The Orb of Terra
Copyright© 2025 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 3: Red Stone Silence (Part Three)
The town wasn’t on most maps.
That was the first thing Ty liked about it.
It squatted at the edge of the desert like it had been forgotten on purpose—one main road, a handful of buildings that had stopped pretending they were temporary decades ago, and a gas station whose sign flickered not because it was broken, but because nobody bothered fixing it anymore.
Eldora, Nevada. Population: who knows, who cares.
Ty crested the last rise just before dawn, the town spread out below him in a shallow basin of dust and sodium-vapor light. He stopped there, pack still on his shoulders, and let himself watch it for a moment.
After hours of canyon silence, the town felt loud even in sleep. A generator coughed somewhere. A semi downshifted on the highway a mile off. A dog barked once and then decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
Civilization.
He hated how quickly his body relaxed at the sight of buildings.
That bothered him more than the orb.
He adjusted the pack straps and started down.
The first person he saw was a woman unlocking the door to the diner. She was older—late fifties maybe—gray hair pulled back tight, posture straight in a way that suggested she’d learned early not to rely on comfort. She glanced up as Ty approached, her eyes assessing him with the practiced efficiency of someone who’d lived her whole life at a crossroads of strangers.
She clocked the pack. The boots. The way he moved.
Not afraid. Not curious.
Just aware.
“Mornin’,” she said, voice rough with years of coffee and desert air.
“Morning,” Ty replied.
“You hiking or running?”
Ty almost smiled.
“Hiking,” he said. “Running would’ve been faster.”
She snorted and unlocked the door the rest of the way. “You’re early. Coffee’s on, food’s a minute.”
“That’s fine.”
She paused, studying him more closely now. “You look like hell.”
“Thank you.”
“Compliment,” she said, pushing the door open. “Means you survived something.”
Ty stepped inside.
The diner smelled like grease, old wood, and something sweet that reminded him vaguely of his grandmother’s kitchen—before life had gotten complicated. Booths lined the walls, vinyl cracked and patched. A counter ran along one side, stools bolted to the floor. A radio murmured quietly from behind the counter, some early-morning news voice talking about markets Ty didn’t care about.
He slid into a booth near the window and set his pack beside him, keeping it in contact with his leg.
The woman brought him coffee without asking.
Black.
He wrapped his hands around the mug. The heat sank into his palms in a way that felt grounding, almost sacred.
She leaned against the counter, watching him.
“You come out of Red Stone?” she asked.
Ty nodded.
“Alone?”
“Yes ma’am.”
She shook her head slowly. “People don’t do that.”
“I did.”
Her eyes lingered on his face, then drifted—just briefly—to the pack.
“You see anything strange out there?” she asked, casual as a weather report.
Ty stilled.
“Depends what you mean by strange.”
She smiled, thin. “Fair.”
She turned and went back to the grill, cracking eggs with practiced flicks. Ty watched her reflection in the window as she worked, the way she moved without hurry, without wasted motion.
Military?
No.
Something adjacent.
Someone who had learned order because chaos had been expensive.
He took a sip of coffee.
It tasted better than it should’ve.
His mind kept drifting to the shadow in the sky. To the thin whine. To the prism nestled deep in his pack, pulsing every so often like it was checking in on him.
He focused on the diner instead. The chipped salt shaker. The laminated menus curling at the edges. The bulletin board near the door with handwritten notes: ROOM FOR RENT, MECHANIC AVAILABLE, DON’T FEED THE BURROS.
Normal.
He needed normal.
The woman slid a plate in front of him—eggs, bacon, toast. She poured herself coffee and sat in the booth across from him without asking.
“Name’s Mara Cole,” she said. “I own this place. Which means I own everyone’s business until they leave town.”
Ty nodded. “Ty.”
“Just Ty?”
“That’s enough.”
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