Transmission 005 // “No One Came”
Silence had settled over the bedroom.
Amelia sat cross-legged on the quilt, a notebook balanced on her knee. Marv sprawled beside her, one foot tapping the bedpost like a metronome. Textbooks lay open between them, pages twitching in the breeze from the cracked window as if trying to turn themselves.
She sighed and let her pen fall. It landed across the page like a fallen soldier.
“Why do quadratic equations even exist, Marv?”
“To remind us life’s inherently unfair.”
He didn’t even look up. His tone was so dry it might’ve been printed in the margins.
Amelia glanced sideways. Her lips twitched, but she swallowed the grin.
“You’ve always got an answer for everything, haven’t you?”
“You better believe it. They don’t call me the Oracle of Old Town for nothing.”
“Just so you know… nobody calls you that.”
“Not yet. But they’ll catch up.”
He flicked a look at her notebook.
“Anyway, talking of answers—how are you still on question five? I thought you were supposed to be good at math.”
She didn’t respond. Her mind had slipped somewhere else. She was drawing a spiral in the corner of the page, watching it widen.
“Ames?”
Nothing.
“Ames.”
He tried again.
“…Earth to Amelia?”
The breeze flipped her page. She blinked, returning to the room.
“Oh—I… sorry, Marv. I was somewhere else.”
“No kidding. You okay?”
“Yeah. I just keep… drifting today.”
“Drifting where?”
“Everywhere, I guess.”
Marv closed his textbook with a soft thud. The sound acted like punctuation.
“Alright,” he said, concern tightening his brow. “Spill. What’s going on? I know you. Something’s up.”
Her pen kept moving, but the spiral changed. It darkened. Deepened. Like she was drilling toward something buried.
“I was thinking about my dad, I guess…
…my real dad.”
Marv’s smirk vanished instantly, like a light cut at the mains.
“Your dad? What about him?”
“Nothing specific. Just memories. They catch me off guard sometimes.” She hesitated. “It started earlier, when I was playing chess… he used to play too.”
Marv blinked.
“Your dad played chess? Huh. That actually tracks. Honestly, I always thought you joined chess club for your college apps.”
“Funny.” Her smile was half-shadow. “At first it was about him. I thought maybe learning the game would help me understand him. Who he was. But now… it feels like it’s mine too.”
She nodded toward the desk.
“That was his,” she said quietly. “At least… I think it was.”
Under the lamp sat her wooden chess set, bathed in gold light. The pieces stood mid-battle—two armies waiting for orders. Dust clung to their edges, fine as frost after a cold snap. Or ash from a fire long dead.
Marv sat up straighter, alert, like he’d caught a new scent.
“Wait—hold on.” He pointed, voice pitching high. “That chess set? That belonged to your dad?”
She nodded.
A beat passed. Marv stared at the board like it was whispering.
“I didn’t think you had anything from… before,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Oh sure,” he scoffed. “Just casually dropping it during a math session. Like you’re telling me what they served in the cafeteria.” His voice cracked into disbelief.
“What the hell, Ames?”
Amelia’s thumb traced slow circles over a worn patch on her jeans.
“Sorry, Marv. I just… I didn’t really know what to say.”
She kept her eyes down—on the notebook, the floor, anywhere but him.
“It just showed up one day. No return address.”
A beat. Memory edged in sideways.
“I was six.”
“And the Swansons? They don’t know who sent it?”
“No. The adoption went through social services. They never had contact with anyone from my old life. Besides…”
Her voice snagged.
“There wasn’t anyone left.”
Marv leaned back, hand under his chin.
“Wow. I don’t know if that’s cool or creepy, Ames.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Same.”
Quiet folded around them. Marv lifted his book again, though he wasn’t reading. His foot kept going, the steady tap-tap she’d been hearing for minutes.
Amelia leaned into the wall. The desk lamp buzzed. A car rolled past outside. Headlights crawled across the ceiling like they were searching for something.
Then Marv’s foot—tapping like Morse code—stopped.
Just stopped.
Like a message had finished transmitting.
He closed the book. Didn’t look up. Just spoke.
“Hey, Ames.”
“Yeah?”
“The writing on the package. Do you remember what it said?”
“What?”
His eyes lifted to meet hers.
“The name. Which one did they use? Swanson or Lockwood?”
Amelia blinked. Then got it.
“Oh. Right. Just my first name—Amelia.”
“No surname?”
“Nope.” She shrugged. “I was six, so it’s fuzzy. But my dad tells the story all the time. He said it was waiting for us on the doorstep. Brown paper, string. Just… there. Weird, huh?”
“Yeah. Weird.”
Marv’s eyes narrowed. His jaw clicked. Then his thumb started its familiar dance—tapping each fingertip in sequence.
Index. Middle. Ring. Pinky.
Back again.
Amelia caught it instantly. She always did.
The Code Demon.
People thought it was a tic. It wasn’t. It was a tell. Marv’s internal boot sequence. If the Code Demon was loading, he’d found something. A bug in the universe he couldn’t ignore.
“What is it, Marv?” she asked.
No reply.
“…Marv?”
Then—like a server blinking back online—he returned.
“Sorry, Ames. I was—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
A recalibration. Then:
“So. You do realize what this means, right?”
He nodded toward the chess set.
“That board belonged to your dad. Benjamin Lockwood. But it turned up here—on Amelia Swanson’s doorstep.”
He let the names hang.
“Whoever sent it didn’t use a last name. So we can’t be certain… not yet. But think about it, Ames. If that chess set was your dad’s, then it didn’t just survive your past.”
He drew a breath.
“It found you. Here.”
Amelia didn’t fully understand where he was heading—her body reacted first. Blood drained from her face. Pins and needles bloomed in her hands. She clutched the quilt like it might anchor her.
“So… w–what are you saying?”
Marv didn’t sugarcoat it.
“You always said you were the last loose end. The only thread connecting back to your old life.”
