Martha became aware of consciousness gradually.

First the sounds, then the voices speaking in low, urgent tones somewhere nearby. The familiar hum of the camp generator, wind moving against the tent fabric.

Then the sensations.

She was lying on her cot, still in her field clothes. Someone had removed her boots and placed a blanket over her. Her head ached with a dull, persistent throb, and her mouth was dry.

Then the memories hit her like cold water.

The wall is breaking and disappearing. The gold and purple bleeding through ancient stone. And the young man floating in the sealed space. His eyes opened, and finding her with absolute certainty.

The name she’d spoken without understanding why.

Martha sat up too fast, the tent spinning around her. She pressed a hand to her forehead and waited for the dizziness to pass.

The tent was her own. Someone had brought her back here, laid her down, and covered her. She checked her watch. Nearly four hours had passed since she’d entered that passage.

She stood carefully, found her boots placed neatly beside the cot, and pulled back the tent flap.

The sunlight hit her eyes like a physical blow. She blinked, adjusting, and took in the scene outside.

Her research team stood in a loose cluster about twenty feet from her tent. Kiera and the others. All of them were present, all of them standing in postures that suggested they were trying to look casual and failing completely.

They weren’t looking at her.

They were looking at him.

He stood perhaps ten feet from her tent entrance, slightly apart from everyone else. He’d found clothes somewhere. Simple ones, dark trousers, and a plain gray shirt that was slightly too large for his frame, probably borrowed from someone on the team without much negotiation. His hair hanging loose on his shoulders also covered his ears.

He was looking at her.

The moment her eyes found his, everything from the cave came rushing back with full force.

The young face carried something behind it that was ancient and immeasurable. His deep black eyes held a lot more than she could comprehend. He had this aura around him that made everyone feel a certain pressure.

Martha’s hand gripped the tent flap hard enough to whiten her knuckles.

Her team noticed she was awake and turned collectively in her direction. The relief on their faces was genuine. Kiera looked like she’d been crying recently.

"Dr. Buchanan." Kiera crossed to her quickly.

"Are you alright? You’ve been unconscious for almost four hours. We were about to call for medical evacuation."

"I’m fine," Martha said automatically. Her eyes kept moving back to the young man, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t looked away.

"What happened in those caves?" Kiera pressed.

"The quake, the collapse, you’re going toward the cliff instead of away. And then he came out carrying you, and we didn’t know—"

"Who is he?" someone else asked from the cluster. Martinez, the geologist. His voice carried the particular strain of someone who’d spent hours trying to get answers and received none.

"He won’t talk to any of us. Won’t say his name, where he came from, or anything. Just stood there and waited for you to wake up."

Martha looked at the assembled team. Ten people, all watching her with varying degrees of fear, confusion, and scientific curiosity.

They were all good people. Competent researchers who trusted her judgment and followed her lead.

She couldn’t tell them what she knew.

Not until she understood it herself.

"He saved my life," she said carefully.

"I got caught in the cave system when the quake started. He pulled me out."

"From where?" Martinez pressed.

"We searched that area, Dr. Buchanan. There’s nobody camped near those cliff faces. There’s nobody for miles who isn’t on our team or with the military company."

"I don’t have all the answers right now," Martha said, which was entirely true.

"But I’m going to get them."

She looked at Sofia and Dane, standing slightly separate from the main group. Sofia’s expression was carefully neutral, but her eyes held a thousand urgent questions. Dane looked like a man trying very hard not to fall to his knees.

They knew, or so they suspected. They’d spent years believing in this possibility, and now they were standing twenty feet from the confirmation of everything they’d hoped for, trying to act like nothing extraordinary was happening.

"Everybody, can you give us some space?" Martha said, her voice finding its professional authority.

"Take an hour break. Check the equipment, and assess the quake damage to the excavation grids." 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The team dispersed with the particular mixture of relief and reluctance that characterized people being told to do something practical when they desperately wanted to stay and watch the interesting thing happening.

Sofia and Dane moved to follow.

Then she looked at the young man.

*

The four of them filed into Martha’s tent. It was crowded with all of them present. Research maps covered the folding table. Her laptop sat open to seismic data she’d never finished reviewing. Personal items were scattered with the casual disorder of someone who lived in their workspace.

The young man stood near the tent entrance, taking up less physical space than his presence suggested. He looked around the tent with eyes that were cataloging everything, processing, and understanding. His gaze moved across the laptop, the modern equipment, and the maps with their satellite imaging and digital annotations.

For a moment, he believed that he might have gotten back to his previous world, but seeing the people around him, he could tell he was not. The world, to his surprise, had undergone a quiet technological advancement. But for the moment, he was thinking more about the woman who was in front of him, the woman who looked exactly like his Rosaine.

Martha watched him take it all in.

He was younger-looking than she’d expected. Late teens at most, by physical appearance.

She pulled out the folding chair from behind her table and sat down. The young man remained standing.

Sofia and Dane positioned themselves near the back of the tent, neither of them quite able to stop staring. Dane’s hands were clasped in front of him, a gesture Martha had come to recognize as his way of managing overwhelming emotion.

"Everybody out," Martha said.

Sofia’s head snapped toward her.

"Martha—"

"Out."