Chapter 90: The Hidden Freezer
It started with a draft.
Not the kind that whispered under broken doors or kissed bare ankles like a ghost. This was sharper — deliberate. Artificial. A slice of cold that didn't belong in open air.
Selene noticed it first.
She stopped just as she reached the ash - strewn lot behind Miller's Meat Processing Plant. Her shoulders stiffened subtly, eyes narrowing toward the building's side wall. A pulse of frost shimmered faintly over her wrist as if her affinity had pricked its ears, alert to something deeper, stranger.
"Wait," she said, her voice as quiet as the cold itself.
Aria turned in the doorway, one hand still braced against the frame, caught mid - step. Her breath hitched — not from fear, exactly, but anticipation. Selene only used that tone when something mattered.
"What is it?" Aria asked, keeping her voice low.
Selene was already moving — graceful, decisive. Her boots made no sound as she swept along the loading dock wall, trailing gloved fingers across frostbitten panels and half - collapsed signage. She paused near a stack of warped crates, something drawing her closer. She knelt and peeled back an old tarp stiff with age, revealing —
A steel door.
Barely visible, nearly fused with the wall behind it. The frame was reinforced, embedded, rimmed with frost so dense it seemed part of the structure itself. No window. No markings — except, as Selene scraped away the rime, a faded engraving emerged:
Miller's Private Stock – Do Not Enter
Smaller text below:
Temperature Regulation Separate from Main System
Aria approached slowly, boots crunching lightly over stray gravel. "You think it's another freezer?"
"No," Selene said, frost creeping down her fingers. She pressed her palm to the keypad beside the door. "I think it's the freezer."
Cracks webbed out from under her touch. A few seconds later, the internal locking system gave way with a mechanical wheeze, gears grinding as ice ruptured something essential inside.
The door groaned open.
Inside was silence. Stillness. Cold — but different.
It didn't sting like the air outside or bite like the main meat locker. This was clean cold. Preserved. Artificial and immaculate, untouched by decay or dust or time. The kind of cold that didn't kill. It kept.
Aria hesitated on the threshold.
The temperature dropped instantly, sliding over her like water. Her breath fogged. Her cheeks tingled. Goosebumps rose beneath her layers, but something else did too —something internal, sharp and reverent. Like stepping into a cathedral.
The light flickered on. Pale, sterile LEDs glowed to life above gleaming steel shelves.
Rows upon rows of them.
Organized. Packed. Still full.
Aria's lips parted. "What the hell…"
Selene stepped past her, eyes sweeping the room like a strategist parsing battlefield terrain. Her expression didn't change, but Aria felt her focus tighten.
Closest to the entrance were cured meats —dozens of them, hung from iron hooks or arranged in wax-lined trays. Salamis. Pepperoni coils. Whole hams encased in cloth. Slices of pancetta pressed between parchment sheets. Goat sausage twisted like rope beside links of dry-aged venison kielbasa.
Selene ran her fingers over one of the packages, reading the label through frost. "Still viable. No degradation."
Aria snapped out of her daze. She opened her dimensional pocket — a shiver of violet mist — and started working.
It felt like looting a museum. Or robbing a time capsule.
Smoked briskets, lamb shoulders, turkey legs — sealed and labeled like artifacts. Smoked mackerel. Cold - packed salmon. A crate filled with smoked eel and trout rested beneath a fragile sheet of ice, almost ceremonial.
Each box, each vacuum - sealed cut, each dated label — it was more than food. It was memory. A snapshot of the world before it fractured.
And all of it was cold. Not dead. Not decayed.
Waiting.
She reached for a box labeled duck confit and hesitated. "Why is this here? Why hide all of it?"
Selene didn't answer right away. She was scanning the upper shelves, expression unreadable. "Miller wasn't preparing for a shortage. He was preparing for a collapse."
Aria swallowed and kept moving.
The next aisle was worse. Or better. She couldn't tell.
