19 October 2024
Western Air Defense Sector — Near Mount Rainier, Washington
Night shift is mostly hum.
Screens and vents.
Green dots on black.
Amara Whitaker sips warm coffee, her headphones pinch her left ear.
The screen is quiet too quiet if you relax.
But she doesn't.
Her grandpa taught her : always watch the edges, stay aware. That's where things start.
Outside, Mount Rainier is a darker shape against a dark sky.
Inside, the air smells like plastic and old carpet, the wall clock ticks steady. She doesn't trust it.
"Anything?" Maya asks from the next desk.
"Nothing" Amara says. "Feels empty."
"Give it five" Maya says "Graveyard shift grows ghosts."
Amara smiles and switches civilian trackers off and on. Blips appear, then fade.
Normal.
Then nine returns pop onto her screen.
No tags.
Not in normal lanes.
They don't move like planes.
They skip.
West to east.
Straight line. A small stagger. A leap like stones skipping on water.
Amara leans forward. "Uh… Maya?"
"I see it."
"ADS-B?"
"Negative."
"Altitude?"
"It's changing. I don't like it."
Neither does Amara,her pulse climbs, she pulls the weather feed clear. No storms, no fronts.
She opens a mountain camera she's not supposed to use. Uses it anyway.
The ridge, clear sky. A spray of stars.
Then the lights nine, bright, sharp, right over the mountain's edge. Moving together. Moving wrong.
"Save it" Amara says.
Everything already saves, but she makes an extra copy. Old habit in case time gets weird.
The lights skip again. Closer, farther, closer, the camera shakes.
Pressure shifts, ears pop, her coffee ripples in perfect circles, one way, then the other.
Static bursts across her screen.
33.394. 104.523. Fourteen.
The numbers repeat. Then stop.
Amara lifts her hands off the desk, she keeps the numbers in her head like she might drop them.
"Did you hear that?" Maya asks, careful.
"Hear what?"
"A hiss, Maybe my set glitched. It's fine."
Fine? Amara almost laughs. Nothing about this is fine.
A chat ping a link from Maya.
"Just went up, they're quicker than us" Maya says "Someone near the park posted a clip."
Three seconds clip.
A phone pointed at the sky, a sharp breath, nine lights skip like stones exactly what they saw.
Caption : anyone else seeing this?
Amara clicks save.
The clip vanishes, content not available.
"Okay..." Maya says"Weird."
"Maybe a prank."
"Maybe."
They both know it's not.
The wall clock sounds too loud, the nine returns make one last hop to the edge of her screen, then blink out.
No contrails. No echoes. Back to green on black.
"I'm going outside," Amara says.
"You can't—"
"Two minutes. I need air."
The hall hums.
The exit door is heavy.
Outside orange lamps, long shadows. The mountain sits large and quiet.
Amara shoves her hands in her jacket, stares up until her eyes sting, nothing moves.
She thinks of a shoebox in her closet, a badge, a folded map, a Polaroid with a circle in the dirt, a date on the back in her grandpa's neat hand.
She's been putting off opening it.
Too busy, she told herself, not ready, if she's honest.
She goes back in.
By the end of her shift, the nine returns are just a rumor passed between desks and one text thread. The rules say : report up and forget. Things like this vanish before they climb the chain.
Amara signs the log, drives off base with the radio off, the world is loud enough.
Her apartment small, warm, second floor, stiff lock. She sets her coffee in the sink.
She takes the box from the closet. Puts it on the table. Stares at it for ten minutes.
Long day already. Should she?
She opens it.
Inside: a badge, a folded map, a deputy's star, and a strip of cloth.
Deputy Carl Whitaker, Chaves County Sheriff's Office.
Her grandfather's stories were simplevcattle, fences, kids with firecrackers, the night his radio went strange.
The story he never told.
She unfolds the map. New Mexico, a circle near Roswell, numbers in the margin :
33.394° N, 104.523° W.
Cold creeps up her arms.
She hears the whisper again, no headphones this time.
33.394. 104.523. Fourteen.
Under the map: a Polaroid, a perfect ring in the dirt not burned, not blasted, brush around it bent flat.
On the back, in her grandfather's hand:
It wasn't a storm. They were people.
People?
She picks up the strip of cloth, letters half gone, one word clear in block print:
REVIVAL.
English, not alien, not some strange script.
Her phone buzzes. Unknown number.
She lets it ring, a text follows:
Don't chase. Don't panic. We are late. 14 minutes.
No name, No details.
She glances at the clock, it's past midnight. A prank?
She sets the photo down. Picks it up again.
The city outside quiet. The sky black, full of small lights.
Her head aches. "I should've slept."
Phone buzz again, a link.
She shouldn't tap, she taps.
It's the same three-second clip from the base reposted. Nine lights. Few skips. Gone.
A comment appears:
33.394° N, 104.523° W. 02 July 1947. We are late. We are you. Don't chase.
Her throat tightens.
She's not superstitious, not a believer.
She's an analyst, none of this makes sense to her.
She checks the lock. Checks the stove.
Touches the badge solid.
Calls her mother.
"Amara? It's late."
"Do you remember Grandpa's night in the desert?"
Silence.
"What about it?"
"You said he had a map. You said he told you not to go to New Mexico. That was a joke, right?"
Her mother's voice thins. "Amara… what happened?"
"Nothing," she lies.
"I found the box."
"You found it?"
"I think he wanted me to."
"He wanted to tell you. He didn't know how you were young."
"Tell me what?"
"About the lights. He said they weren't from space."
Amara grips the phone. "Then what?"
"People," her mother says "They looked wrong, but they were people. One spoke. He heard English."
"What did he say?"
"Help."
The call drops. Not ended gone. No bars.
Thirteen minutes since the text, One left.
She types the coordinates into a browser. Map: Roswell, flat, empty. Switch to satellite nothing.
She prints the page, folds it, puts it in her jacket with the badge and cloth strip.
At the window pressure in her ears, buzz in her teeth. Stars waver.
Nine lights line up over the mountain.
Hold still.
Then.
Skip.
Skip.
Skip.
They cross the city in a blink. Amara waits for fear, instead recognition.
She presses her palm to the glass, cold, thinks of the ring in the photo.
The badge, the map, the cloth.
A man in the dark with a dead radio. A voice that said help.
She picks up the Polaroid.
They were people.
Wait fourteen minutes.
She waits.
The clock ticks. Skips a beat. Keeps time.
Somewhere a truck turns down a dirt road. Elsewhere a red light inside a broken vessel blinks, then dies.
Her apartment stays small and warm.
She writes on the back of the printed map:
Nine lights. 19 Oct 2024. 14. Not aliens, Us.
She puts the paper in the box.
Her phone beeps Maya.
You awake?
Yeah.
I didn't hear numbers, just saw the lights. Tell me I didn't imagine them.
You didn't. Don't tell anyone yet.
Why?
Because they're not done with us.
The box goes back in the closet, this time she leaves the door open.
She lies down, listens to the building breathe.
When sleep comes, it brings pictures:
Nine lights behind her eyelids. A desert ring. A dark sky. A shape like a ship and a wound.
A voice hers, and not hers: We've done this before, we keep doing it until we survive.
Morning will bring calls and questions.
For now, the loop pulls tighter.
Somewhere, in 1947, a man stands on a road, hears English in the wind. Somewhere, in 3024, a small figure with black eyes touches glass and dreams of a blue sky.
Between them, Amara stands at her window, knowing a hard truth:
They are not aliens.
They are us.