[December 31, 2042]

Christmas had come and gone.

For Mel, Cal had gotten an old DVD of her favorite movie (The Screaming Walls of Chateau d’Orloa), which they watched that night under a wool blanket while he sipped hot cocoa. For Ram, an omnibus. For Aina, a promise he would play her in chess at least once every day until the new year. For Bridget, a polish for the buttons of her uniform, which she had requested. He had even taken the time to make a “Merry Christmas” card for Isaac Frost, which he had somewhat shyly given his employer when Isaac stopped by the mansion on the 26th.

Cal’s present for Ellie, a model rocket ship he had found for cheap at an oddity shop, had gone unopened on his desk. He had barely even seen her recently. She was absent from meals, most unusually. Whenever she was home, she was hauled up in her room. She zoomed from place to place without stopping. It was disturbing to Cal, this change of pace, like he was watching someone he knew slip away out of sight without being able to prevent it. He found he missed her presence and easy smile, and the way she always seemed to be super happy to eat the food he cooked.

Therefore, at that moment, it came as a huge surprise when Cal ran into Ellie outside the mansion gate. He had been taking a trash bag from the kitchen to the can on the road, as he often did every other day or so. Six people (five of whom were corporeal) living in the same house generated quite a lot of waste, as it turns out. When Cal had slung the bag of trash in one clean movement over his shoulder into the opened can, with a little more strength than one might have been expected from his slim frame, he turned and almost jumped out of his skin.

Ellie was standing behind him, her body illuminated by the soft blue light of the street, dressed in an oversized yellow jacket and big sneakers. She was smiling. “Yo, boss,” she said casually.

“Jesus,” Cal muttered, tapping his chest. “Hey, Ellie. I thought you were-”

He stopped, shaking his head.

“What?” Ellie tilted her head, and then a glint of understanding came into her eyes. “Oooh, did you think I was Roxy?”

“You know about her?”

Ellie shrugged, the fabric of her large jacket bending. “Sort of. Pale girl with white hair, kind of a hottie? Yeah, I’ve come across her a few times. You know how I’m always out and about at night?”

“More so recently than usual,” said Cal.

Ellie's smile faltered for a moment, but she shook her head, ignoring this jab. “You look thin.”

Cal rubbed his hands together. He had worn his coat when he went outside, but the winter air still stung his fingers. “What?”

“Remember when we went out to eat together, um, mid-October…ish? You’re thinner than you were back then.”

“I see.” Cal didn’t know how to respond to this comment. He was now facing Ellie directly and looking into her dark eyes, which were playful as usual, but undoubtedly had an aspect of weariness in them.

She looks tired, he thought to himself, tired and quite stressed.

They stood there, a few steps from one another, not saying anything. Ellie was shifting her weight slowly from foot to foot, playing with the braids of her black hair, which had grown long enough to reach her waist. Typically, Ellie had no issue with saying what came to mind, but now she looked uneasy.

Cal decided to broach the silence for her sake. “So, what’s going on? Something’s going on, isn’t it?”

Ellie entangled a braid around her finger. “Nothing gets past you, huh?”

She said this like she resented it.

“I’ve barely seen you since Christmas, it wasn’t exactly subtle. The other girls are worried, too.”

“They’re worried because you’re worried, you mean.” Ellie sighed, letting go of her hair to rub her nose. “Sorry, no, that’s not what I want to say. I mean… Can I ask you a favor?”

“Of course.”

“A weird favor.”

“Honestly, I’d be more surprised if it wasn’t.”

Ellie smiled again, but she still seemed unsatisfied. “I’m serious.”

Cal raised an eyebrow. “As am I. I’m always serious. You’ve commented on that before, I believe.”

“Okay, yeah, yeah, boss.” Ellie’s humor had returned, indicated by her voice regaining some levity. “Can you follow me? For a bit. I mean not for a bit, for a while?”

Cal considered this. “It’s almost seven. Where would we be going?”

“I’d rather explain everything when we get there.”

He clicked his tongue. “I think Mel wants to watch a movie together tonight.”

Ellie made a half-exasperated face. “She wants to watch a movie with you every night! The least she can do is expand her genre base…” She trailed off, then spoke with a firm voice. “Cal, I’m really asking here.”

Cal took a look at the illuminated windows of Otter Manor, visible on top of the hill that lay behind the gate, and then looked at Ellie. Her face seemed to contain his answer.

“Okay,” he said briskly, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Lead the way.”

