Chapter 10: The Shelf That Waited for Her
They found the market by accident.
It was tucked behind a half - collapsed laundromat and a chain pharmacy with melted signs. The front window was split clean down the center like a crack in the surface of a mirror, but none of the glass had fallen out. The painted grocery sign above the entrance was sun - bleached to bone and peeling like old wallpaper. The parking lot was filled with silence. Not emptiness — silence. The kind that hangs in the air after something ends.
Aria stepped through the warped automatic door. The sensor tried to open, hesitated, then twitched sideways and stopped. She slid through sideways, careful not to snag her coat on the rusted metal. The air inside hit her like old breath — cold, stale, and sweet in a way that felt deeply wrong.
Her boots pressed softly into scattered sugar packets and bloated flyers. The lighting hummed overhead, flickering like a thought half-remembered. She heard Selene step in behind her — light, calculated, cautious. The faint sound of a knife sliding back into its sheath broke the stillness.
"I don't think anyone's been here," Aria whispered.
Selene scanned the aisles, eyes sharp. "Someone has," she murmured. "But not recently."
"How do you know?"
Selene crouched beside a smear of something dried and dark near the floral display. A burst juice box lay beside it, crumpled and leaking sugar - stiff threads. She touched the stain and stood. "The blood's dry. And nothing else moved."
They started down the nearest aisle. Everything was almost normal — almost. Boxes sat slightly crooked, like they were holding their breath. Labels peeled upward, reaching toward a source of light that didn't exist. A display of canned peaches sat like an altar, untouched but watched.
Aria hesitated. "It feels like it's… waiting."
Selene didn't answer. She pulled out her knife again and motioned her forward.
They moved methodically. Aisle by aisle. Their eyes flicked to the ceiling, to the floor, to the gaps between shelves. The light didn't touch every corner — some shadows simply refused. Aria's tote bag bounced lightly against her hip, nearly empty now. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it. She was saving that space. For something better.
She reached for a box of crackers and paused. Then closed her eyes.
She felt for that space again — the one she still didn't understand.
It sat just beneath her consciousness, just past her lungs. It was silent, enormous, and listening. A pocket of not - space that folded open at her touch.
The box disappeared from her hand with a flicker like breath in cold air. Gone — without fanfare, without sound.
Selene nodded approvingly. "Again."
Aria moved faster now. She took things carefully, only what wasn't disturbed. Pasta, sealed water bottles, antiseptic wipes, hand warmers, protein bars. Things she'd learned to value. Things that had kept them both alive.
Each time she used the space, it grew easier to reach — like it was learning her, too.
She didn't want to think about what that meant.
"Feels different today," she said, after tucking a can of lentils inside.
Selene adjusted her coat. "How?"
"Like it wants to hold more. Like it's… stretching." Aria flexed her fingers, staring at her palm like it held a second mouth. "It doesn't feel full. Not even close."
Selene watched her a moment longer than necessary. "Or it's growing because it's hungry."
Aria didn't answer.
They reached the freezer aisle. The hum was stronger here, more real, almost comforting. The glass doors were misted with frost. She ran her fingers down one and left streaks of warmth. Inside, frozen meals waited like relics of the old world — TV dinners, fish sticks, shredded cheese fossilized in ice.
Aria stared at the reflection of herself.
"You okay?" Selene asked.
"I want to try something."
She opened the freezer and grabbed a vacuum - sealed bag of tilapia, her breath steaming against the glass. She focused again, the space yawning open inside her like a second lung. She placed the fish inside — let it vanish.
Waited.
Five seconds. Ten.
Then she called it back.
It appeared in her hand again, still cold. Still perfectly preserved.
Selene raised a brow. "Time doesn't move in there."
"It's not just storage." Aria swallowed, her voice dropping. "It's preservation. A world that doesn't follow this one."
She didn't say the rest. She didn't say how sometimes she felt it breathe back at her.
They didn't take much more. Just enough. Aria stored a few last things — a pair of sealed batteries, a wind - up flashlight, a pack of dry ramen. She held them in her hand and let them slip into that space like they belonged there.
And maybe they did.
When they stepped out of the store, the world had changed again.
The light had faded to a bruised lavender, heavy with dusk. The buildings in the distance blurred at the edges, like ink bleeding into wet paper. The wind carried something light and papery — petals, maybe. Or ash.
They walked in silence for a while. Aria watched Selene's shadow flicker beside hers. The edges kept blurring, splitting in two, then rejoining. Like the world wasn't sure how many of them there should be.
"What if I can put people in there?" Aria asked suddenly.
Selene kept walking. "Can you?"
"I don't know."
She waited for Selene to tell her not to try. But the older girl just looked at her with something unreadable behind her eyes. Not doubt. Not fear. Something heavier.
"Do you want to?" Selene finally asked.
Aria hesitated. "I don't know that either."
They passed a bent streetlamp flickering in morse code. Neither of them could read it. A dog barked in the distance, but the sound came from beneath their feet, not ahead of them.
They turned a corner and stopped.
The street ahead was wrong.
A row of buildings on the right side had collapsed, but not into rubble. They were folded. Pressed in on themselves like origami undone mid - crease. On the left, a billboard blinked static, then showed a picture of Aria's face. She blinked. It changed to Selene's.
The siren started.
Not a warning. Not an emergency. It was deeper than that — like it came from the city's spine. Like it had been waiting for them to reach this exact spot.
Aria felt the air pressure drop. Her ears rang.
"That's new," she muttered.
Selene didn't look up. "No," she said slowly. "It's just finally close enough to hear."
The sound vibrated in their ribs, low and constant. The windows along the street trembled. Birds launched themselves into the sky and didn't come down. A man across the street collapsed mid - step, eyes rolling white.
Something was shifting.
Not above. Not below.
Inside.
Aria closed her eyes again.
That space inside her wasn't silent anymore.
It whispered.
Not in words. Not in language.
But she understood anyway.
It was almost ready.
And so was she.