Abigale sitting bolt upright with her rifle across her knees and her chin on her chest. There were two cold cups of tea in front of them, and a third one at the empty stool next to Abigale's, waiting.
I put a blanket over each of them from Storage. Abigale's hand twitched on the rifle when the blanket touched her shoulders. Then it relaxed.
I went into the back room.
The Planning Board was still lying on the floor where I'd left it, WHAT NOW (AGAIN) across the top and SENSEI circled three times in the middle. Under it, in small neat letters: FIRST: SCHALE. GO LOOK.
I picked up the marker.
Next to it, I wrote: CHECKED.
Then, underneath that, I wrote: ARONA.
And then I stopped, with the marker hovering over the cardboard, because I didn't know what came after it. A friend. A secret. A promise. A little girl in a broken classroom, waiting, who'd almost called me something she couldn't remember.
I left it like that. ARONA, and then nothing.
Not shelved. Not finished. Just there, where I'd see it every single morning.
. . .
I was halfway to the cot when the turtle phone buzzed in my pocket.
I stared at it.
Only two people in the world had this number. One of them was asleep at the counter, snoring. The other one lived inside a tablet in a basement across the city.
I pulled it out.
One new message. From a number that wasn't really a number at all, just a long string of symbols that shifted slightly every time I blinked.
Testing! Testing! This is Arona! Is this secret enough? :)
And then, a second later:
Also Arona was not totally honest. Arona does not actually remember where the strawberry milk carton came from. But it was very good strawberry milk. Do not tell anybody.
And then, a second after that:
Goodnight, Mel. Arona is glad you're Arona's friend.
I read them all twice. Then I looked at the string of symbols at the top of the screen, shifting and flickering, a number that wasn't a number, coming from somewhere no phone company in Kivotos had ever heard of.
And I looked at the phone itself. Plain. Black. Prepaid. Bought from a turtle. The kind of thing you use for a while and then drop in a bucket.
It didn't feel right. Not for this. Not for her.
I turned around, went back to the Planning Board, and picked up the marker again.
Under NEW PHONE. (Done. A turtle.), I'd been planning to write NEW PHONE (MY OWN), the line I'd added in my head back in the classroom.
It wasn't big enough anymore.
Instead, I wrote:
EXCLUSIVE PHONES.
And underlined it.
Not just one for me. A whole set. Built by hand, from scratch, out of parts nobody could trace to anywhere. Phones that didn't belong to any network in Kivotos, didn't talk to any tower, didn't show up on anybody's records. Phones that only talked to each other.
Underneath it, I started a list.
ME.
CHRIS. (Kotori keeps the old one. This one is for family.)
ELI.
ABIGALE.
And then, after a moment:
EVERYONE AFTER.
Every identity I hadn't made yet. Every double. Every sister, if that's what they turned out to be. And anyone else who ended up close enough to me that they needed a way to call for help that nobody else could hear.
I looked at the list for a while. Then I added one more line at the bottom, small, next to a little doodle of an umbrella.
ARONA: ALREADY HAS ONE. (SOMEHOW.)
I capped the marker.
---
-Christina POV-
I hadn't meant to wake up.
I'd heard the back door, that was all. Very faintly, from upstairs. The soft click it made when someone was trying very hard not to make it click. And then nothing, for a long time. And I'd lain there in the gray dark, listening, until I couldn't anymore.
So I came down the stairs in my socks, very quietly, the way she would have.
The back room door was open a crack. There was a lamp on inside.
I looked in.
Mel was kneeling on the floor in front of the Planning Board, still in the black suit, with her mask pulled down around her neck and her long gold braid hanging over one shoulder. Her eyes were red. She'd been crying. She was smiling, too, a little, at the phone in her hand, like someone had just told her something wonderful and something sad at the same time.
She didn't see me. She was writing.
. . .
I'd seen the board before. I'd seen it every day since I woke up. WHAT NOW (AGAIN). The schools. SENSEI, circled three times. I knew what most of it meant, because some of it had been my plan, too, once, back when I was her.
But I'd never seen the new part.
EXCLUSIVE PHONES. Underlined.
ME.
CHRIS. (Kotori keeps the old one. This one is for family.)
For family.
I read it three times, standing in the dark in my socks.
ELI. ABIGALE. And then EVERYONE AFTER, which I understood immediately, because I knew how she thought. I knew what TRINITY meant on the other side of the board, and GEHENNA, and DOUBLES: HOW? I knew there'd be more of us. More girls who'd wake up on a workbench someday with memories that were theirs and weren't, looking up at the same face I'd looked up at.
She was going to build all of them phones. By hand. So none of us would ever be alone without a way to call her.
She was going to do all of it, I realized. The schools. The doubles. The phones. The base. Sensei. All of it. By herself, if she had to. Until she cried on the floor at dawn in a ninja suit.
. . .
I didn't go in.
I just stood there in the doorway, and I made a promise. Not out loud. Not on any board. Just to myself, quietly, in the part of me that I was fairly sure was mine.
'I'll help.'
Not because she asked. She hadn't. She probably never would. But she was my sister, and my creator, and the one who'd been me before I was me. And there were going to be other girls someday who'd need someone to show them where the cafeteria was and which vending machines were cursed.
I was in the Engineering Department. I sat next to the scrap bins every single day. Utaha threw out things other clubs would kill for, and Hibiki had already told me, twice now, exactly what I needed to do if I wanted any of it.
Ask next time.
I would. I'd ask for everything. Servos. Circuit boards. Lenses the size of a grain of rice. Whatever Mel needed, before she even knew she needed it. And if Hibiki wanted to know what it was all for, she could keep wondering.
I smiled a little, in the dark. A small, sly smile. I knew whose it was.
Then I went back upstairs, very quietly, before she could hear me, the way she would have.
---
-Melissa POV-
I sat down on the edge of the cot, with the phone in both hands, and the gray light coming in under the back door, and the calm leaning quietly against my side.
And for the first time in a very long time, I laughed until I cried, and didn't mind which one it was.