Andromeda Last

The last tree on Earth died on a Tuesday. I watched it go from a rooftop in what used to be Seattle, the trunk finally giving up and folding into itself like a tired old man lying down for the last time. No ceremony. No announcement. Just a slow, creaking collapse that kicked up a cloud of dust so fine it looked like smoke.

I lit a cigarette and let the smoke join it.

Three days later, the aliens showed up.

They didn't come with fire and light shows. No dramatic descent through the clouds, no ultimatums broadcast on every screen. One morning the sky just had a hole in it. A perfectly circular tear, like someone had taken a cookie cutter to the fabric of the atmosphere, and through that hole I could see stars that weren't supposed to be there. Stars that didn't match any constellation I'd ever mapped on those long nights when sleep was a luxury I couldn't afford.

The government called it an anomaly. The scientists called it a wormhole. The religious called it judgment day.

I called it an opportunity.

My name is Alexander. I don't use my last name anymore, not since the Purges made having a family history a liability. I deal in information, mostly. Trade secrets, black market coordinates, the location of the last fresh water sources that haven't been claimed by the corporations. I'm good at finding things people don't want found. Better at disappearing when the finding gets too close to home.

The hole in the sky was the biggest thing to happen since the Dust started. Everyone wanted to know what it was, where it led, who was on the other side. Everyone had questions.

I had answers for sale.

The client met me in the ruins of a bookstore, which felt like a sick joke. Shelves of paperbacks turned to mulch, pages scattered across the floor like dead leaves. She stood by what used to be the philosophy section, picking through a copy of Camus with fingers that still had clean nails. That told me more than any introduction could. Clean nails meant she had access to water. Regular access. The kind of access that came with money or power.

"You're the one they call the Ghost," she said. Not a question.

"I'm the one who knows things." I pulled a book off a shelf, let it fall open. The pages were blank. The ink had long since bled away. "What do you need?"

She turned. Dark hair pulled back tight. Eyes the color of old copper. A scar ran from her temple to her jaw, clean and deliberate, like someone had drawn it with a blade. "I need to know what's in that hole."

"Everyone does."

"I need to know how to get through it."

I closed the book and put it back. "That's a different price."

She reached into her coat and pulled out a photograph. A man. Late fifties, maybe. Gray hair, kind eyes, a smile that looked like it had been used often. He stood in front of a building I recognized. The old research station in Nevada, before it went dark.

"My father," she said. "He was on the team that opened the hole. He went through it three days ago. No contact since."

"And you want me to find him."

"I want you to take me to him."

I laughed. Couldn't help it. The sound echoed off the empty shelves, bounced back at us like a ghost. "You don't know what you're asking. That hole isn't just a door. It's a wound. Nobody knows what's on the other side. Nobody knows if there's air, or gravity, or if you'll come out the other side as a puddle of meat."

"I know." She didn't flinch. "I also know you've been planning to go through it yourself. You've been stockpiling supplies, mapping trajectories, running calculations. You've got a ship ready in the old port district. A modified cargo hauler with a cryo unit you stole from the Mars colony project."

My smile died. "You've been watching me."

"I've been paying people to watch you. There's a difference."

I took a long drag of my cigarette, let the smoke curl around my face. The air tasted like ash and old paper. "What's your name?"

"Doesn't matter."

"It matters if I'm going to die with you."

She held my gaze. Copper eyes steady. "Dr. Elara Vance. Astrobiology. I was on the team that designed the first generation of the hole. I know its structure. Its weaknesses. I know how to stabilize it from the other side."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I find another way." She tucked the photograph back into her coat. "But you'll die here. On this rock. Watching the last things die around you until there's nothing left but dust and memory."

She wasn't wrong.

I'd been running calculations for six months. Running them over and over, trying to find a future that didn't end with me suffocating in a bunker or getting shot by corporate security. The hole was the only variable I hadn't accounted for. The only wild card that might change the equation.

"What's your father doing on the other side?"

She hesitated. First crack in the armor. "He's looking for a new home. We've been monitoring the signals coming through the hole for weeks. There's a planet. In the Andromeda system. Earth-like atmosphere. Liquid water. Stable orbit."

"Andromeda. That's two and a half million light years away."

"The hole isn't a wormhole in the traditional sense. It's a shortcut. A fold in space. The distance is irrelevant. The travel time is days, not years."

I crushed the cigarette under my boot. "And your father went through alone."

"He was supposed to wait for the team. But something spooked him. Something he saw in the data. He went through without authorization. Now he's out there, and the signals are getting weaker, and I need someone who knows how to survive in places that want to kill him."

She had me. She knew it. I could see it in the way her shoulders relaxed, just a fraction. The way her hand drifted away from the pocket where she kept something that was probably a weapon.

"One condition," I said.

"Name it."

"We do this my way. I don't take orders. I don't follow protocols. If I say we run, we run. If I say we hide, we hide. You're a scientist. I'm a survivor. Those are different skill sets."

"Agreed."

"Don't agree so fast. You haven't seen what I do when things go wrong."

She smiled. It was a small thing, barely a curve of the lips, but it changed her face. Made her look younger. Made her look like someone who still believed in happy endings.

"I've seen your file, Ghost. I know exactly what you do when things go wrong."

I didn't ask what the file said. Didn't want to know.

"Meet me at the port district. Dock 17. Midnight. Bring your own supplies. I'm not sharing mine."

"I'll be there."

She turned and walked out through the gap where the door used to be. I watched her go, counting her steps. Sixteen before she disappeared into the haze.

I pulled out another cigarette. Stared at the hole in the sky.

Andromeda. Two and a half million years of light, compressed into days. A new world. A new chance.

Or a new way to die.

Either way, it beat waiting for the end on a dead planet with nothing but dust for company.