Amelia nodded slowly.
“But that can’t be true. Not in a world where that exists.”
He nodded at the chessboard.
The weight of it hit her. Hard.
“Whoever sent it,” Marv said, eyes locked to hers, “knew both of your names. Both versions of you. And if we’re being logical, there are only two real options.”
“Options?” she whispered.
“Yeah. Uno, dos.”
He held up two fingers.
“Number one: someone from your old life knows about your new one. And they reached out. Sent you something they knew would matter.”
Her pulse stumbled.
“And two?”
Marv leaned in, voice low.
“Option two is that someone from your new life knows about your old one. And they’re playing a game.”
A silence stretched—long, cold, deliberate.
“A very long, very patient game.”
Amelia swallowed. Her mouth was sand.
“One that might not be over.”
A chill ran the length of Amelia’s spine. She folded her arms across her chest, holding herself in place. For a moment she didn’t speak. Just sat there, choosing her next words like stepping stones.
“Marv… there’s something else.
…My mom left me something too.”
He sat up so fast the mattress tilted.
“She did?” A thin pause. “What?”
“A book.”
She swallowed, hard.
“She gave it to me right before…”
Her voice caught.
“…before they hid me in the closet.”
The closet.
She didn’t need to explain. Marv knew. She didn’t talk about it often, but it lived under her skin—always there, shifting in the dark.
She’d been four. A break-in. Her parents shoving her into the bedroom closet moments before the door splintered. Her dad whispering stay quiet, stay still.
So she did.
So quiet the police didn’t find her for over an hour. So still they had to pry her out of that darkness. Breath barely there. Body rigid.
She’d talked about it once or twice. The fear. The regret. The night terrors.
Not everything—just enough for him to understand that it wasn’t a memory anymore.
It was a sentence.
And she was still serving it.
Amelia stood and crossed to the bookshelf.
“I’ve had it since that night,” she murmured.
Her fingers traced the spines by touch, not title. They stopped exactly where they always did. She slid the book free, held it a moment, then returned to the bed.
“I still look through it sometimes,” she said, settling on the edge.
She held the book in both hands, trying to stay composed. Something inside her slipped anyway.
“It was the last thing she gave me, Marv.” Her voice cracked.
“The very last thing.”
Marv reached out, fingers brushing her shoulder.
“Ames, you don’t have to—”
Amelia nodded. A breath escaped. A single tear fell.
She cradled the book like it might collapse if she loosened her grip. Then she set it between them on the quilt.
Marv eased back, giving her space. He understood exactly what she was laying down.
“She told me to keep it safe,” Amelia whispered. “So I did. This and the chess set… they’re all I have left of them.”
Silence hovered—fragile, easily broken. Marv didn’t move at first. Then he shifted onto one elbow and freed a hand.
“Looks ancient,” he said, not touching it yet. “Wonder when it was published.”
No reply.
Slowly, he drew the book toward him and read the cover.
“Harmonic Containment Systems: A Study of Resonant Energy Fields, by Aldous Greaves.”
One eyebrow climbed.
“Catchy.
…Old Aldous must’ve been a riot at parties.”
A breath puffed out of Amelia. Almost a laugh.
“Mom was a scientist. I think this was tied to her work. Or it might’ve been personal. A project. I never knew.”
Marv opened the book at random. The print was tiny, dense—an old serif font that made his eyes twitch. He skimmed a line. Then another. None of it meant anything. Not because it was technical—he devoured tech manuals for breakfast—but because this wasn’t code. And it wasn’t science he recognised.
The margins were chaos. Tight looping handwriting—underlines, arrows, equations abandoned mid-stroke. Ideas half-born, half-buried.
He turned the pages carefully, like they might bruise.
“You’ve read all this?” he asked.
“I’ve tried,” Amelia said. “A hundred times. It never makes sense.”
Marv didn’t say what he was thinking—that maybe one percent of people could parse this, and her mother had been one of them.
“This isn’t just a book, Ames,” he said. “This is her. Every note, every formula… it’s like a map of her mind.”
Amelia looked down again, quieter.
“I’ve tried to follow it,” she whispered. “But I can’t read it. I’m not as smart as she was.”
Marv looked up, eyes careful—not calculating now.
“Did you ever show it to anyone?” he asked. “Someone who might understand it?”
Amelia let out a short, bitter breath.
“And say what? ‘Hey, my dead mom left me some cryptic equations. Can you decode my childhood trauma?’”
She didn’t wait for a response. Marv didn’t offer one. He just kept tracing the pages—slow, deliberate.
He squinted at a dense knot of handwriting.
“‘Plasma fields.’ Okay… sounds like lasers or something. Futuristic.”
Amelia’s stomach tightened.
“And this diagram…” He leaned closer. “Looks like a feedback loop. We built something like this in Coding Club last summer. Think she was modeling something? Simulating?”
“I don’t know,” Amelia snapped.
But Marv didn’t flinch. His eyes were still on the page.
“Seriously… I think your mom might’ve been a legit genius. Did she—”
“Can you not?” she hissed.
Sharp, but brittle.
She grabbed the book, fingers gripping the spine until her knuckles blanched.
“It’s private.”
Marv lifted a hand instinctively.
“Sorry, Ames. I wasn’t trying to—”
“Just give it back.”
She still wouldn’t look at him.
“I shouldn’t have shown you. This was a mistake.”
He started to let go of the book—then stopped, eyes snagging on something near the back cover.
“Wait.”
He blinked. Once. Twice.
“Just… wait a second.”
Amelia sat up straighter.
“What is it?”
Marv’s shoulders had gone still, but his mind hadn’t. She could see it—racing ahead, too fast for his mouth to keep up.
“Ames…” he said, low. “How old were you when it happened?”
The question hit like a cold hand to the back of her neck.
“Four,” she whispered.
Marv didn’t move. But something inside him misfired.
His lips parted—stalled—parted again. A small tic in his jaw.