Hot dogs. Chicken nuggets. Cooked deli meats, each package pristine: maple - smoked turkey, honey - glazed ham, herb - roasted chicken, bologna, pastrami, roast beef. Stacks of salisbury steak. Even miniature meat pies in gold foil tins — flash - frozen, individually wrapped, absurdly nostalgic.
She choked out a dry laugh. "It's a bunker. A luxury bunker made of meat."
Then she opened a drawer marked Game/Exotics — and stopped breathing.
Rows of organized, labeled packets. Flash - frozen:
Kangaroo tenderloin. Gator tail medallions. Pheasant legs. Frog legs. Rabbit loins. Elk ribs. Quail breasts. Even snake filets, wrapped in sealed parchment.
"Selene," Aria said softly, "Who the hell was this man feeding?"
Selene stepped beside her, gaze lingering on a slab of marinated goose. "Whoever it was… they didn't make it back to claim it."
There was something solemn in her tone. Not mourning, but recognition.
Aira moved on, faster now. More crates. More dimensions of strange abundance. Goat ribs beside bison burgers. Flash-frozen prawn dumplings. Canned seafood chowders and eel stews. Octopus arms coiled in bags of brine. Vacuum - sealed cockles and clams, canned in heavy tin with hand - written dates.
She was sweating despite the cold.
Every step into the freezer felt like sinking deeper into something she couldn't name — some emotion caught between awe and grief. The absurdity of it all — luxury and rot, survival and memory — collided in her chest.
She opened another bin. Inside: eggs.
Delicate, beautiful, and absurd in their abundance.
Duck eggs. Goose eggs. Quail. Ostrich. Even preserved century eggs, black-shelled and sulfur - rich, stacked in airtight jars. Crates upon crates of them, packed with foam to keep each shell whole.
She picked one up — a blue - speckled quail egg. Perfect. Still cold. Still full of life, somehow.
"Selene," she said quietly. "This isn't just food."
"No," Selene murmured. "It's a vault."
They stood in silence, listening to the hum of the sealed chamber. It sounded like breathing.
Aria didn't speak. Couldn't.
Because it hit her — sudden and sharp — that this place didn't just preserve meat. It preserved the idea of before. The indulgence. The rituals. The flavors of memory.
Pancetta like her mother used to sear on cold mornings. Roast duck her sister had tried to make one winter, burning the skin but crying with pride anyway. Hot dogs. Shitty nuggets. Ice - cold beer and greasy meat pies eaten by moonlight. Every piece of it, packed into this tomb of frost and metal.
She clenched her hands, suddenly aching.
The world outside was ash and steel and hollow wind. And this — this freezer was proof it hadn't always been that way. That people had once lived for flavor. For tradition. For the absurd joy of feeding each other.
Something knotted behind her ribs.
Selene didn't speak, but when Aria turned, her gaze was already on her — quiet, still, unreadable.
Not cold. Just… distant.
It made Aria's breath stutter again.
She forced herself to move, pulling the last few crates into the dimensional space. Her magic thrummed quietly, tired but obedient. When she finally sealed it, she felt hollowed out in a way that had nothing to do with hunger.
She stood there, staring at the empty freezer.
"We shouldn't leave it behind," she said without thinking.
Selene tilted her head. "It's sealed. Preserved. If others find it…"
"They'll ruin it," Aria said quickly. Too quickly.
Selene's brows lifted faintly.
Aria looked away. "I just…"
She didn't finish.
Because the truth was, she didn't want anyone else to touch this place. Not because of greed. Not even because of strategy.
But because it meant something. And too much had already been lost.
Selene stepped to the door. She paused, one hand brushing the steel frame — almost like she was saying goodbye.
Then she looked back at Aria. "Come on."
Outside, the wind screamed again, harsh and unwelcome.
Aria hesitated one last second, gaze lingering on the eggs, the shelves, the ancient, perfect symmetry of preservation. Then she stepped out into the cold.
The door sealed behind them with a whisper.
And the freezer slept on — quiet, waiting, full of ghosts.