03 July 1947
Roswell, New Mexico at night
Town lights blink like tired eyes, the neon sign buzzes over a dark diner, the moths bump the glass and keep bumping it like they forgot how to land.
Lys Amari moves in the shadow of the buildings her hat low and the collar up.
A strip of cloth wraps her throat and hides the line of her jaw.
Sunglasses at night look strange, but not as strange as her real eyes.
Nyro walks one step behind her, coat too big on his narrow shoulders and Zia is the quiet shape at her right, hands deep in pockets, mouth set.
The hum is low now, the field sits soft in their teeth and the ring is miles away, asleep in scrub. Here, the air smells like oil and dust and bread.
"Two hours before the hum climbs again" Nyro whispers, looking at a small device cupped in his palm. It is no one's business but theirs.
It looks like a pocket watch that forgot what time is.
"We won't need two" Lys says.
They turn down a side street.
A sign hangs over a small shop door :
Cline Radio & Records : Repairs — Recording — Tubes — Needles
The glass front shows a row of radios on a shelf, their dials dark and a record player sits in the window with a paper sign: 78s Cut Here.
"Here" Lys says.
They stand a moment and listen, the town is quiet, but they never trust quiet, the cars in the distance.
A train far away with a low, slow horn, a dog, a screen door creak.
Lys knocks.
Nothing.
She knocks again first soft then harder.
A light comes on in the back room and a man in a white undershirt appears, hair mussed, eyes half closed. He looks through the glass and does the first thing most people do when they see their outlines, he tries to make them make sense.
He opens the door but keeps it tight on the chain.
"We're closed" he says.
"We'll pay" Lys says.
Her voice is low and even, she keeps her hands where he can see them."We need one record, Just one, It won't take long."
The man squints "You folks sick?"
"Dust fever" Lys says.
It is a lie with a little truth.
"We keep wrapped up at night."
He looks at her hat, her glasses, the scarf, then he looks at Nyro's gloves then at Zia, who does not look back.
"I don't cut at night" he says "Come back tomorrow."
"We can't" Lys says, she takes out a small roll of bills from a pocket sewn into the inside of her coat, the bills are old but real, they planned for this"Please."
He looks at the money then he looks at her face again, which is mostly not a face then he opens the chain and lets them in.
"Ten minutes" he says "No more."
The shop smells like hot dust and lacquer and the last customer's smoke.
Radios sit open on benches with their backs off, tubes like small glass bones, a cutting lathe sits on a low table, arm up, blank lacquer disc waiting on the platter.
"What do you need recorded?" he asks.
"A message" Lys says "Spoken and clean."
He nods then he moves like a man who has done this a thousand times, he checks the stylus, checks the weight then switches on the motor. The platter turns and the room fills with a soft new hum.
"Stand here" he says, pointing to a simple mic. "Talk straight at it, slow and clear, no shouting."
Lys stands at the mic and Zia stands at her shoulder meanwhile Nyro flips the sign on the door to CLOSED and pulls the blind down to the bottom.
"Ready" the man says. "It'll go right to the lacquer, no edits, you get what you say."
Lys takes a breath.
Her voice through the shop speaker sounds like it came from far away last night and found a path to here, the man's eyes flick to the woofer like he felt it in his chest.
"We are people" Lys says "We are you."
Zia's hand is on the small of her back, it is not for balance, it is for courage, which needs a place to stand.
"Wait fourteen minutes after every light you see" Lys says. "Do not chase, Do not shoot, Just watch, Just listen, it is for your safety and ours."
The man glances up at that.
His mouth pulls tight like he bit his lip and didn't mean to.
"Remember this word" Lys says "Revival."
She stops.
She looks at Nyro.
He nods once.
She says the numbers the way Eric said them in a room she can't see, in a year she can barely hold in her head.
"Thirty‑three point three nine four. One zero four point five two three."
The stylus cuts the groove in wider rings, the sound of it is a soft scratch that sits under her words like sand under rain.
"We came to warn" Lys says "We do not bring war."
She steps back. The man lifts the arm and the platter keeps spinning down until it stops.
"What is this for?" he asks.
"For someone who will come for it" Lys says.