Ellie let out a breath she had been holding and then did the same with her own hands. “You know, that’s your best quality, boss,” she said, winking as she spun on her heel to begin walking. “You always know the best time to stop asking questions. Paired with your cooking skills, that makes you a prime candidate to be a stay-at-home dad for some lucky lady!”

“Can we go now, or do you want to keep going with the clever remarks?”

“Yeah, dude, calm down, we’re going.”

They walked in relative quiet for about twenty minutes, across the clean, hushed streets of Extremis City, not towards the central district, but outward towards the outskirts where the buildings became more spread out and low, where the myriad chromatic glow of skyscraper tall neon signs were replaced by white and blue street lights that gently illuminated the cold asphalt and cement. It was very cold. Neither Cal nor Ellie said much, though the girl did sometimes make a passing remark about something, but in a tone of voice that indicated she wasn’t really expecting an answer — and Cal did not. He knew Ellie wasn’t speaking because she needed to, or even wanted to, but rather because her personality didn’t endear itself easily to sincerity. Her running tongue was because of the awkwardness she felt upon asking for such a suspicious sort of favor, and Cal didn’t intend to add to it by engaging in the superficial chit-chat.

That changed when they turned a corner and found Roxy bending over the curb of the street, dressed the same as always in her revealing black clothes, legs spread in a crouch, the hem of her green raincoat rubbing against the ground. She seemed to have noticed them first, because her red eyes were already alert and her teeth in a sharp grin, looking between Cal and Ellie like they were some delicious meal. From her hand hung a tall aluminum can of iced coffee, which she appeared to have drained empty despite the cold weather.

“Hey, cutie!” Roxy called over to Cal, whom she hadn't seen since he stepped between her and Bridget’s blade. “Out with a new girl, tonight, are you? Damn, what a slut. Hopefully, this one doesn’t try to behead me, huh?”

Then she appeared to recognize Ellie. “Oh shit, wait, I know you.” She stood, pulling her fishnet stockings over her white thighs. “Ellie, right?”

“The very same, dude.” Ellie and Roxy did a fist bump in mutual recognition. “Though for the sake of preventing future misunderstandings, me and Cal aren’t like that, as I think I told you before.”

“Well,” Roxy said, shrugging. “I don’t put a lot of emphasis on people’s words very often. You can tell a lot more from tactility — sweat, heat, sensation. How someone’s tongue feels in your mouth is a better indicator of who they are than anything they can tell you.”

She turned her head, white hair falling across her nose. “Speaking of which, hey Cal. You haven’t said hi to me yet.”

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“...Hey Roxy, keeping out of trouble?”

“Hey Cal, keeping out of trouble?”

Ellie swung her head back and forth between them, a look of legitimate surprise on her face. “Woah dude, wait. Um… I think I missed a step here. Are you two… what, friends with benefits?”

“No,” said Cal, rolling his eyes.

“Yes,” said Roxy, enthusiastically.

She fist-bumped Ellie again.

“Let me just ahead of this,” said Cal, taking an adamant step forward. “Myself and Roxy have talked before on a few separate occasions. One time, Bridget showed up and attacked her, for reasons I still don’t entirely understand-” Here he cast a sharp look at Roxy, who raised an amused eyebrow. “-but needless to say, I got between them. So that’s our relationship. We’re acquaintances at best.”

Ellie whistled. “Bridget did that? Damn, didn’t know she had it in her.” She paused, tugging at her sleeve. “Okay, maybe that’s not true… I did see her practicing with that big-ass sword one time.”

Roxy leisurely raised a pale hand, like she was a student in a classroom, her red eyes twinkling with mischief. “I would also like to submit to evidence that myself and Cal have also made out. With tongue. It was hot.”

“Christ, Roxy!” Cal actually blushed, something Ellie had never seen before. “It was not!- look, we did not make out."

“Mmm,” Roxy said, sarcastically frowning and laying a cold hand on Cal’s shoulder, the chill from which he could feel even through the coat. “Well, it was more than ten seconds. I think that qualifies, don’t you?”

Uncharacteristically of her, Ellie reached over and pulled Cal’s arm to her side as he shrugged himself away from Roxy. This unexpected physical touch made Cal shoot an inquisitive look at her, but the expression in her dark eyes told him that despite her casual demeanor earlier, she wanted them to be on their way.

Roxy noticed this, her smile fading slightly and her red eyes seeming to glow. “Oh? Am I in the way? I know when to skedaddle.”

“Sorry, Roxy,” Ellie said, wincing apologetically but not letting go of her surprisingly tight grip on Cal’s arm. “Truth is, we’re not on a leisure walk tonight. We can’t stop very long. But we can talk later.”