“No… no way…”
His voice fractured under the weight of too many thoughts trying to get out.
“It doesn’t add up.”
He shot to his feet and started pacing—one hand on his hip, the other raking through his hair like he was trying to rip the answer loose. Amelia watched him circle, wanting to shake it out of him, but she knew better. Pushing him now would make it scatter.
He needed room.
Time.
Silence.
And then—click.
He stopped moving.
“Listen,” he said. “You’re smart, Ames. Sharp as hell.”
His eyes dropped to the page, scanning, lining up the pieces.
“But no four-year-old on the planet could crack a cipher like this.”
He didn’t look up.
“She would’ve known that. Your mom was brilliant. And you were a kid. Too young.”
Then he met her eyes—apology and revelation braided together.
“The thing is… I don’t think this message was meant for you.”
The air tightened. The room felt smaller, like the walls had leaned in to listen.
Amelia didn’t move. But something inside her shifted, sharp and sudden.
Marv kept going.
“Your parents must’ve known something was coming. That’s why they hid you. And your mom—she scribbled this in at the last second. Look at it. Different pen. Messier script. She was rushing. She didn’t have time.”
He tapped the margin gently.
“She gave the book to you, yeah. Told you to guard it. But she couldn’t have believed a four-year-old would ever decode this. She wasn’t leaving a clue for you.”
He took a breath.
“She was leaving a clue with you.”
His voice lowered.
“Which means the person she wrote it for… someone older, someone she trusted… was supposed to come find you.”
Amelia’s lips parted, barely sound.
“Someone else was supposed to find me.”
Silence drew tight as wire.
Then—soft, almost inaudible—
“But Marv…”
Her fingers curled into the bedsheet. Her voice scraped the air.
“The police found me.
…No one came.”
And that was the moment—precise and merciless—when something in Amelia’s world tilted off its axis. Not the room. Her life. The story she’d been living inside for ten years cracked beneath her feet.
She had spent years searching for the life she lost.
Listening for it.
Trying to feel a heartbeat in the ruins.
And now, in the stillness, she felt it.
It wasn’t gone.
It wasn’t over.
It wasn’t buried.
It was alive.
Its pulse rising.
And it was looking right back at her.
Silence had settled over the bedroom.
Amelia sat cross-legged on the quilt, a notebook balanced on her knee. Marv sprawled beside her, one foot tapping the bedpost like a metronome. Textbooks lay open between them, pages twitching in the breeze from the cracked window as if trying to turn themselves.
She sighed and let her pen fall. It landed across the page like a fallen soldier.
“Why do quadratic equations even exist, Marv?”
“To remind us life’s inherently unfair.”
He didn’t even look up. His tone was so dry it might’ve been printed in the margins.
Amelia glanced sideways. Her lips twitched, but she swallowed the grin.
“You’ve always got an answer for everything, haven’t you?”
“You better believe it. They don’t call me the Oracle of Old Town for nothing.”
“Just so you know… nobody calls you that.”
“Not yet. But they’ll catch up.”
He flicked a look at her notebook.
“Anyway, talking of answers—how are you still on question five? I thought you were supposed to be good at math.”
She didn’t respond. Her mind had slipped somewhere else. She was drawing a spiral in the corner of the page, watching it widen.
“Ames?”
Nothing.
“Ames.”
He tried again.
“…Earth to Amelia?”
The breeze flipped her page. She blinked, returning to the room.
“Oh—I… sorry, Marv. I was somewhere else.”
“No kidding. You okay?”
“Yeah. I just keep… drifting today.”
“Drifting where?”
“Everywhere, I guess.”
Marv closed his textbook with a soft thud. The sound acted like punctuation.
“Alright,” he said, concern tightening his brow. “Spill. What’s going on? I know you. Something’s up.”
Her pen kept moving, but the spiral changed. It darkened. Deepened. Like she was drilling toward something buried.
“I was thinking about my dad, I guess…
…my real dad.”
Marv’s smirk vanished instantly, like a light cut at the mains.
“Your dad? What about him?”
“Nothing specific. Just memories. They catch me off guard sometimes.” She hesitated. “It started earlier, when I was playing chess… he used to play too.”
Marv blinked.
“Your dad played chess? Huh. That actually tracks. Honestly, I always thought you joined chess club for your college apps.”
“Funny.” Her smile was half-shadow. “At first it was about him. I thought maybe learning the game would help me understand him. Who he was. But now… it feels like it’s mine too.”
She nodded toward the desk.
“That was his,” she said quietly. “At least… I think it was.”
Under the lamp sat her wooden chess set, bathed in gold light. The pieces stood mid-battle—two armies waiting for orders. Dust clung to their edges, fine as frost after a cold snap. Or ash from a fire long dead.
Marv sat up straighter, alert, like he’d caught a new scent.
“Wait—hold on.” He pointed, voice pitching high. “That chess set? That belonged to your dad?”
She nodded.
A beat passed. Marv stared at the board like it was whispering.
“I didn’t think you had anything from… before,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Oh sure,” he scoffed. “Just casually dropping it during a math session. Like you’re telling me what they served in the cafeteria.” His voice cracked into disbelief.
“What the hell, Ames?”
Amelia’s thumb traced slow circles over a worn patch on her jeans.
“Sorry, Marv. I just… I didn’t really know what to say.”
She kept her eyes down—on the notebook, the floor, anywhere but him.
“It just showed up one day. No return address.”
A beat. Memory edged in sideways.
“I was six.”
“And the Swansons? They don’t know who sent it?”
“No. The adoption went through social services. They never had contact with anyone from my old life. Besides…”
Her voice snagged.
“There wasn’t anyone left.”
Marv leaned back, hand under his chin.
“Wow. I don’t know if that’s cool or creepy, Ames.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Same.”
Quiet folded around them. Marv lifted his book again, though he wasn’t reading. His foot kept going, the steady tap-tap she’d been hearing for minutes.
