Chapter 91: Bone Cold
The hallway beyond the freezer groaned under its own silence.
Not emptiness — but something denser. A silence that had weight. It pressed against Aria's skin like water pressure in the deep, like if she breathed too hard, it might snap and spill whatever memory or monster still waited beneath the surface.
Blood had dried in streaks along the tiled floor. Not in pools — no, that would've been too fresh. This had aged. Rust - colored veins twisted through the frost, mapping out old violence like it had meaning. Smeared bootprints ran through them, trailing toward the door at the end. Aria tried not to look too closely. She didn't want to guess how many belonged to one person. Or how many had walked in but never walked out.
The air didn't feel breathable. Thin, like it froze inside her throat before it could reach her lungs. She coughed, soft, the sound swallowed by the cold.
Selene walked ahead, as always. Her boots landed soundlessly even over broken glass and twisted debris. She didn't falter. Didn't pause. Every step was deliberate. Like she knew where she was going, even when no map existed.
Aria hated how steady she looked.
She hated more how much she leaned on that steadiness, without meaning to.
"Back there," she said, her voice catching on frost, "those seals — whatever kept that vault frozen — it wasn't human design."
Selene didn't turn. Her profile was a study in ice and poise. "No," she said simply. "They weren't."
The words felt like they should be followed by something. An explanation. An assurance.
They weren't.
Aria shifted her grip on her blade, glancing at her reflection in its dull sheen. Pale face, tighter jaw. Her breath fogged on the steel.
"You walked through them like they meant nothing," she said. "Like you'd seen them before."
Selene's footsteps slowed, just enough for Aria to catch up. "Because they were nothing. Compared to what's ahead."
The door at the end of the corridor looked like it had been built to keep things in. Wide, reinforced, and disturbingly bent around the handle — like something had tried to escape. Or break through.
Selene reached for it.
"You think there's more behind that?" Aria asked.
"There's always more," Selene replied, and shoved the door open.
The room inside was worse.
It didn't hit all at once. It seeped. The smell. The weight of it. Not rot — there hadn't been flesh in here for a long time. But something else. Lingering. Like a presence had been sealed away with the carcasses, and no one had thought to exorcise it before leaving.
Chains hung from the ceiling, still swaying slightly. Aria didn't see any wind. Didn't feel it either. Machines stood like the bones of extinct beasts, their kill - lines still rusted red. Some had been partially dismantled. Others were clawed through, metal peeled like fruit skins. She didn't want to imagine what kind of tools left those marks.
She took a step inside and froze.
Tracks.
Not bootprints. Not shoes.
Clawed. Wide. Bare.
And still melting the frost where they walked.
"Selene —" she reached out, grabbing her by the arm. "Something's down here."
Selene's eyes flicked to the tracks, then scanned the corners of the room in an instant. Her shoulders shifted, blade already loosening from its sheath. "We're not resting," she said. "We're not safe."
"No shit." Aria drew her own weapon, the hilt familiar and solid in her hand. Her breath was faster now. Controlled, but climbing. "Then why the hell are we still here?"
Selene's lip curved — not a smile. Just the barest tilt. "Because we're scavenging."
"For what?"
Selene didn't answer right away. Her gaze had locked on something in the corner — no, not at it. Through it. Like she was watching something Aria couldn't see.
"Answers."
And then the shriek hit.
It wasn't just sound. It was violence, given voice.
Something screamed through the ventilation above them — a noise too mechanical for an animal, too organic for a machine. A shriek like metal being scraped by bone. Too close.
Aria staggered back instinctively. Selene didn't even flinch.
She drew her blade slowly, frost cracking along its edge like it breathed. The weapon's glow spread into the air, curling into mist — making the cold colder.
"Stay close," she said.
Aria stepped forward anyway. "You don't get to play protector now. Not after freezing me out."
Selene turned her head, calm and sharp. "I'm not protecting you."
"No?" Aria's heart beat like a hammer. "Then what are you doing?"
Selene's eyes narrowed. "Reminding you what's real."
Aria opened her mouth, something bitter and hot rising — but then Selene said it.
"I own you."
The words weren't loud. But they echoed anyway. Deeper than they should've.
Aria's breath caught. Her fingers curled around her blade until her knuckles went white.
"No," she said, but it sounded like a lie — even to herself.
Selene stepped closer. That goddamned glacial grace. "You keep telling yourself that. While your body keeps remembering the truth."
Aria could've slapped her.
Could've screamed.
But the sound in the vents changed again. Louder. Closer.
Claws, maybe. Or legs. Or something worse, dragging itself across rusted steel. They both turned, instinct tightening every muscle.
Backs together. Blades ready.
Breathing in sync. Unwillingly. Unforgivably.
"Do you hear it?" Aria asked, voice low.
"I hear everything," Selene murmured.
"Then why aren't we running?"
"Because it's not chasing us."
That made her blink. "Then what is it doing?"
Selene's voice dropped lower. "It's waiting."
"For what?"
Selene turned toward the center of the room, eyes fixed on the floor.
Aria followed her gaze.
It was a hatch. Square. Subtle. Covered in rust and carved with markings that didn't belong in a meat processing plant. Or in this world.
She stepped closer. The symbols curved in circular lines, not mechanical — ritualistic. Older than the building around them. Older than cities.
"That wasn't on the schematics," she said.
"It wouldn't be," Selene replied.
A loud thump dropped through the vents above them.
Then another.
Heavier.
It was in the walls now.
Selene crouched, pressing her fingers to the hatch. Frost traced the seams, but didn't stick. "We go down."
Aria recoiled. "Are you insane?"
Selene didn't bother answering.
She thrust her blade into the seam — ice spread, cracked, and the mechanism gave with a metallic moan. The hatch creaked open.
A blast of cold rose from below.
But not natural cold.
This was void - cold. Cold that felt like it had intention. Like it pulled rather than pushed.
Aria stared into the blackness.
"You don't even know what's down there."
"No," Selene said.
"Then why the fuck are you going?"
Selene turned her gaze on her.
And what Aria saw wasn't cruelty.
It wasn't apathy.
It was belief.
Conviction, ice-slicked and terrifying.
"Because whatever's above ground — whatever left those tracks, whatever screamed in the vents — it's not the source. It's the symptom."
She dropped without hesitation.
Gone.
Aria stood alone in the echoing dark, breath ragged, eyes on the open hatch.
She was furious.
She was terrified.
She was cold.
But what she hated most — what truly set her blood boiling — was the fact that she still trusted Selene. Somewhere beneath the barbed wire and the venom and the ice, she trusted her. And that was more dangerous than any goddamned monster.
With a grimace, she stepped to the edge, tightened her grip on the blade —
— and jumped.
The hatch slammed shut behind her with a finality that rang through the floor.
No light.
No warmth.
Just the dark.
And the cold.
Bone deep.
And waiting.