Roxy waved a hand dismissively, seemingly annoyed at being pushed out. “Sure, sure. But I would really rather have a private talk with Cal since we have more to discuss since last time, you know?”

“Bite me,” Cal sighed.

“Oh, I will, don’t worry about that.” Roxy’s face became stern. “But seriously, we do need to have a talk later about that crone. Lizzie told me that you know her, from way back when you were a kid. You’re just a never-ending headache, aren’t you?”

That made Cal pause and take a long look at her, despite Ellie pulling at him to try to get him to begin walking. “You mean, what, that Delilah woman you were talking about last time?” He furrowed his brow, remembering something. “No, it can’t possibly be the same person. That was forever ago, and under special circumstances, anyway.”

“Lizzie said you know her.”

“I don't know who that is!” Cal snarled, suddenly irritated for some reason. “It’s not the same woman. Goodnight, Roxy.”

And he let Ellie lead him around the corner. He could feel Roxy’s stare on his back, and for a moment he felt a chill of fear or apprehension run up his spine, but it faded before he could be sure. It was as if a deadly predator had spied him from a distance, but then decided to leave him alone on some whim.

“She’s charming, you have to admit,” Ellie said. They were still walking arm-in-arm, each taking long hurried strides across the cement and asphalt. It was very quiet. “Funny, you know.”

“I don’t approve of your friendship,” Cal said sullenly. “You two are far too similar in personality. It’s exhausting.”

She laughed. “You’re funny too, but you never intend to be. Did you two actually kiss?”

He sighed again. “Yes, but I’d appreciate you not bringing it up.”

“Okay, okay…”

They walked along another street, more run-down, more working class.

“Do you know what she is?” Cal asked, at last. “Bridget wasn’t very clear about any of it.”

“Mmm, no,” Ellie responded. She seemed a little distracted and paused her stride, looking for something. “I mean, I have a few guesses. I imagine you do, too. But I think our opinion is skewed slightly by our perception of what it means when girls with red eyes and sharp teeth wander around at night. Bridget would be able to give you a more accurate answer, I expect.”

“Do you think she’s dangerous?” Cal said, almost softly. He was even leaning into Ellie’s side, if only barely. “I mean, I defended her from Bridget without thinking. But maybe…”

He trailed off.

“Dangerous?” Ellie blinked. “Obviously. She’s very dangerous. But probably not to you. She told me before when we met the — the second time, I think? She was by the gate to the manor, right where you met me tonight, just sort of watching. She told me she just wanted to keep you safe, and I believed her. Come on, we’re here.”

Ellie appeared to have discerned the direction to go. She led Cal around another corner until they came to a large box-shaped building, its front-facing windows alive with artificial blue-white light cast from affixed LEDs — like the sort in places built in the 2000s or 2010s. Ellie, having finally released his arm, led Cal into the building and said a chipper hello to the sleepy-looking attendant at the counter, who seemed to have just clocked in for the night shift.

“Back again, Ellie?” the attendant said, attempting a smile, though his eyes still seemed blurry. “209, right?”

“Hey Will,” Ellie said, flashing a card in her wallet and taking the outstretched key fob the attendant held in his large hand. “Yep 209, thank you.”

As they turned into a white corridor and ascended some metal stairs, Cal finally realized where they were. This was a place for storage units, seemingly a more high-end one since the units (all labeled 20x, presumably because they were on the second floor) seemed very large judging from how much space divided them on the floor. The units seemed to be more like rooms, far more space than one would need to house some simple furniture or nostalgic items.

Ellie held up the key fob to the door labeled 209 and it unlocked automatically. The space inside was less cluttered than Cal would have expected. He had cleaned the mess that was Ellie’s room back at Otter Manor on occasion, which was always full of dirty clothes and plates or mugs she had carried up from the kitchen. The linoleum floor of 209 was clean and sparsely decorated. There was a mattress with clean linen in the corner, books of engineering or astrology stacked against the leftward wall, and a single trash bin filled with chip bags and energy drinks.

What was most unusual was the center of the room, which had been covered with a white tarp. There were a variety of tools, screws, and other assorted objects sprawled on it as if they had recently been in use. There was also something that Cal couldn’t name placed in the very middle of the tarp, a sort of ovular-shaped convex glass mounted on a tripod of dark metal legs. Pressing against the glass were dials and wheels and knobs that Cal couldn’t guess the purpose of.

Ellie stopped, resting her hand against the convex glass, almost fondly. Then she turned to look at Cal. This room was also lit by an LED light from above, and it made Ellie’s dark features look strangely stark as the light bounced off the yellow jacket she was wearing.