Amelia leaned into the wall. The desk lamp buzzed. A car rolled past outside. Headlights crawled across the ceiling like they were searching for something.
Then Marv’s foot—tapping like Morse code—stopped.
Just stopped.
Like a message had finished transmitting.
He closed the book. Didn’t look up. Just spoke.
“Hey, Ames.”
“Yeah?”
“The writing on the package. Do you remember what it said?”
“What?”
His eyes lifted to meet hers.
“The name. Which one did they use? Swanson or Lockwood?”
Amelia blinked. Then got it.
“Oh. Right. Just my first name—Amelia.”
“No surname?”
“Nope.” She shrugged. “I was six, so it’s fuzzy. But my dad tells the story all the time. He said it was waiting for us on the doorstep. Brown paper, string. Just… there. Weird, huh?”
“Yeah. Weird.”
Marv’s eyes narrowed. His jaw clicked. Then his thumb started its familiar dance—tapping each fingertip in sequence.
Index. Middle. Ring. Pinky.
Back again.
Amelia caught it instantly. She always did.
The Code Demon.
People thought it was a tic. It wasn’t. It was a tell. Marv’s internal boot sequence. If the Code Demon was loading, he’d found something. A bug in the universe he couldn’t ignore.
“What is it, Marv?” she asked.
No reply.
“…Marv?”
Then—like a server blinking back online—he returned.
“Sorry, Ames. I was—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
A recalibration. Then:
“So. You do realize what this means, right?”
He nodded toward the chess set.
“That board belonged to your dad. Benjamin Lockwood. But it turned up here—on Amelia Swanson’s doorstep.”
He let the names hang.
“Whoever sent it didn’t use a last name. So we can’t be certain… not yet. But think about it, Ames. If that chess set was your dad’s, then it didn’t just survive your past.”
He drew a breath.
“It found you. Here.”
Amelia didn’t fully understand where he was heading—her body reacted first. Blood drained from her face. Pins and needles bloomed in her hands. She clutched the quilt like it might anchor her.
“So… w–what are you saying?”
Marv didn’t sugarcoat it.
“You always said you were the last loose end. The only thread connecting back to your old life.”
Amelia nodded slowly.
“But that can’t be true. Not in a world where that exists.”
He nodded at the chessboard.
The weight of it hit her. Hard.
“Whoever sent it,” Marv said, eyes locked to hers, “knew both of your names. Both versions of you. And if we’re being logical, there are only two real options.”
“Options?” she whispered.
“Yeah. Uno, dos.”
He held up two fingers.
“Number one: someone from your old life knows about your new one. And they reached out. Sent you something they knew would matter.”
Her pulse stumbled.
“And two?”
Marv leaned in, voice low.
“Option two is that someone from your new life knows about your old one. And they’re playing a game.”
A silence stretched—long, cold, deliberate.
“A very long, very patient game.”
Amelia swallowed. Her mouth was sand.
“One that might not be over.”
A chill ran the length of Amelia’s spine. She folded her arms across her chest, holding herself in place. For a moment she didn’t speak. Just sat there, choosing her next words like stepping stones.
“Marv… there’s something else.
…My mom left me something too.”
He sat up so fast the mattress tilted.
“She did?” A thin pause. “What?”
“A book.”
She swallowed, hard.
“She gave it to me right before…”
Her voice caught.
“…before they hid me in the closet.”
The closet.
She didn’t need to explain. Marv knew. She didn’t talk about it often, but it lived under her skin—always there, shifting in the dark.
She’d been four. A break-in. Her parents shoving her into the bedroom closet moments before the door splintered. Her dad whispering stay quiet, stay still.
So she did.
So quiet the police didn’t find her for over an hour. So still they had to pry her out of that darkness. Breath barely there. Body rigid.
She’d talked about it once or twice. The fear. The regret. The night terrors.
Not everything—just enough for him to understand that it wasn’t a memory anymore.
It was a sentence.
And she was still serving it.
Amelia stood and crossed to the bookshelf.
“I’ve had it since that night,” she murmured.
Her fingers traced the spines by touch, not title. They stopped exactly where they always did. She slid the book free, held it a moment, then returned to the bed.
“I still look through it sometimes,” she said, settling on the edge.
She held the book in both hands, trying to stay composed. Something inside her slipped anyway.
“It was the last thing she gave me, Marv.” Her voice cracked.
“The very last thing.”
Marv reached out, fingers brushing her shoulder.
“Ames, you don’t have to—”
Amelia nodded. A breath escaped. A single tear fell.
She cradled the book like it might collapse if she loosened her grip. Then she set it between them on the quilt.
Marv eased back, giving her space. He understood exactly what she was laying down.
“She told me to keep it safe,” Amelia whispered. “So I did. This and the chess set… they’re all I have left of them.”
Silence hovered—fragile, easily broken. Marv didn’t move at first. Then he shifted onto one elbow and freed a hand.
“Looks ancient,” he said, not touching it yet. “Wonder when it was published.”
No reply.
Slowly, he drew the book toward him and read the cover.
“Harmonic Containment Systems: A Study of Resonant Energy Fields, by Aldous Greaves.”
One eyebrow climbed.
“Catchy.
…Old Aldous must’ve been a riot at parties.”
A breath puffed out of Amelia. Almost a laugh.
“Mom was a scientist. I think this was tied to her work. Or it might’ve been personal. A project. I never knew.”
Marv opened the book at random. The print was tiny, dense—an old serif font that made his eyes twitch. He skimmed a line. Then another. None of it meant anything. Not because it was technical—he devoured tech manuals for breakfast—but because this wasn’t code. And it wasn’t science he recognised.
The margins were chaos. Tight looping handwriting—underlines, arrows, equations abandoned mid-stroke. Ideas half-born, half-buried.
He turned the pages carefully, like they might bruise.
“You’ve read all this?” he asked.
“I’ve tried,” Amelia said. “A hundred times. It never makes sense.”
