Tiera's Earth (Andromeda 9 Book 1)

by Ethan T. Marston

  “This one says ‘miss’ for some reason,” Samuel said as he entered the kitchen, then set the box on the floor. He was wearing athletic-looking shorts and a large t-shirt—though it looked like he had ripped the sleeves off, then stretched the holes so that they almost reached his waist.

  “It probably says ‘misc.,’ as in miscellaneous,” their mom explained. “And what are you doing in that shirt again? I told you to throw it out—you look like an immodest hobo!”

  “I was running, Mom. Would you rather I go shirtless?” Samuel lifted the bottom of his shirt and used it to wipe the sweat off of his face, much like their mother had done with her apron earlier—except he revealed a large expanse of mocha skin in the process. He flexed what he probably thought were impressive abs, and Tiera laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Samuel said, quickly covering himself back up.

  “You’re a dork,” she said good-naturedly, careful not to fan the fire of his teenage insecurities. “I should visit you more.”

  “Basically. How long are you staying?”

  “Just until tonight. Natalie and I are getting ice cream around eight.” Tiera didn’t want to weird her family out with the details of the stakeout.

  “Why didn’t you say so before?” their mom cut in. “We’ll have to have dinner right now if you want to make it back in time!” She dumped the rest of the utensils she was sorting into a large drawer and pulled her keys out of her apron pocket.

  “It’s only five o’ clock—we have plenty of time,” Tiera said, looking down at her mom’s brown pixie cut as she followed her out of the room.

  “We have plenty of time because we’re leaving now,” her mother said. “What do you want to eat? Mexican? Italian? Sushi?”

  “Ugh—not Mexican,” Samuel complained, catching up to them. “And can I take a shower first? I’m pretty sure I reek.”

  “Just put some deodorant on,” their mom said at the same time that Tiera said, “Do you not like Mexican? You are Mexican.”

  “I’m sorry, do you love gumbo because you’re black? Mexican is all I ate till I was like, nine years old.” Samuel ran up the stairs, then returned moments later smelling strongly of some sort of body spray. “I still remember my birth dad’s old restaurant. So gross!”

  “Let’s go for sushi then,” Tiera said. I probably would have known all that if I visited more often. Tiera tried not to feel too guilty though—she hadn’t lived at home since she was 22, and that was only a year before her parents had adopted Samuel.

  They all piled into her mom’s car, and Tiera admired the varied architecture around her as her mom drove. Daybreak was a fairly new housing development—or town . . . thing—that was made up of lots of different styles of homes, from contemporary condos to French colonials with wrap-around porches. But as they drove to Tsunami—the sushi restaurant—Tiera soon lost track of any of her surroundings.

  What’s going to happen tonight? She thought about it over and over, until she just itched to leave and find out.

  Unfortunately that just made dinner drag on even longer.

  When her mom had finally paid and they all piled into the car, Tiera asked her mom to drop her off at the nearest TRAX station.

  “Oh! I can give you a ride all the way to Salt Lake if you like. Which ice cream place are you going to? Or would you rather I drop you off at your place?”

  “I have a UTA pass, Mom, you really don’t need to drive me.” Tiera tried to keep her tone calm—to mask the fact that she was bristling with impatience.

  “Driving is faster—and don’t pretend you don’t care about what’s faster. You’ve been acting like I’m holding you hostage practically since you got here.” Tiera’s mom gave her a sideways glance from the driver’s seat.

  Guilt overpowered any impatience Tiera was feeling. I already don’t visit enough. I don’t need to act like I don’t want to be here. “I’m . . . sorry. It’s not that I don’t want to be here, it’s just—”

  “You’re chasing some story tonight, aren’t you?” her mother said, sounding pleased with her own powers of deduction.

  “Wha—yes. How did you know?”