She smiled apologetically. “Thank you for not asking questions, Cal. I’m going to have to ask you to just do as I want a little longer without saying anything, okay? I promise I wouldn’t have asked you otherwise, but I need two people for this part.”

He shrugged. “No problem.”

“I wonder,” she sighed, kicking at a screw on the ground with her big shoes. “Look, boss. You’re going to see some stuff and you probably understand immediately. Just don’t worry about it. I’ll explain everything after the fact.”

Cal felt a weird sense of weariness, like he was dreading something in the future, but he nodded. “Okay.”

“Take this,” Ellie bent over and handed him a sort of remote with two joysticks that had been resting against one of the object’s legs. “When I turn on the astro-phemenologicalator, some numbers are going to flash on the screen of the remote. The satellite signals of this planet are going to be constantly interfering with this signal, coming from here. The controls of the remote will make the width of the waves expand or become narrower — um, the number will go up or down. I need you to keep that number between 225 and 245. Can you do that?”

“I can,” Cal said tonelessly, taking the remote.

“Okay,” Ellie took a large breath, running a practiced finger over the convex glass. It purred to life, though she had not touched any of the dials on the glass. “Oh please, oh stars, oh all heavens going on forever, please let this work.”

The number on the remote screen jumped immediately to 320, and Cal began to wrestle with the fluctuating number.

“Light offs,” Ellie commanded, in a loader and harsher voice than Cal would have expected from her.

The LEDs, which must have been voice-activated, instantly dimmed and shut off. The only light in the room was the lights bouncing inside the convex glass, green, and yellow, and jumping, illuminating Ellie’s face in a bizarre fashion. The machine, the astro-whatever, was also getting louder, as if puffing out steam, answering whatever Ellie was doing as she expertly turned dials and flipped switches on the surface of the glass.

The remote said 205, 200, 195. Cal turned the joysticks in the opposite direction he had been previously.

“Hotweb prepped,” Ellie said out loud to the silent room, her face covered in pulsating colors. “Atemporal matrix realigned over the fourth-dimensional reading. Just… need to boost the signal here without interference… Where are we at, Cal?”

“230,” said Cal, loud enough for her to hear over the machine.

Ellie adjusted a knob. The inside of the glass looked like an entire universe in miniature, the colors forming the outlines of planets and stars and nebulas, all spinning around in chaos like a snow globe. Cal could barely take his eyes off the beautiful sight in order to watch the number on the remote.

“Fuck it,” Ellie whispered to herself, her voice trembling with a deep and profound emotion. “The axis isn’t perfectly aligned, but I won’t get a better chance. In for a penny…”

She punched a button.

The noise coming from the machine whimpered out. The screen of Cal’s remote had turned off. Everything was perfectly quiet and still except a slight undulating breathing from the glass. The lights inside the glass ceased to bounce and instead began to form some sort of shape. No, a face?

“This…” Ellie stopped, her breath hitching.

Cal was bewildered to realize that she was actually crying: small tears emerging in the corners of her dark eyes, though it was hard to tell in the unusual and dim light.

Ellie took another deep breath, wiped her eyes, and then leaned her face right up against the colors and shapes forming in the glass. “This… this is Ellinova Mercury. Cosmonaut ID 7783312. Requesting a rendezvous, code 021: Temporal Displacement as Designed by Universal Factors. Can you hear me?”

The face — the lights, the thing — inside the glass did not answer.

“Please, please.” Ellie pressed the glass with the tips of her fingers, hard enough that it seemed like she threatened to break it. “This — fuck! — this is Ellinova Mercury. Cosmonaut ID7783312. Requesting a welcome from the universe.”

No answer.

“Cosmonaut ID 7783312. I’m… I’m Ellinova Mercury.” There were unwanted tears in Ellie’s eyes again, which were making them sparkle in the shifting light that had changed into softer, cooler colors. “My parents are Demaine and Alice Mercury. I was part of the Fifth Cosmonaut Squad, exploring the Outer Firmament. Please… please respond. I... I don't know what else I can do. This is my last option.”

No answer.

At first.

The air crinkled. The lights shifted again, turning bright, passionate red as a low murmur began to build, a voice — an inhuman voice, Cal realized — coming out of the dark, out of the sky, out of the visage of the thing that was beginning to become visible in the glass. The murmur became words, a language, and then finally a language that could be understood as the distorted signal strengthened.

“We see you, Ellinova Mercury. Don’t cry, brave lost human. Welcome to the universe.”