One Month Ago

Location: California Coast

Reha

Reha liberated the bottom panel from her window's security alarm. She had rendered the delicate wires exposed, vulnerable to her tampering. She had studied this system and knew what she was doing. One wrong move, and the house's alarm would blare out her intentions of escape. But she didn't make mistakes, not with the stakes so high. She got to work, peripheral senses always listening out for the slightest sound from the hall. She listened for a tinkering in the kitchen downstairs, Justine seeking out her cheap, bottom shelf wine at the early morning hour. If Reha didn't despise the woman, she would almost understand the habit. She would drink too if she had to sleep with Jim.

Her bedroom door was locked as always from the outside. Jim and Justine never forgot to barricade it every night. That was fine. It gave her foster parents a false sense of security. The archaic metal lock convinced them she was sufficiently trapped until dawn. What was their listless prisoner child to do with her thin physique and drug fogged mind? There would be no way she could hack the alarm system and escape, or hide the cocktail of Lithium, Risperidone, and Antipsychotic medication they made her take in the back of her throat before spitting it out in the awaiting toilet.

Reha smiled as the alarm fell dormant with a final blink. No longer at risk to awaken her wardens with the ear-piercing snitch, she dropped her few bags down into the manicured grass Jim had to dry out a river to maintain in the California desert heat.

It wasn't an unreasonable drop, but Reha knew the limits of her twig like bones and didn't jump. Instead, she fastened the end of a smuggled extension cord to her bedframe. Before she made her descent, she checked her pocket. The familiar bulge of the Transistor radio was there in her right pocket. She could almost hear her dad's voice, whispered in the static, cheering her out the window.

"I'm coming home, dad." She whispered to the device they had made together when he still graced her and the living world with his smile. They would sit up for hours, listening to strange frequencies from foreign radio stations or old satellites, or, if they were lucky, the strange blip from space. Those times seemed so far away, or at least Jim and Justine wanted her to feel they were.

Mom long dead, and her dad not yet cold in the ground the foster system had swept Reha away. Then came the sweet eccentric couple from California, wanting to open their hearts and home to the unfortunate Southern girl. When she had first met them, Reha could never have imagined the evil that simmered under their alabaster skin. She was a special needs child, and her sort brought good government funding every month to those who knew how to work the system.

She slipped down the cord from her empty room, feet landing silent on the ground with her worn sneakers. She gathered her bags and headed for the garage. The garage door was left open, which was unusual for the paranoid couple. But it was broken.

It was broke because Reha had broken it. A day before, a simple short in the connections did the trick when no one was looking. Jim was a cheapskate and had barked at her to fix it for him, so he wouldn't have to hire someone. She agreed. She told them it needed a special piece to fix and the garage door had to remain open or risk further damage to it. They needed to wait for that special piece in the mail. That piece was not coming.

Using the spare key she had swiped from Jim's junk drawer, she unlocked the Sedan and threw in her bags, and then herself. She didn't start the car, not wanting any sound to rouse the neighborhood, or the car's owners who slept over her head.

She put the car in neutral and let it roll backwards out of the garage. Once on the road, she got out and pushed it from the house. The process was painfully slow, having to jump back into the driver's seat to readjust the wheel as it swayed off course.

When Reha decided she was far enough from Jim and Justine's house she got in for good and shoved the key into the ignition. The engine roared to life, and she shook out her hands with a smile, a nervous tick she indulged in light of the small victory. She pushed the gas and was off from the suburb. No radio or music. Only the silence of the night rumbled in her ears.

Reha let out a scream of triumph. She was laughing, almost manically. Three carefully calculated years, and she had executed her escape. She was free.

Though happier than she had been in years, she wasn't out of the woods just yet. She had to travel as far as possible through the night and next morning, making a B line for the East Coast. It would be late Sunday morning when Justine would claw herself from her tangle of comforters and her own hang over and maybe release Reha from her room. She often forgot to unlock the door until Reha started to bang on the floor. If she was lucky, they wouldn't notice the car or her absence until noon. She would be in Nevada by then. They would call the cops, but Reha had her Transistor radio to listen out for law enforcement frequencies. She turned on the device and left it to cycle through its channels as a precaution. Reha wasn't above believing Justine would wake up, knowing something was amiss. Maybe she would smell Reha's disability check fading over the horizon with the car.

She remained most comfortable with her own thoughts, so she listened to the hum of the Transistor and went over her plan. Lay low, only stop to eat, refuel, and pee once a day. She had money she managed to collect from odd jobs and hide away from Justine. If she was careful, it would carry her to North Carolina. Then she would ditch the car, change her name, and start over.

The 'Welcome to Nevada!' sign came and went, and the hours lulled together in a blurred din of Transistor white noise. Sometimes the radio would buzz with a quiet transmission. Once a police frequency came close and she pulled into a parking lot to wait for the cruiser to go by. Now on the open road, empty Nevada desert stretched out before her. The effects of Justine's caffeine pills Reha had taken were wearing off.