Marv didn’t say what he was thinking—that maybe one percent of people could parse this, and her mother had been one of them.
“This isn’t just a book, Ames,” he said. “This is her. Every note, every formula… it’s like a map of her mind.”
Amelia looked down again, quieter.
“I’ve tried to follow it,” she whispered. “But I can’t read it. I’m not as smart as she was.”
Marv looked up, eyes careful—not calculating now.
“Did you ever show it to anyone?” he asked. “Someone who might understand it?”
Amelia let out a short, bitter breath.
“And say what? ‘Hey, my dead mom left me some cryptic equations. Can you decode my childhood trauma?’”
She didn’t wait for a response. Marv didn’t offer one. He just kept tracing the pages—slow, deliberate.
He squinted at a dense knot of handwriting.
“‘Plasma fields.’ Okay… sounds like lasers or something. Futuristic.”
Amelia’s stomach tightened.
“And this diagram…” He leaned closer. “Looks like a feedback loop. We built something like this in Coding Club last summer. Think she was modeling something? Simulating?”
“I don’t know,” Amelia snapped.
But Marv didn’t flinch. His eyes were still on the page.
“Seriously… I think your mom might’ve been a legit genius. Did she—”
“Can you not?” she hissed.
Sharp, but brittle.
She grabbed the book, fingers gripping the spine until her knuckles blanched.
“It’s private.”
Marv lifted a hand instinctively.
“Sorry, Ames. I wasn’t trying to—”
“Just give it back.”
She still wouldn’t look at him.
“I shouldn’t have shown you. This was a mistake.”
He started to let go of the book—then stopped, eyes snagging on something near the back cover.
“Wait.”
He blinked. Once. Twice.
“Just… wait a second.”
Amelia sat up straighter.
“What is it?”
Marv’s shoulders had gone still, but his mind hadn’t. She could see it—racing ahead, too fast for his mouth to keep up.
“Ames…” he said, low. “How old were you when it happened?”
The question hit like a cold hand to the back of her neck.
“Four,” she whispered.
Marv didn’t move. But something inside him misfired.
His lips parted—stalled—parted again. A small tic in his jaw.
“No… no way…”
His voice fractured under the weight of too many thoughts trying to get out.
“It doesn’t add up.”
He shot to his feet and started pacing—one hand on his hip, the other raking through his hair like he was trying to rip the answer loose. Amelia watched him circle, wanting to shake it out of him, but she knew better. Pushing him now would make it scatter.
He needed room.
Time.
Silence.
And then—click.
He stopped moving.
“Listen,” he said. “You’re smart, Ames. Sharp as hell.”
His eyes dropped to the page, scanning, lining up the pieces.
“But no four-year-old on the planet could crack a cipher like this.”
He didn’t look up.
“She would’ve known that. Your mom was brilliant. And you were a kid. Too young.”
Then he met her eyes—apology and revelation braided together.
“The thing is… I don’t think this message was meant for you.”
The air tightened. The room felt smaller, like the walls had leaned in to listen.
Amelia didn’t move. But something inside her shifted, sharp and sudden.
Marv kept going.
“Your parents must’ve known something was coming. That’s why they hid you. And your mom—she scribbled this in at the last second. Look at it. Different pen. Messier script. She was rushing. She didn’t have time.”
He tapped the margin gently.
“She gave the book to you, yeah. Told you to guard it. But she couldn’t have believed a four-year-old would ever decode this. She wasn’t leaving a clue for you.”
He took a breath.
“She was leaving a clue with you.”
His voice lowered.
“Which means the person she wrote it for… someone older, someone she trusted… was supposed to come find you.”
Amelia’s lips parted, barely sound.
“Someone else was supposed to find me.”
Silence drew tight as wire.
Then—soft, almost inaudible—
“But Marv…”
Her fingers curled into the bedsheet. Her voice scraped the air.
“The police found me.
…No one came.”
And that was the moment—precise and merciless—when something in Amelia’s world tilted off its axis. Not the room. Her life. The story she’d been living inside for ten years cracked beneath her feet.
She had spent years searching for the life she lost.
Listening for it.
Trying to feel a heartbeat in the ruins.
And now, in the stillness, she felt it.
It wasn’t gone.
It wasn’t over.
It wasn’t buried.
It was alive.
Its pulse rising.
And it was looking right back at her.
---
Silence had settled over the bedroom.
Amelia sat cross-legged on the quilt, a notebook balanced on her knee. Marv lay sprawled beside her, one foot tapping the bedpost like a metronome. Textbooks lay open between them—pages twitching in the breeze from the cracked window, as if they were trying to turn themselves.
She sighed and let her pen drop. It landed across the page like a fallen soldier.
“Why do quadratic equations even exist, Marv?”
“To remind us that life’s inherently unfair.”
Marv didn’t even look up. His tone was so dry it might as well have been a footnote in the textbook between them.
Amelia glanced sideways. Her lips twitched, but she bit the grin back.
“You’ve always got an answer for everything, haven’t you?”
“You better believe it. They don’t call me the Oracle of Old Town for nothing.”
“Just so you know, nobody calls you that.”
“Not yet. But they’ll catch up… eventually.”
He glanced down at Amelia’s notes.
“Anyway, talking of answers—how are you still on question five? I thought you were supposed to be good at math.”
Amelia didn’t respond. Her mind was somewhere else. She was drawing a spiral in the corner of her notebook, watching it widen like a whirlpool.
“Ames?”
Marv cleared his throat theatrically.
“Ames…
…Earth to Amelia?”
The breeze caught the edge of her page and flipped it. She blinked back into the room.
“Oh—I… sorry, Marv. I was somewhere else for a moment.”
“No kidding. You okay?”
“Yeah. I just keep… drifting today.”
“Drifting where?”
“Everywhere, I guess.”
Marv closed his textbook with a soft thud. The sound landed like punctuation.
