MalloS

She turned.

Mallos had taken half a step towards her already, but for some reason the sound of his name froze his feet and sent a spark of adrenaline crackling up his spine. Danger, an unidentifiable voice in his mind warned him, with no explanation or weight behind it. Before he could analyse that, Croe had closed the gap between him, her fingers brushing his cheek. He reached up and closed his hand over hers, feeling the familiar shape of her fingers and knuckles. Their foreheads touched, eyes locked, the strange alien world around them melting away.

Her first question wasn’t the one he would have asked, under the circumstances, but it was at least one he could answer. “Sixam,” he breathed, wrapping his arms around her waist as she curled hers around his neck. She smelled of the sea, the way she had when they’d first met.

The name may mean something to Croe or it may not. Although only a short distance from Earth, Sixam wasn’t much of a destination for tourists or professionals: nothing much survived the unforgiving terrain. Nothing any sane person would want to encounter, anyway. Like the moon, one side of it always faced the sun it orbited, baking the surface like an oven. Fortunately for the pair of them, they’d landed on the dark side of the planet where the nights were endless and the sun never rose.

He pulled back a little at her second question, cupping her face with his hand, considering. What was reality, anyway? He leant in and kissed her firmly, deeply. He ran his hand round to the back of her neck and through her hair, and pulled back just enough to grin at her.

“Feels real to me,” he remarked.

Mallos started to lean in to kiss her again, but a gleam up on the cliffs behind her caught his eye and he leant back again, looking past her. Up on the bluffs, high above them, a small, glass-fronted building was nestled into the cliffside. A slight frown creased Mallos’ brow as he studied it. He knew what it was - the base the Council of Originals had built centuries ago for general visitation purposes – but something about it felt… off. His skin tingled, and not in the good way it did whenever Croe was touching him. Wordlessly, he took hold of her hand, interweaving his fingers between hers, and started towards the base off the cliff. It was a relatively easy scale, with conveniently placed paths and rocks, although he did have to drop her hand regretfully part way up. At the final lip, he turned and gave her a hand up – not because she needed it, but because it gave him an excuse to take hold of her and not let go.

The scene that greeted him, when he turned to face it, was like something from a horror movie. The whole front of the building had been glass, once. That glass was now scattered into millions of pieces all over the floor, crunching underfoot as they stepped through the gaping hole. The furniture inside had been blasted back, some of it splintering on impact against the walls. All of the lightbulbs had shattered, leaving lone wires hanging from the ceiling. Without letting go of Croe’s hand, Mallos manoeuvred himself into the centre of the room, then turned and walked back towards the hole in the wall. In the glow of the bioluminescence, the broken glass glittered like crystals on the floor. The window had been smashed from the outside so completely that none of it was still standing.

Something had happened here. Something important. Sixam wasn’t just some random location the universe had thrown the two of them into. It was important – the key to unlocking the hazy memories locked beyond reach. He knew it.

He knew something else, too.

“I was here.” He thought aloud, twisting round to look at the room again. “I was here when this happened.”