She rolled the window down and let the cool night air ruffle her wild afro. The Transistor picked up a Spanish speaking host before the frequency was pulled back into oblivion. The stars overhead, cool wind in her hair and the buzz of the Transistor radio. "Just like old times, eh dad?" she mumbled out loud. She sighed at the silence. She recalled the old days with a grin, not letting grief into her heart. That could be delt with later when she was strong enough to face it. A clear night like this was perfect for her dad. A space nerd at heart, who had successfully passed on the interest to his only daughter. They would spend hours locating satellites and joking about aliens. The latter of which her dad claimed to be the real reason behind the Transistor radio she now carried.

"You never know," her dad had chuckled all those years ago. He fiddled with the dials of the Transistor that warm North Carolina night. "What if someone out there is trying to say 'hello'? It's good to listen, just in case."

She shook her head, slapped at her own face to fight off the fatigue. "just make it to the next State," she reasoned with herself. Then she could find a nice desolate place to park out of sight and pass out. Despite her resolve her eyes were heavy, the quiet hum of the Transistor lulling her like a lullaby.

The Transistor radio screeched.

Reha startled. Her nerves already stretched tight, ready to snap, she jerked the wheel hard to the right. It almost sent her careening into a ditch. With trembling hands, she put the car in park and snatched the Transistor from the floor where tricipital force had carried it.

The sudden jumbled shrieks her device unleashed was like nothing she had ever heard. Her anxiety began to catch up. Had it broken, leaving her without the only means of staying ahead of her pursuers? She adjusted its dials, but it continued to cry out.

She pushed her weight into the car door and got out. The desolate highway was quiet, not even graced with a chirping cricket.

When she turned her body with Transistor in hand, the sound changed. It crackled in succession. Numbers and coordinates. She recognized the equations in the gibberish. No human voices of any dialect greeted her. The frequency was foreign. Other worldly. Whatever the source was, it was scrambling her device, and the signal was strongest where she had come. Deep in the Nevada Desert.

Reha stood on the side of the road, her feet cold, feeling fused with the asphalt. Her heart was heavy, like Justine had injected liquid led in her veins to make her sluggish and to keep her from running any farther. No matter how much she tried to reason what she was hearing, there was no denying it.

The signal wasn't coming from any known, terrestrial source.

Her dad would be screaming, doing backflips with Transistor in hand. He wouldn't hesitate. He would have jumped back into the car and flew down the road to find the source.

But her dad wasn't with her, and she was on the run.

Reha gazed away from the signal. She was only a few hours from the Utah boarder. In little under a week, she could be standing on North Carolina soil again. She could smell the salty air of the coast or stand in the wind kissed waves.

She turned again. The signal flared. Urgent and pleading. Was it just her, or was whatever calling trying to ask for help? Once that thought wormed into her brain, she couldn't dispel it. It was pulsing out its alien message. Beckoning.

She was only one state away from her Foster parents. That wasn't nearly far enough. But this wasn't just any other signal. What if it wasn't just a fluke? What if there really was something otherworldly calling out. The Transistor didn't pick up any other frequencies, so she was the only one in the area. The only one to hear the call.

"What if someone out there is trying to say 'hello'?" she whispered, quoting her dad's favorite saying.

Resolve and adrenaline chased away her weariness. Reha jumped back into the car and brought the engine to life. She stepped on the gas, sending rocks and dust up into the air as she spun the car around. Utah was at her back, and she raced into the Nevada desert under the light of the moon and the urgent calling of whatever beckoned. She was risking her freedom, her future, everything, to determine the source of the signal. She recalled her dad's smile. Her own wonder as she gazed at the stars from his lap as a child, wondering if there was someone else gazing back. She decided finding the transmissions source was worth the risk.


Present Day

Location: Earth, Nevada Desert

With a final exasperated grunt, Reha yanked the scavenged solar panel onto the shack's tin roof. "Ha HA!" she exclaimed. She usually wasn't one for outward expression, but after failing to lift the awkward and sensitive piece of equipment onto the shack's roof, and falling off herself once, she had earned the right to do whatever she wanted.

"Think it'll work?"

Reha startled at the invading voice at her back. She lost her balance and toppled off the roof for the second time that day. The short fall saved her from anything worse than a bruised ego when she hit the unforgiving Nevada desert dirt.

She moaned in her heap, not ready to face the man who had scared her, or the rest of the day's work for that matter. A breath hitched in her throat when she felt a hand on her wrist. "Ya ok?" her tormenter asked, failing to hide the smirk from his dirty face.

"Yeah," she stumbled to her feet and shook away from the man's touch. "You just scared me, Darrel." She had to shake out her hands a few times to express the nervous energy the ridiculous scenario had built up in her muscles.