“Alright,” he said, concern knitting into his brow. “Spill. What’s going on? I know you, Ames. Something’s up.”
Her pen was still moving, but differently now. The spiral had deepened, carving into the paper like she was trying to find the bottom of something.
“I was thinking about my dad, I guess…
…my real dad.”
Marv’s smirk vanished instantly, like someone had flipped a switch.
“Your dad? What about him?”
“Nothing in particular. Just memories. They catch me off guard sometimes. It started earlier, when I was playing chess… he used to play too.”
Marv blinked.
“Your dad played chess? Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense. Honestly, I just kinda assumed you joined chess club to make your college applications look more interesting.”
“Funny guy.” Her lips curled — half-smile, half-shadow. “It started because of him. At first, anyway. Now… I think it’s more than that. It feels like it’s mine too. But back then, I thought maybe learning to play would help me understand him… y’know, who he was.”
She nodded toward the desk.
“That was his,” she said casually. “At least… I think it was.”
A wooden chess set sat beneath the lamp, bathed in gold light. Its pieces stood frozen, mid-game — two armies waiting for orders. Dust clung to their edges, fine and delicate, catching the light like frost after a cold snap — or ash from a fire long gone cold.
Marv sat up straighter, suddenly alert, like a rabbit catching a new scent when the wind changes.
“Wait… hold on.” His voice pitched up as he pointed. “That chess set? Right there? That belonged to your dad?”
She nodded again — this time, at him.
A pause fell between them. Marv stared at the board like it was speaking to him.
“I didn’t think you had anything from… before,” he said finally. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Oh sure,” he scoffed. “Just casually dropping it during a math session. Like it’s the latest lunchroom gossip.”
His voice cracked halfway into disbelief. “What the hell, Ames?”
Amelia’s thumb traced slow circles over a worn patch on her jeans.
“Sorry, Marv. I just… I didn’t really know what to say.”
She kept her eyes down — on the notebook, the floor, anywhere but him.
“It just showed up one day. No return address.”
She paused, slipping sideways into memory.
“I was six.”
“And the Swansons? They don’t know who sent it?”
“No. The adoption went through social services. They never had any contact with anyone from my old life. Besides…”
Her voice caught — a dropped stitch in the air.
“There wasn’t anyone left.”
Marv leaned back, hand cupped beneath his chin.
“Wow. I don’t know if that’s cool or creepy, Ames.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Same.”
The quiet folded over them. Marv picked up his book again, but she could tell he wasn’t reading — not really. His foot was still going, the same steady tap-tap she’d been hearing for minutes.
Amelia leaned into the wall. The desk lamp buzzed. A car passed outside. Headlights crawled across the ceiling like they were searching for something.
Then Marv’s foot — tapping like Morse code against the bedpost — stopped.
Just stopped.
As suddenly as it had started. Like a message had finished transmitting.
He closed the book. Didn’t look up. Just spoke.
“Hey, Ames.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember what it said?”
“What?”
He lifted his eyes to meet hers.
“The writing on the package. What did it say?”
“Oh. Right. My name, you dummy. What else would it say?”
“Yeah, I know. But which name?… Swanson or Lockwood?”
Amelia paused. Then got it.
“Oh. Right. Just my first name. Just Amelia.”
“No surname?”
“Nope.” She shrugged. “I was six, so I don’t remember the details exactly. But my dad’s told the story, like, a hundred times. He says it was waiting when we got back home one day — a box wrapped in brown paper and string, just sitting there on the doorstep. Weird, huh?”
“Yeah… weird.”
Marv’s eyes narrowed. His jaw clicked tight. Then his thumb began to move—tapping each fingertip in sequence.
Index. Middle. Ring. Pinky.
Ring. Middle. Index.
Middle. Ring. Pinky.
Amelia spotted it instantly. She’d seen it a hundred times. She even had a name for it.
The Code Demon.
It always started the same way—the eyes, the jaw, the breath, the shoulders. Then the thumb. Always the thumb.
To anyone else, it looked like a tic. But Amelia knew better.
It wasn’t a tic at all.
It was a tell.
It was Marv’s boot sequence.
And if the Code Demon was loading, it meant he’d found something.
It meant his brain was chasing a bug in the codebase.
“What is it, Marv?” Amelia asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
No reply.
“…Marv?”
And then—like a server coming online—he was back.
“Sorry, Ames—I was…” The words faltered. “You know. Anyway—”
He shook his head once, recalibrating.
“So. You do realize what this means, right?”
He nodded toward the chess set.
“That board belonged to your dad. Benjamin Lockwood. But it turned up here—on Amelia Swanson’s doorstep.”
He let the surnames hang in the air.
“Whoever sent it didn’t use a last name,” he said quietly. “So we can’t be certain…
…Not yet.
But think about it, Ames—really think about it. If that chess set was your dad’s, then it didn’t just survive your past.”
He paused. Drew a breath.
“It found you... here”
Amelia didn’t fully follow where he was heading — but her body reacted anyway. Blood drained from her face. Pins and needles bloomed across her hands. She clutched the edge of the quilt like it might anchor her.
“So… w–what are you saying, Marv?”
She heard herself ask it. Marv didn’t sugarcoat his reply.
“Okay, look. You always said you were the last loose end. The only thread still connecting back to your old life.”
Amelia nodded, slow.
He tilted his chin toward the chessboard.
“But that can’t be true, Ames. Not in a world where that exists.”
The weight of his words pressed into her chest. She hadn’t let herself think about it like that before. Not really. Not until now.
“Whoever sent it,” Marv said, eyes locked on hers, “they knew both of your names. Both versions of you. So if we’re being logical, there are only two real options.”
“Options?” Amelia echoed, wary.
“Yeah—uno, dos.”
He held up two fingers and counted them off.
“Number one: someone from your old life knows about your new one. And not just knows—they reached out. Sent you something they knew would matter.”
Her heart kicked hard in her chest. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the second one, but the question still came.