  “You can never sit still once you’ve realized you don’t know something,” she explained. “Not since we first got you.” Tiera’s mom paused for a second, then smiled to herself. “You know, whenever you’d have a panic attack we would just pull out a copy of National Geographic or turn on some space documentary. It would calm you down faster than anything else we could do. Thank goodness for your curiosity!”

  “Yeah,” Tiera mumbled her agreement, thinking of what trouble her curiosity might get her into this time. “Thank goodness.”

  “Sooooo we’re all going to Salt Lake?” Samuel piped up from the back seat. Tiera had almost forgotten he was there.

  Their mother was silent, probably hoping Tiera would answer. She’s right . . . driving would be faster, she thought to herself.

  “Yeah,” Tiera finally said. “You can drop me off at City Creek—I’m meeting Natalie at Farr’s.”

  “Sweet! Can we stop by The Running Company? I need new running shoes.” Samuel stuck his foot between Tiera and their mother’s seats to show how worn his old shoes were.

  “We just got you new shoes! What have you been doing to them?”

  “I’ve been running, Mom. And you got me these last year.”

  Tiera’s mother and brother bickered about whether Samuel really needed new shoes for most of the ride north. By the time they reached City Creek Mall, Tiera’s mom realized that her argument was falling apart about as much as Samuel’s shoes were, and she finally gave in.

  “Bye, guys! I love you! Thanks for the ride!” Tiera tried to cut in over Samuel’s sounds of celebration as she stepped out of the car. They were stopped at a red light between the mall and Temple Square, and she figured this was as good a place as any to get out.

  “Oh—love you too! Make good choices!” Tiera’s mom shouted her familiar parting words just before the door shut, which effectively muted Samuel’s grateful ranting.

  Tiera stepped gingerly around the parked cars that separated the street from the sidewalk—she didn’t want to set off any sensitive car alarms—then made her way over to Farr’s Fresh Ice Cream. The creamery was technically a part of the City Creek Mall, but it faced the street—and Temple Square. That meant Tiera was just steps away from the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

  It wasn’t quite eight o’ clock, so when Tiera entered Farr’s she immediately claimed a window seat where she could wait for Natalie. There were plenty of interesting people to look at here, most of them either waiting in line to get a hotdog from the restaurant that shared this space or crowding around the soft serve machines that lined the wall, but none of that could keep Tiera from staring out the window. There were a couple small trees in the way, but she could still just barely make out the area where the weird sphere had appeared the last two nights—except she couldn’t see the blue post box anymore. The city must have removed it. That was uncharacteristically fast. Construction projects always seemed to drag on for years in Utah.

  “Hey Tiera!”

  “Oh! Hi!” Tiera was surprised to see Natalie standing right next to her table. She supposed she might have noticed when she walked in if she hadn’t been staring out the window the whole time.

  “I just came straight from work,” Natalie said, thumbing her Disney-themed scrubs. “I mean, I made a little detour at Wendy’s. As much as my inner child would have loved it, I didn’t think ice cream for dinner was a good idea—though I guess I forgot this is a hotdog place too.”

  “Right,” Tiera laughed. “Ready for ice cream?”

  “Is that even a question? Come on!” Natalie pulled Tiera from her seat and steered her toward the line. They grabbed bowls, pulled the levers on whatever soft serve flavors they wanted, and (literally) topped it all off at a buffet of candies and sauces. Tiera went for a peanut butter cup theme, but Natalie’s bowl looked like she
had just grabbed anything she thought sounded good.

  After paying, they sat down and took their first few bites, which was when Natalie finally asked, “So what’s the plan?”

  “Well, they usually show up around nine, but I don’t think it’s an exact science. I figured we’d just watch the area where their light thing showed up and take some pictures or video.”

  “We could do both,” Natalie suggested, pulling out her smart phone. “I could take pictures; you could take video?”

  “Sure!” Tiera was glad Natalie seemed interested enough to be helpful. She probably doesn’t think I’m crazy then.

  “So how close do you want to be? Do you think we could watch from here?” Natalie twisted her head around to look out the window.