The local man rubbed at the stubble on his chin. She winced at the short scratching sound it made. "Ya didn't hear my junk engine truck rumbling up the road?" he wondered, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at the mangled flatbed behind him.

She shook her head and flitted her eyes away from his face, already done with the conversation. "I'm focused when working."

"I see you're busy, but I'm checking on the engine you promised."

Reha hurried under the shack's tarp doorway. She snatched the scavenged engine from next to her bed/dining table. She had fixed it for Darrel in exchange for machine parts she couldn't find in the scrapyard and a few cups of instant ramen noodles. Once outside, she fired it up to prove it worked.

"I got to tell ya kid," Darrel said, pausing to light a cigarette. Reha scowled at the smoking stick in the man's mouth. Her foster mother smoked the same cheap brand. The familiar scent made her want to peel at her skin in revulsion. "I wasn't sure what to make of ya when you rolled into town last month… but you're some kind of mechanical marvel. I thought the only nerdy kid was that four eyed thirteen-year-old that comes by for parts every now and again."

"I'm 17," she reminded him. It wasn't the first time Darrel had called her a kid.

Darrel coughed through his laughter. "Yeah, so you've said. But no matter the reason you blew into town, I'm grateful. Your repurposed engines are getting lots of lookers. People keep asking who's fixing them for me."

The fear on Reha's face must have been prominent because Darrel put up his hands reassuringly, "And I didn't tell anybody. Whatever secrets you're keeping are still safe."

Reha let out a breath of relief, though the emotional reprieve didn't last long. Darrel loaded the engine into his flatbed truck and came back to wander the small patch of desert she currently called home. "So, I recognize some of this stuff you're working on from things I've dumped out here. Get anything good from the scavenge yard?"

She followed Darrel's gaze towards the shadowed plateaus not far from her camp. "Yeah, actually. I'm surprised how much good electronics are thrown out there. Hardly anyone picks there, which is a plus."

Darrel gave a snorting laugh, "Ya know why no one comes round here, right? Locals say it's haunted," he explained despite her not asking. "Beyond that it's dangerous as all heck. Rocks fallin' from the top. Small earthquakes. People say they hear massive footsteps just around the rocks."

"Whatever works to keep people away," Reha said with a shrug. Then she noticed she was talking to no one. Darrel had moved onto something else. Her most recent work, and most important, was his next target for scrutiny.

"I see this monster is coming along?" he said after knocking on the metal construction.

Reha sighed. She knew she should have covered it with a tarp before she went to work on tuning the roof's solar array. If she had, she would be avoiding the conversation. "The communication and energy refractor. Not done." She explained.

Darrel knocked on it again and whistled. "You still tryin' to call aliens with this thing?"

"I guess it could be used for that," she said with a shrug. Then she realized he may have been being sarcastic. "But it's still just to pinpoint the energy flux I tracked here a month ago. It's the reason I'm set up in the middle of nowhere." She almost said more, though let the explanation drop, along with her gaze. She still wasn't far enough from California and had wanted to reach the east coast… but the strange radio signal she had gotten a month ago had stuck in her head the moment her Transistor radio picked it up. It was a signal she had never seen before, even after years of frequency tinkering and monitoring satellite chatter. She was well hidden and convinced herself she had enough time to find the source.

She startled backwards when Darrel burst into a fit of wheezing laughter. "You sure you don't want to stay around here? You'll fit right in with the rest of the space nerds moving in! This used to be a nowhere town until these conspiracy nuts started to pore in, looking for giant robots and spaceships. I say why not? Crazy or not, it's bringing in business!"

Reha scowled at him. "I'm open to fix whatever else you have. I'm starting to run low on cash." She offered, taking a step back in hopes he would get the hint and leave.

Darrel nodded and headed for his truck. He pulled something from the passenger seat and threw it in an arch with a "Head's up!" She scrambled to catch it. Another instant ramen, and a can of monster energy. "Not much, I know. But, call it extra thanks."

Reha straightened. "Thanks."

Darrel gave a thumbs up and got into his truck. It roared to life and dust flew from under the tires. He stopped next to her and cranked the window down. "By the way, I pulled more of these down from around town," he offered her a small stack of wrinkled papers. Her own sunken eyes staired back at her from the 'missing' posters in her hands. She could feel her body shaking despite the heat. "There's still one in the police station, but not much I can do about that one. Whatever you're running from, I hope you get it all sorted. See ya round Reha, and don't talk to any aliens while out here alone!" he laughed at his own joke as he drove off.

Reha didn't look her missing poster in the eye before ripping it down the middle. She threw it onto the pile of flammable junk she intended to burn for warmth that night.

Her foster parents still had people on her tail. She had to move. "But I need to finish the device before I keep running," she whispered to the desert. She was too close to stop tracking what had called her here. She often hated her obsessive personality. It was now currently standing in the way of her continued journey east. But this signal she had picked up… she just had to find it. After that, she would keep running. "Just a little while longer."