“And two?”
Marv leaned in.
“Option two,” he said, lower now, “is that someone from your new life knows about your old one. And they’re playing a game.”
He let the silence stretch. Let it crawl.
“A very long, very patient game.”
Amelia swallowed.
Her mouth had gone dry.
“One that might not be over.”
A chill ran the length of Amelia’s spine. She folded her arms across her chest, holding herself in place. For a moment, she didn’t speak. Just sat there. Choosing her next words carefully.
“Marv… there’s something else.
…My mom left me something too.”
He sat up so fast the mattress shifted beneath them.
“She did?” A pause, thin as a paper cut. “What?”
“A book.”
Amelia swallowed, hard.
“She gave it to me right before…”
Her voice faltered.
“…before they hid me in the closet.”
The closet.
Amelia didn’t need to say anything more. Marv knew. She rarely talked about it, but it was always there—just beneath the surface. A shadow that shifted sometimes, but never truly disappeared.
She’d been four. Just a little girl. There was a break-in. Her parents hid her in the bedroom closet moments before the intruders came through the door. Her dad told her to stay quiet. Stay still.
So she did.
So quiet the police didn’t find her for over an hour. So still, when they pulled her from the dark, she was barely breathing—body locked rigid with terror.
She’d opened up about it once or twice. The fear. The regrets. The night terrors.
Marv didn’t know everything. But he knew enough.
He knew it wasn’t just a memory anymore. It was a sentence.
One she was still serving, and probably would be for life.
Amelia stood and crossed to the bookshelf.
“I’ve had it since that night,” she murmured.
Her fingers moved along the spines, searching by texture, not title. They stopped exactly where they should. She slid the book free, held it for a beat, then returned to the bed.
“I still look through it sometimes,” she said, settling on the edge.
She held the book in both hands, trying to stay composed. But something inside her slipped.
“It was the last thing she gave me, Marv.” Her voice cracked.
“The very last thing.”
Marv reached out. His fingers brushed her shoulder.
“Ames, you don’t have to—”
Amelia nodded. A breath slipped loose. A single tear followed.
She cradled the book in both hands, like it might fall apart if she let go. Held it there. Then, instead of handing it over, she placed it on the bed between them.
Marv shifted back slightly, giving her space. He understood the weight she was laying down.
Her hands hovered a second longer, then curled into the quilt.
“She told me to keep it safe,” she whispered. “So I did. This and the chess set are all I have left of them.”
The silence that followed felt delicate. Breakable. Marv didn’t move at first. Then he eased onto one elbow, freeing a hand.
“Looks ancient,” he said, not touching it. “Wonder when it was published.”
No answer.
Slowly, he reached out. Drew the book toward him and studied the cover.
“Harmonic Containment Systems: A Study of Resonant Energy Fields, by Aldous Greaves,” he read aloud.
One eyebrow lifted.
“Catchy.
…Old Aldous must’ve been a riot at parties.”
Amelia let out a short breath. Almost a laugh, but not quite.
“Mom was a scientist. I think maybe this was connected to her work. Or it could’ve just been something personal. A side project. I don’t really know.”
Marv opened the book to a random page. The type was small, densely packed in an old serif font that made his eyes twitch. He read a line. Then another. The words meant nothing to him. Not because they were technical—his bookshelf was stacked with tech manuals, and he read them for fun. But this wasn’t code. And it wasn’t science—not the kind you learn in high school anyway.
The complexity showed in every margin. Tight, looping handwriting spiraled around the printed text—lines underlined, arrows linking thoughts, equations mid-stroke and abandoned. Half-finished ideas hung in white space like they’d been quarantined.
He turned the pages slowly. Every one packed with notes, sketches, symbols. All the same hand. All the same focus. A map of something vast—and unfinished.
“You’ve read all this?” he asked, thumbing the next page.
“I’ve tried,” Amelia said, nodding. “A hundred times over. None of it makes sense.”
Marv didn’t say what he was thinking—that it didn’t surprise him. That maybe one percent of people could even begin to understand this book. He guessed that most who tried wouldn’t make it past the contents page. Whatever Evelyn Lockwood had been working on, he could tell she wasn’t playing around.
“This isn’t just a book, Ames. This is her. Every note, every formula… it’s like a map of her mind.”
Amelia looked down at it again, quieter now.
“I’ve tried to follow it,” she said. “But I can’t read it. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. I’m not as smart as she was.”
Marv looked up, his eyes careful. Watching, not calculating.
“Did you ever show it to anyone?” he asked. “Someone who might understand it?”
Amelia let out a short, bitter snort.
“And say what? ‘Hey, my dead mom left a bunch of scribbled equations in an old science book. Mind solving them so I can finally get some closure?’”
She didn’t wait for a response. Marv didn’t offer one. He just kept turning pages — slowly, carefully, like the paper might bruise.
He tilted the book, squinting at a dense knot of handwriting.
“Plasma fields,” he said, eyebrows up. “Okay…. sounds like lasers, or something. Futuristic stuff.”
Amelia felt her stomach twist.
“And this diagram…” He leaned closer. “It looks like a feedback loop. We did something kind of like it in Coding Club last summer. You think she was modeling something? Running simulations maybe?”
“I don’t know,” Amelia snapped.
But Marv didn’t flinch. His eyes were still glued to the page.
“Seriously…” he said. “ I think your mom might’ve been an actual genius. Did she—”
Amelia flinched.
“Can you not?”
Her voice came out sharp, but brittle enough to break. She reached for the book, fingers wrapping the spine tight. Her knuckles went white.
“It’s private.”
Marv instinctively raised a hand.
“Sorry, Ames. I wasn’t trying to—”
“Just give it back.”
She didn’t look at him.
“I shouldn’t have shown it to you. It was a mistake.”
He started to let go of the book—then froze, caught by something near the back cover.
“Wait.”