  “Probably not—there are trees in the way. And it’ll be dark soon.” Tiera ate another spoonful of ice cream. “I want to be as close as we can without being exactly where it shows up—I don’t want what happened to the post box to happen to us.” Tiera thought for a moment. “And I guess we want to be far enough that they don’t spot us right away. One of them definitely recognized me last time.”

  “Sounds good,” Natalie said, then looked out the window again. “We might be able to hide behind those pillar things at the entrance. Would that work?”

  Tiera tried to see through the trees. “I think so!” She turned back to Natalie, who was scraping the bottom of her paper bowl. “Are you done? We could go out there right now!”

  “Yep! You’re not though,” Natalie said, gesturing toward Tiera’s bowl, still half full of ice cream.

  “It’s hard for me to eat when I’m so anxious,” Tiera admitted, then checked her phone. “You can have it if you want—but bring it with you. It’s 8:20 already and I don’t want to miss them.”

  “Sounds good to me!” Natalie agreed. They both got up and headed out the door, throwing away their trash in the process.

  By the time they had made it across the street, Tiera realized something. “We’re going to look weird, loitering by the entrance like that.”

  “Homeless people do it all the time,” Natalie said dismissively.

  “Yeah, until the doorman asks them to move.”

  “Well we’re not homeless—we’re not even asking for anything. And it’s a public sidewalk.”

  “Right,” Tiera said, though still not convinced. It’d still be best if we had some sort of excuse.

  She and Natalie made their way west until they were at the entrance of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. The entrance had a canopy of sorts, held up by bronze-colored pillars that were thick enough to hide behind, especially if you stood sideways. The rest of the building was startlingly white, with Roman-style columns several stories high set between the windows. Even farther west of the entrance was the patch of sidewalk where Tiera saw the sphere, a little ways before the gated entrance to Temple Square.

  I can’t have been the only one to see it. This is one of the busiest areas of Salt Lake! Tiera thought as she and Natalie positioned themselves behind two of the pillars. They pulled out their phones and tried to look nonchalantly westward. I guess I’ll be the only one to document it.

  They hadn’t been standing there for five minutes when the doorman appeared, just as Tiera had predicted. Tiera tried not to make eye contact.

  “Excuse me,” he said, approaching Tiera. “Can I help you with something?”

  “No, thank you,” she said sweetly before looking west again. Tiera could only risk looking away from her target for a second, but she got a good enough view of the doorman to realize he looked familiar. He was a taller man in his thirties with short, red hair. Is he the same one that was working two nights ago? “We’re just waiting for a couple of friends—uh,” Tiera tried to think. “They’re getting engaged tonight! And we’re supposed to document it, so we’re waiting for them to get here. And the future bride can’t know we’re here, obviously—that’s why we’re kind of hiding. Is that okay?” Tiera risked a sideways glance to gauge the man’s reaction. There are marriages and engagements at the Mormon temple everyday—please buy it.

  His features seemed to relax. “Oh! That should be fine then.” Tiera watched in her peripheral vision as the doorman turn to go, but then he stopped. “Have I . . . met you before, miss?” He kept his tone light, but Tiera’s stomach dropped.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, but Tiera was sure now that this was the doorman she had passed as she ran from this spot two nights ago.

  He waited for Tiera to continue, but when she didn’t he just awkwardly said, “Right. Have a nice night.” The doorman then walked back toward the building.

  Tiera took a deep breath when she heard the door close behind him, but she still shifted her weight from one foot to the other almost constantly. If Goldsmith’s bodyguard suspected me of anything—or even if he didn’t—he might have mentioned me to the police. And if they asked the doorman if he saw me too . . . Tiera’s anxiety over getting in trouble with the cops started to battle her curiosity over the two men and their light sphere.

  The sun was low enough now that Tiera had a hard time seeing anything else as she studied the area above where the post box used to be, but in the midst of that brilliant red-orange light, she thought she saw a flash of—something else.