He looks at her, eyebrows up. "You folks from the base?"
"We're from the desert" Nyro says, It is not an answer and not a lie.
The man lowers the playback needle onto the edge, the speaker crackles, the words come back thin and scratchy but clear.
We are people.
We are you.
Wait fourteen minutes…
Goosebumps rise on Nyro's arms under the gloves, Zia looks down at the floor and then back up.
The man turns the volume down without thinking and licks his lips like his mouth went dry.
"You want a sleeve?" he asks, practical because practical is safe.
"Yes" Lys says "And a label."
He slides the warm disc into a paper sleeve then he places it on the counter and he puts a small white circle sticker in front of Lys and a fountain pen.
Lys thinks of the words that fit and the words that don't, She tries to keep it simple so she writes in block letters.
HOLD ROSWELL
FOR WHITAKER
14 MINUTES
Zia takes the pen and draws a small circle and writes 14 inside it and she presses the pen deeper for the number to the point where it bleeds through a little, it looks true.
The man watches her hand thank god he is a man who knows when not to ask, he just nods once.
"That'll be five" he says, voice back in the ordinary world.
Lys peels bills, she puts them on the counter and adds one more and sets her hand on it for a second.
"Thank you" she says.
He looks at the money then looks at her and nods again.
As they turn to go, he says "Which station is that? I'd like to tune it."
Lys pauses with her hand on the door.
"You can't" she says. "It isn't a station, it's a window."
He frowns at that and then smiles because it sounds like nonsense, which is easier to put away.
They step into the alley and the night wraps around them, the hum touches their skin and then pulls back like a tide.
Zia holds the sleeve to her chest with both hands. "Next" she says.
"The bank" Lys says.
Desert Trust sits on the corner of Main and a smaller street, white stone steps, two columns. A clock above the door that keeps the right time in big black numbers, the door is locked, a night light burns in the lobby and a small brass slot to the right reads NIGHT DEPOSIT.
Nyro studies the slot.
"Too small" he says, nodding at the disc.
"We wait" Lys says. "We come back at first light."
They don't sleep, they don't sit all they do is walk the town in slow circles, counting windows and doors and corners. They keep to shade and kiss the edge of light and step back again. Two men leave a bar singing low and bad, a woman with her hair in a scarf smokes on a porch and watches them and then looks away because she does not want to find a story at this hour.
They come back when the sky is the color of old paper, the clock says 7:52 and the door says OPEN at 8:00.
An older man with a set of keys arrives at 7:58.
He glances at them and glances again then he puts the key in the lock and pushes the door and holds it there with a polite little angle, like he does this for anyone within reach.
"Morning" he says.
"Morning" Lys says, and they step inside.
The bank smells like ink and leather and the way paper smells when it knows it will be touched a lot. A woman at a desk writes in a big book with careful loops and a man in a tie counts money with his thumbs while another man wipes glass on a case like he wants it to know he sees it.
"Safe deposit?" Lys says to the first person who looks up.
The woman points with a pen toward a side door. "Mr. Barnes will help you" she says without looking long at their faces because looking long is rude and she was raised right.
Mr. Barnes is tall and thin and has a watch on a chain that he checks every few minutes like it gives him comfort. He looks at the three of them and sees the hats, the gloves, the glasses, the dust.
He does not like it but he likes money more.
"Yes?" he says.
"We need a box" Lys says.
She keeps her voice mild and her words small.
"Today."
He clears his throat. "We have boxes available, there's a rental fee, identification?"
Lys slides an envelope across his desk.
It has cash inside and a card she wrote in the alley on Zia's back.
The name on the card is clear and steady.
REVIVAL MUTUAL
He reads it, his mouth does a small thing at the corner like he forgot to smile eighty times and now it might come back by surprise.
"What kind of mutual is that?" he asks, not because he needs to know but because he needs to say something while he weighs the envelope in his palm.
"The kind that shares when it can" Lys says.
He nods as if that is a sensible answer and not a riddle.
He stands and opens the gate at the end of the counter and leads them down a short hall to a heavy door.
He unlocks it with a key that is too big by modern standards and just right for this one and swings it open. Inside is a room with a table and a wall of small doors with numbers.
