Chapter 94: The Bloom Expands
Location: Southside Harbor → Miller's Meat Processing Plant → Outskirts
The van creaked under the weight of their haul, its suspension groaning like some half - buried beast unearthed and forced into motion. The sound was steady, rhythmic, like bones grinding beneath the skin of the world. Selene kept both hands on the wheel, her eyes fixed on the cracked road ahead, every jolt echoing through the frame like a distant threat approaching.
Twilight was falling fast. The kind that painted everything with the sickly amber of dying fires. The road ahead shimmered with heat ghosts, but the sun was already gone — swallowed behind clouds, smoke, or something worse.
Southside Harbor receded in the mirrors. Its once - mighty skyline collapsed into silhouette, jagged like broken teeth. Towers stripped to their steel bones. Rooftops hollowed by fire. The last light of day caught on shattered windows, turning them into slow - blinking eyes that watched them leave.
Inside the van, the air was saturated. With dust. With blood. With silence.
And with something else.
A pressure, subtle but growing. The kind of tension that didn't come from any weapon or enemy. It came from within.
Aria hadn't spoken in nearly an hour. She sat motionless in the passenger seat, arms crossed over her chest, her legs angled slightly away from Selene as if bracing for something. Not impact — something slower. Deeper. She watched the world go by with too - still eyes.
Eyes that shimmered faintly now. Not just from the passing light, but from within.
Selene broke the silence. "You're glowing again."
Aria didn't turn. "I noticed."
Selene gave her a sideways glance. "Stronger than before."
A pause. Then Aria exhaled, a slow, deliberate breath. "It's the serum. The medical cache. It wasn't just chemicals. It was… history. Memory. Hope. When I took it in, something clicked. Like a door opening."
Selene's jaw tightened, though she didn't comment. She remembered how Aria had stood with the crate, clutching it like it was sacred. How her hands had trembled — not with fear, but with awe.
Selene steered them past a rusted overpass half - collapsed with ivy. Vultures perched on the twisted railing above, motionless and watching.
"You said it's growing," Selene murmured. "What does that mean?"
"It means it's not just a space anymore. It's becoming… a place. With structure. Gravity. Weather." Aria turned now, her voice low, eyes gleaming faintly in the gloom. "It has trees. And rivers. Things I never put there."
Selene kept her eyes forward. "Is it mimicking the world?"
"No. It's interpreting it."
That silenced them both for a time. The van rumbled over potholes and loose gravel, its frame groaning under the strain of its cargo: hundreds of pounds of food, medicine, tools, memory. All stored in Aria's pocket dimension — a place that had once been inert, obedient. Contained.
Now, it bloomed.
Earlier that morning, they'd scavenged from the outskirts of the harbor — an old dispensary hidden behind shuttered metal gates and razor - wire fences. Inside, sterile rooms lay untouched, even sacred. Aria had absorbed entire storage lockers of syringes and supplements, her fingertips glowing faintly with each contact.
But the effect wasn't linear anymore. Every absorption echoed. Echoes layered. Memories tangled.
When she closed her eyes now, Aria didn't just see what she'd taken in. She felt it.
She remembered a nurse's hands — weathered and warm — lifting a child off the floor during a blackout. She tasted blood - metal on her tongue from a patient's final breath in a fever ward. She heard lullabies humming through cracked intercom speakers, recorded by someone who hadn't lived to see the world end.
And beneath it all: roots.
Something was growing under her skin. Not in flesh, but in memory. In potential.
She pressed her palm lightly against her chest.
It was warm.
They stopped at a rest area around nightfall — just off an overgrown highway choked with moss and graffiti. The camper beside the rest station was collapsed inward, roof devoured by time and insects. The wooden picnic tables were warped and scorched by old fires.
Selene killed the engine. For a moment, the van ticked in the stillness, heat escaping through the vents like a dying breath.
They set up quickly. No fire. Just blankets, protein bars, and water filtered from a nearby raincatcher barrel. Aria moved stiffly, her senses still half-turned inward.
Selene took first watch, climbing onto the roof of the van with a thermal scope and her blade beside her. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. Her silence was a signal: I'll keep you safe. You figure out what's happening to you.
Aria sat with her back to the van, facing the woods. Her fingers curled into the earth.
She slipped inside.
The internal dimension had once been a room — windowless, empty. Then it became a storage vault. Now, it had depth. A horizon.
Trees lined the far edge of the field — tall, skeletal things with bark made from old wires and bone. The wind here wasn't wind at all — it was breath. Sighing through leaves that shimmered like medical gauze and broken CDs.
And in the middle: a bloom.
A single flower taller than Aria herself, unfurling petal after petal. Its stem was black and silver, like spinal cord and wire twisted together. Its petals — gossamer, layered — shifted colors constantly. Blue, then red, then ultraviolet. Aria couldn't quite look at it directly. It pulsed.
As if waiting.
Near it stood the figure.
The one from before.
It was clearer now — less abstract. Still faceless, still flickering between identities. But it stood with purpose. Watching the bloom.
When Aria approached, it didn't retreat. It simply tilted its head.
She stopped five feet away.
"What are you?" she whispered.
It didn't speak. But the bloom quivered behind it. And Aria understood — not in words, but in feeling.
It was a question.
Not from her.
From it.
What are you?
She pulled out, breath catching.
Selene was there instantly, sliding down the van's side with a practiced motion. "You okay?"
Aria nodded, still gasping. "I think… I think it's conscious now."
Selene didn't flinch. "The bloom?"
Aria shook her head. "The space. The world inside me. It's asking questions. It's observing."
"Can it get out?"
"I don't think it wants to."
Selene narrowed her eyes. "Not comforting."
"It wants to grow. That's what scares me."
They didn't sleep. They sat together until dawn, backs against the van, hands close to weapons, hearts beating in time with a rhythm neither could hear but both could feel.
When the sun rose, Aria looked at the sky and whispered, "It's rejecting things now."
Selene turned. "What?"
"The vault. It's no longer accepting everything. It spat out a rusted tank last night. Not dangerous — just… unworthy."
Selene's expression darkened. "It's becoming selective."
"Not just selective. Discerning."
Selene stood. "Then it's not yours anymore."
Aria didn't argue. She just looked down at her hands — still glowing faintly — and said, "Maybe it never was."
They drove again.
Past the forests. Past the ruins. Past where maps ended.
And in the space behind Aria's eyes, the bloom opened another petal.