Chapter 12: The Quiet Harvest Before the Fire
Time: 3:27 A.M.
They worked through the night.
Selene never questioned the plan.
She just made it move faster.
While the world locked its doors and waited for answers from a government that had already gone quiet, they moved like ghosts through the bones of what remained.
Silent. Calculated. Vanishing before the dust could settle.
Weapons came first—blades, compact pistols, spare clips, boxes of mixed ammunition. Not enough for a war, but enough to survive one.
Selene handed Aria a blade without ceremony.
Aria turned it in her palm, the edge catching thin slivers of lantern light.
"Like this," Selene said, stepping behind her. Her hand closed over Aria's fingers. "Not like a kitchen knife. Like it's a part of your arm."
Aria frowned. "This feels wrong."
"It's supposed to."
"Where'd you learn that?"
Selene didn't look at her.
"You taught me."
—
By sunrise, they turned their focus to supplies.
Selene moved like she had a map burned into her mind—locations she never explained. Hidden caches in forgotten bunkers, locked cabinets behind fire stations, storage lockers in flooded malls. An abandoned farmers market with yellow sunflowers peeling on its painted walls.
Selene lingered too long beneath the mural.
"You okay?" Aria asked, heaving a crate of powdered rations onto the floor.
Selene blinked once. "I hate this place."
"Why?"
"I don't remember."
Aria didn't ask again.
—
By late morning, they found the RV—sun-bleached, cracked, sitting beneath a collapsed billboard that once promised clean air and faster commutes. Tires intact. Keys tucked in the visor.
Selene tested the engine. It turned over like it had been waiting.
"Why not stay in a house?" Aria asked.
"Too easy to trap."
Then, softer—
"They'll start experimenting again. When the safe zones fall."
Aria's breath hitched. "Who will?"
Selene didn't answer. But her fingers curled tight around the steering wheel.
—
Evening fell like a curtain of dust and smoke.
They found the yacht just before dark—tied off at a private pier, untouched and gleaming like a memory that didn't belong here. Too clean. Too perfect.
Ash drifted on the wind like petals in a season gone wrong.
Selene moved through the vessel with surgical silence, checking for damage, for traps, for signs that someone else had already laid claim. Her silence had a weight Aria didn't know how to carry.
"We can't save everyone," Selene said finally.
Aria stood at the edge of the dock, watching the blackened sky flicker.
"I don't want to be someone who only saves herself."
"You weren't."
Aria turned. "What?"
Selene looked away. "Nothing."
—
Night pressed cold against their backs.
They packed the RV with a merciless efficiency. Aria's space cracked open wider—something deep inside her bending to the strange pull of what it could now hold. Gasoline. Medical kits. Seed packets. A compact generator. Two pairs of boots that didn't belong to either of them.
When Aria stumbled with the last crate, Selene moved to catch her—then stopped. Hand hovering, not touching.
Aria leaned against the RV wall, winded. "It's getting heavier."
"Because it's real now."
"It hurts."
Selene met her eyes. "Good. That means you'll remember."
—
They parked behind an old gas station, half-buried in weeds.
No signal. No noise. No life.
Aria curled on the bench seat, blanket around her shoulders. The air was too still.
Selene stayed awake.
She listened to the hiss of the wind through the broken sign outside. The metal groan of a world trying to reset. The silence between one history ending and another beginning.
She looked down at Aria.
She looked human.
Soft. Unmarked. Still asking questions instead of surviving them.
Selene's breath caught.
Not this time, she thought.
This time, I'll give her more.
Even if I have to burn everything else to ash.
She turned her face toward the window.
And waited for morning.