They shine like a hundred small promises.
He picks one.
"Three twelve" he says "Good number."
He opens it with the bank's key and pulls the small steel drawer out and sets it on the table.
"You sign here" he says, placing a card in front of Lys with a line at the bottom. He looks at her gloves and does not comment.
She signs and writes block letters, not cursive.
He frowns and then lets it pass then he gives her a small brass key on a ring. T
he number 312 is stamped into it.
She looks at the key. It is the kind of key that keeps a door for a long time.
"Do you need a private minute?" Barnes asks, eyes on the polite line he is supposed to say.
"Yes" Lys says.
He leaves the room.
Nyro breathes out "That was too easy" he says.
"Don't ask for hard" Zia says, and sets the paper sleeve on the table like it weighs more than paper should.
Lys opens the drawer, It is empty and cold. She slides the disc in and lays it flat and adds a folded paper with three lines in block letters:
FOR WHITAKER ROSWELL
33.394 / 104.523
WAIT 14 MINUTES
She touches the edge of the disc with two fingers like a promise then closes the drawer and pushes it in.
Barnes comes back.
He locks the box with the bank key and looks at Lys's hand holding the customer key, he does not ask why she will not take off her glove to tuck it in a pocket.
"Keep that safe" he says. "We don't keep spares on this side."
Lys nods.
She can feel the weight of the key through the glove. It bites into the leather just a little.
They step into the lobby, people have started to fill the line, a baby makes a soft sound like it is practicing a cry, a man coughs into his hat.
As they reach the door, a deputy walks in. Carl Whitaker.
He holds the door for them, he looks tired, he looks like he didn't sleep, he looks like a man who hears a word in the wind and can't tell anyone without breaking something.
Lys keeps her head down.
Nyro turns a fraction.
Zia looks at the floor.
Carl steps past them and does not know his future passes an inch from his shoulder with a key in her glove.
The street is bright now, the sun is up. They stand under the bank awning in the thin strip of shade and say nothing for a long minute.
Lys holds up the key.
It gleams.
"Who gets it?" Nyro asks.
"Not us" Lys says.
She looks down Main toward the sheriff's office. "Not yet, not today. We will place it when the air is quiet and no one is watching the door."
"And if we fade before we do?" Nyro asks. He says it like he is not trying to say it.
"We won't" Zia says. It is a promise to herself, it is a promise to a woman who isn't born yet holding a shoebox in a small kitchen, it is a promise to a man under a dome who says numbers like prayers.
Lys slides the key into an inner pocket separate from the one with money and taps it once with two fingers to mark where it is in her mind then turns her face toward the alley.
"Back to the ring Keanu is probably worried about us " she says. "We did what we came to do."
They move through the town the way they came, edges and shadows, soft feet and quiet hands.
The shop signs swap OPEN for CLOSED.
The day wakes and starts its lists, the three of them walk against it like a memory moving backward.
They pass Cline Radio & Records.
The man is behind the counter, already working a screwdriver into a radio back, he looks up and sees them and gives the smallest nod.
Lys nods back.
They walk out of town and into scrub, the hum grows as the air gets thinner of people and thicker of heat.
A grasshopper snaps past their feet, Zia jumps and then laughs once at herself, a soft laugh like she forgot how and remembered.
At the ridge, Lys stops.
She looks back at the line of town and says the words out loud, simple, the way she will say them every time until they do not need to be said.
"We are people" she says. "We are you."
Nyro lifts his hand, palm out toward the sky. "Wait fourteen" he says.
Zia touches the pocket where the key sits and nods. "Don't chase" she says "Just watch."
They go down the far side of the ridge where the ring sleeps.
The air tastes like iron again. The field brushes the edge of their skin.
Lys thinks of a man with a notebook, thinks of a woman with a wall clock that skips one beat and keeps time, thinks of a word cut into a groove that will wait in a box for a long time without getting bored.
She puts her hand flat on the skin of the ring. It is cool, warms under her palm.
"Borrowed voices" she says, and smiles without showing her teeth. "We leave them, and they use them, and then we are all less alone."
Nyro nods.
Zia closes her eyes for a breath.
The ring hums a little louder.
They have work to do.