The Envoy

The Envoy

By J.R. Velárdez y J.P. Velárdez

“There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing”.

T. E. Lawrence

Chapter 1: White Noise

Cosquín, Córdoba, Argentina, February 2026.

The noise had ceased to sound like noise. It was a continuous vibration, a low-frequency pressure hammering the base of the skull and rising from the dry earth through the legs of the fifty thousand people surging toward the Cosquín Rock stages. Every movement kicked up reddish dust, clinging to sweat, settling in the folds of clothes, and floating above the grounds like a hot haze that blurred the hills of the Punilla Valley.

The crowd moved in surges between the metal barricades, food stalls, and lighting towers, smelling of beer, sunscreen, roasted meat, and baked dirt. Overhead, thousands of phones strained for signal simultaneously, broadcasting identical fragments of songs that hadn’t even started yet, smiling faces, raised cups, and urgent proof that each person was there, and not anywhere else.

The entire valley seemed to vibrate at the exact same frequency.

Except for her.

Tomás spotted her while waiting in line to enter. In the middle of the human tide pushing forward like a massive, writhing serpent under a hundred-degree sun, she was walking in the opposite direction, carving a path effortlessly, as though physical contact couldn’t touch her. No one actively stepped aside, yet bodies seemed to veer away before making contact, as if the crowd implicitly recognized an invisible obstacle.

She had blonde hair, an unnaturally pale complexion beneath the harsh afternoon glare, and a pair of gray eyes that swept over him from head to toe with scanner-like precision.

As she passed, she brushed against him. It was a brief contact—barely the graze of a forearm—but Tomás felt a static discharge that set his hair on end: a dry, electric jolt.

She offered a faint smile—the shared confidence of someone in on a private joke—and, without a word, sat on the sparse grass beside a perimeter fence.

Tomás stopped dead in his tracks, completely ignoring the shoves and curses from the people behind him yelling at him to keep the line moving. He barely registered the impact of shoulders against his own.

He watched her from a distance: she wasn’t looking at the main stage where a metal band was soundchecking, nor was she looking at her phone. She simply sat with her knees pulled in, observing the crowd with a serene focus, like someone watching a fire from a safe distance.

Tomás hesitated for a fraction of a second, then abandoned his friends in line and walked toward her.

“You’re walking the wrong way,” he said, catching his breath.

She raised her eyes toward the stage.

“The view is better from here,” she replied, offering a vague gesture toward the light towers.

Her voice cut through the din with disconcerting clarity. Tomás could distinguish every syllable, even as he struggled to make out the announcements booming from the loudspeakers.

He glanced back at the entrance. The line, the stalls, and the people seemed to have receded several meters—or perhaps it was just the shade of the steel framework and the momentary relief of escaping the crush.

“Did you come alone?”

“I came with people. They’re somewhere else.”

“Mind if I sit?”

“Go ahead.”

He sat on the grass beside her. From this vantage point, the festival felt different. Smaller. Farther away. As if the volume of the world had dropped a few decibels below a threshold of safety.

“I’m Tomás.”

He extended his hand, expecting a formal greeting, but she closed the distance and kissed him on the cheek.

Tomás froze. The softness of her lips felt electric, a subtle, brief vibration like the static preceding a lightning strike.

“Irina,” she said.

Her scent threw him off too. It wasn’t a commercial perfume, nor the reek of sunscreen and sweat dominating the grounds; Irina smelled of an odd mixture, something botanical and medicinal, akin to the ozone saturating the air after a sudden downpour, but with a sweet, magnetic undertone.

“Are you by yourself?”

“No. With two friends, but I seem to have lost them.”

“It’s never good to miss the beginning of things,” she said with a half-smile. “You should go.”

“Why?”

“Because beginnings are rare. After that, everything becomes routine.”

Tomás narrowed his eyes. He looked at her a second longer than discretion dictated.

“Will you be here when the show ends?”

She shrugged.

“Who knows these things,” she replied.

The sound snapped him back, returning him briefly to his surroundings while the warmth of her kiss lingered on his cheek. Out of pure reflex, he pulled out his phone with an urgent need to capture the moment before the crowd swept him away again.

“Can we take a picture? Just for...”

“We can,” she interrupted.

Tomás snapped the selfie.

He looked at the screen to check the shot before saving it. The image took a fraction of a second longer than usual to render.

On screen, he appeared crisp, wearing his black t-shirt with his skin flushed red by the sun. But beside him, Irina’s figure was a unsettling sight. Though her features were visible, they were encased in a chromatic distortion—a halo of grainy interference that pixelated the air around her body, warping the background landscape into a tremor the camera sensor was incapable of anchoring.

“What the hell,” Tomás muttered, restarting the app. “Must be the signal. Everything’s jammed...”

At that exact instant, the crowd erupted into a single roar as the headlining band took the stage. The ground vibrated violently, and the human tide, reignited by the first chords, surged forward in a massive shove that pulled Tomás toward the center of the bottleneck.

Surrendering to the chaos of pressing bodies, he turned around on pure instinct before losing her completely. Irina remained in the exact same spot, small and unshakable. Only she was no longer watching the mass of people or the stage. She was looking at the sky.

Tomás had the strange sensation that she wasn’t gazing at the stars.

She was waiting for something to happen.