Marv’s voice snapped — sharp and unfamiliar. Amelia’s hand stopped mid-motion. She’d never heard him like that. He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. The moment held, taut and weightless.
Then he recalibrated. His jaw eased. His shoulders drained.
“Sorry, Ames,” he said, quieter now. “But I think I saw something. Let me check. I promise I’ll be quick… please.”
Amelia hesitated, then loosened her grip.
She let go.
Marv drew the book back into his eye-line and flipped toward the final pages. He angled the spine to catch the light.
“There. Gotcha… I knew it.”
He’d only caught a flash. But for Marv, that was enough. His brain had always been wired for pattern recognition. Years of debugging corrupted code had honed the instinct to a blade. He didn’t just spot patterns. He felt them—like air pressure shifting before a storm.
And right now, the air had that weight. That hum. That rising static.
The kind that only builds when the storm’s about to break.
The numbers sat a few pages from the back—scrawled in thick, black ink. Darker than the rest. A different pen. Slanted left, strokes uneven. Like they’d been written fast, maybe even in a rush.
Amelia exhaled, deflating.
“That’s what you saw?” she asked flatly, unable to mask her disappointment. “I’ve seen it a hundred times. Just more numbers. Science stuff. Who knows what any of it means.”
Marv slowly shook his head.
“No, Ames. You’ve got to trust me on this…”
His finger hovered over the string of digits, reading their rhythm.
Eight blocks. Each one looked like a date.
Three numbers. Two slashes. A space.
Then the pattern repeated.
There were no units. No labels. No key. But to Marv, the pattern wasn’t just obvious—it was loud. He hadn’t been looking for it. But it had practically screamed at him from the back of the book.
He didn’t know what it meant. Not yet.
But he knew one thing:
It wanted to be found.
Amelia leaned in. The hairs on her neck prickled. Her pulse ticked faster—faster.
“What is it, Marv?”
No answer. Just his eyes, locked on the page.
“I’m not sure yet,” he murmured. “But I think it might be…”
He trailed off. The pause held.
“…a cipher.”
The silence that followed felt like a drop. Like the first lurch of a rollercoaster in the dark—sudden and weightless. A plunge you didn’t see coming.
It held. Too long. Not long enough.
Amelia spoke first.
“A cipher?” The word felt foreign in her mouth. “You mean… like a secret code?”
Marv nodded, eyes still anchored to the page.
She shifted, the bed creaking beneath her. A knot of heat and dread was tightening in her gut.
“But… why would my mom hide a code in here?” Her fingers grazed the worn page. “It’s just a science book… right?”
Marv looked up. Finally met her eyes.
“You said she told you it was important, right?”
Amelia nodded.
“Maybe this is why.”
He kept tracing the numbers backward and forwards.
“She gave it to you right before everything went to hell.”
Amelia didn’t speak. Didn’t move.
“Think about it,” he said. “It fits. She wanted you to keep the book. Not just because of her notes, but because she left a message in it. A code. For you.”
Then he stopped.
Not like a full stop. More like a system glitch. A thought crashing into itself.
His brow furrowed. Mouth still open. Words caught—spooled tight at the edge of something that suddenly didn’t make sense.
“Wait…”
He blinked. Once. Twice.
“Just… wait a second.”
Amelia sat up straighter.
“What is it?”
Marv’s shoulders had gone still. But his mind hadn’t. She could see it—racing ahead, too fast for speech to keep up.
“Ames…” he said, low. “How old were you when it happened?”
The question hit her hard.
“Four,” she whispered.
Marv didn’t move. But something inside him stuttered.
His lips parted—then stalled. A flicker of tension moved across his face.
“No…” he muttered. “It can’t have… no way…”
His voice fractured—too many thoughts trying to escape the same exit.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
He shot to his feet and started pacing. One hand on his hip, the other dragging through his hair like he could wrench whatever it was out by force.
Amelia watched.
She wanted to scream. To grab him by the collar and shake the answer loose.
But she knew how Marv’s brain worked.
Pressure wouldn’t help. He didn’t need noise.
He needed time.
He was buffering.
She bit her tongue. Waited.
Then—click.
He stopped moving.
“Listen,” he said. “You’re smart, Ames. Sharp as a tack. No question.”
His eyes dropped to the page—scanning, calculating.
“But no four-year-old on the planet could crack a cipher like this.”
He didn’t look up.
“Your mom would’ve known that. She was brilliant. And you were young. Too young.”
Then he met her eyes—half apology, half revelation.
“The thing is…”
His voice softened.
But the weight of it hit like a stone.
“I don’t think this message was meant for you.”
The air seemed to pull tight. The walls felt closer—like they’d taken a step inward.
Amelia didn’t move. But something inside her did.
Marv was in too deep to stop.
“Your parents… it sounds like they knew something was coming. That’s why they hid you. And your mom—she scribbled this in at the last second. Different pen. Messier handwriting. She was rushing. Running out of time.”
He nodded at the page.
“She gave the book to you, yeah. Told you to keep it safe. But come on—no way someone like her thought a four-year-old could crack this on her own.”
His voice dropped.
“The only viable conclusion is that she wrote that code for someone else. Probably an adult. Which means—”
“Someone else was supposed to find me,” Amelia whispered.
The silence stretched, taut as wire.
Then Amelia spoke—words clawing through fog.
“But, Marv…”
Her fingers curled deep into the bedsheet, bracing for something she could already feel coming. Her mind reeled. Her throat was dry. Her voice barely reached the air.
“The police found me…
…no one came.”
And right then—in that exact breath—Amelia Swanson’s world tilted. Not just the room. Her life. The story she’d stood on for ten years cracked beneath her. And everything started to fall.
She had spent years looking for the life that she’d lost.
Not just searching. Trying to find a pulse.
Now, in the silence of the moment, she felt it.
She’d found it.
That life was no longer behind her, buried in the shadows.
It was alive.
Its pulse was rising.
And it was looking right back at her.
