Signals preceding communication. Listening.

We're here now. I didn't know what to say, but I stayed.

Patch Signal Sensed

She hadn't done this in awhile.

As Wend rose from the final step of the stairs, she gripped the railing at the end, her knuckles white, and stepped onto the roof's fire escape. A cool breeze passed through in the dark and sent her hair and clothes billowing for a moment, seeming to fan her for her effort. She stepped onto the roof and let out a breath, bending over to stretch. It had been a while.

Wend wiped her forehead and straightened up, swallowing. As the dust of her latest exertion settled, the air fell into a tender silence. The sound of movement through the streets, tempered by the quiet of midnight. The buildings below were checkered with warmly lit windows. Miniature scenes of evenings not yet finished. Wend turned and looked about her, the empty rooftop coming into focus against the distant glimmer of the city.

The surface was uneven. Barely perceptible, but there. Smelled like tar. An unfinished beer sat on the ground by the fluorescent lit door—Maybe the super, maybe someone living way up here. She reached into her pocket, gingerly pulled out the worklight, clicked it on. Then off again. She cycled through its brightness and flash modes, reflexive, like flexing a muscle she didn't want to lose. The roof and the treetops below briefly lit up, excessive for a moment, and then dropped back down into the night.

She sat down at the fire escape. The metal was cold and relieving in the summer air. Work, the city, stretching—a preview of what was coming back her way.

Wend clicked on again, the control button firm underneath the tip of her thumb. She looked up over at the horizon where The Patch was, the clouds above it seeming to hold a different kind of light. She tilted her head all the way to one side, then all the way to the other. It looked the same either way.

Another click. A notch lower. Just bright enough to catch the steel. She lingered on this setting, slowly moving the light over the bars that held her. Wend always lingered here. Even when she didn't need to.

Signals, maybe. She pressed her thumbs over each of her knuckles, cracking them. One more click. Then the light went out.

She hadn't done this in awhile. And she wondered if that rooftop remembered her.

---

They don't come from the past.