  “Did you see that?” Tiera asked urgently, this new clue chasing away her anxious thoughts.

  “What? Sorry, I—” Natalie sounded flustered. “Tiera, that doorman hasn’t stopped watching you since he went back inside. And now he’s on the phone.”

  “My phone!” Tiera scrambled to unlock her phone and open the camera app without taking her eyes away from where she saw the something else. I could have recorded that! She finally opened the camera app and started recording a video.

  “Tiera, did you hear me? I think he might be calling the cops. We should go!” Natalie sounded nervous.

  “It’s a public sidewalk,” Tiera reminded her. “Besides, he’d probably call Temple Square’s security first, so we have some time.”

  “Do you really want to explain all this? What if you were right about them suspecting you for whatever messed up the post box?”

  “Natalie.” Tiera was getting annoyed. “My own anxiety is hard enough to handle without all of yours too, okay?” She said all this without looking away from the patch of sidewalk ahead—or her phone’s recording of it.

  After a long pause, Natalie responded with a simple “Sorry.”

  Tiera sighed. “Me too. I—”

  The small flash of something else was suddenly back—but this time it was more than a flash. It expanded outward like a bubble, and Tiera watched the light of the sunset behind it warp and shift. Then she saw the room.

  It was as if this spherical space were fighting between showing the reddish hues of the sunset and the stark white interior of a strange-looking room. Anytime Tiera tried to focus on a specific detail of the room it was suddenly replaced with sunset—she had only been watching it for a few seconds and her head was already starting to spin.

  Tiera heard Natalie gasp. “It’s real!” A rapid series of clicking noises emanated from Natalie’s phone as she took pictures, each one punctuated with a breathy “Oh my heck!”

  Tiera thought she could see movement inside the sphere, but then a sudden voice returned her attention to her immediate surroundings.

  “Could we speak to you ladies for a second? We’re with Temple Square security.” Tiera looked away from the sphere just long enough to see that there were two large men in front of the doors to the Memorial Building on their right. The men would have to walk toward Tiera and Natalie—and past the lip of the building’s entrance—to see what was happening farther down the sidewalk.

  “Sure, come on over,” Tiera said, watching the movement in the sphere take on two distinct forms. It must be the men in white. Tiera figured it was hard for her to see any more detail because the room inside the sphere was just as white as the two men’s outfits.


  “We’d prefer if you came inside, actually. There’s a police investigation we think you might be able to help us with.”

  “Is it about the black girl who saw what happened to the post box from one of the upstairs bathrooms?” Tiera asked, emboldened by what she saw coming out of the sphere. “Because those two guys know what happened.” Tiera pointed toward the sphere, and the security guards finally moved close enough to see what she saw.

  Two men in brilliantly white jumpsuits emerged from the sphere of fluctuating light, which was becoming more noticeable in the waning sunlight. They were backlit by the light of both the sunset and the room they came from, but Tiera knew they were the same brown-haired and white-haired men that she saw the night before.

  Her phone still recording, Tiera stepped out from behind the pillar that obscured her from their view. “Hey! Who are you two?” she shouted.

  Their heads jerked up as they looked at her, then looked at each other. Without wasting another second, they turned around and walked briskly back to the sphere.

  Should I have expected anything else? Tiera thought, then she sprinted after them.

  “Tiera! Wait!” Natalie shouted from her hiding place, followed by some vague yells from the guards.

  Tiera ignored them. She had a story to chase, and she had already invested too much of herself in this to just let those two get away.

  Tiera watched as the two men made contact with the sphere, entering it and continuing forward into the room. She was still a few yards away when she realized the sphere was shrinking, but she was close enough to see that the room was warped and stretched across the sphere’s surface just as much as the sunset was.

  Is the room in the sphere or on the sphere? Tiera realized with a start that she didn’t know anything about this thing. If she hadn’t been running at it from less than a foot away at that point, she might have turned back. Too late.