Chapter 6: Echoes in the Static

Chapter 6: Echoes in the Static

The lock on her apartment door clicked shut with a sound that was both deafeningly loud and pitifully inadequate. Dahlia leaned her back against the solid wood, the splintery texture a grounding sensation against her thin sweater. She was home. She was safe. The words were a desperate mantra, a prayer she didn't believe. The familiar scent of Shelby’s Earl Grey tea and old books, once a source of comfort, now smelled like a museum to a life that no longer existed.

The adrenaline that had fueled her flight, her fight, her survival, was gone. It had burned away, leaving behind a toxic sludge of exhaustion and a terror so profound it felt like a physical illness. Her body ached with a deep, cellular weariness, but her mind was a screaming chaos of fractured images: John’s face slackening in confusion, Mary’s porcelain skin cracking like a dropped vase, the hulking silhouette of the Collector absorbing the light, its voice a razor blade scraping against the inside of her skull.

I will see you again.

Her first desire was to erase the night. She stripped off her clothes, leaving them in a heap by the door as if they were contaminated, and stumbled into the bathroom. She turned the shower on, twisting the knob until the water was scalding hot, a punishment and a purification all in one. Steam filled the small room, fogging the mirror, and she stepped into the spray, scrubbing at her skin until it was raw. She was trying to wash away the phantom taste of blood and corrupted magic, the dusty, grave-like scent of her parents as their boons failed them.

But the night was not so easily erased. The obstacle was her own body. As the steam and hot water turned her skin pink, the bruises began to bloom in stark, ugly contrast. A violent purple mottling on her ribs where Mary had slammed her into the wall. Dark, finger-shaped marks on her shoulders. She turned off the water, her body trembling, and wiped a hand across the fogged-over mirror.

Her reflection stared back, a stranger with haunted, intelligent eyes. Her face was pale, her lips tinged blue. And for a fraction of a second, a flicker in the periphery, the reflection wasn't hers. A patch of the steam behind her left shoulder seemed to swirl and darken, coalescing into a shape that was too tall, too broad, a distortion in the air like heat haze rising from asphalt.

She spun around, her heart seizing in her chest.

Nothing. Just the tiled wall and the damp bathmat.

She dismissed it as a trick of the steam, a symptom of trauma. But the seed of unease was planted. The world no longer felt stable. The solid lines of reality felt blurred at the edges.

Wrapped in a towel, she padded into the small living area. The silence was absolute. For twenty years, there had been a clock ticking inside her, a low-level thrum of anxiety she had mistaken for her own personality. Now, it was gone. The Collector had taken it. The silence it left behind should have been a relief, but it felt like a profound and terrifying amputation. It was the quiet of a room after a bomb has detonated.

She needed to hear a human voice. An anchor. She fumbled for the old landline phone on the side table, a relic Shelby had insisted on keeping. She thought of calling Sarah, her friend from her philosophy seminar. What would she say? Hi, I know it’s late, but I just killed my monstrous, soul-selling parents and now a cosmic entity is collecting me like a rare stamp.

Her finger hovered over the keypad. She didn't have to say anything. Just hearing Sarah complain about their upcoming paper on Kant would be enough. She picked up the receiver and pressed it to her ear.

There was no dial tone. The line was dead.

But it wasn't silent.

From the earpiece came a faint, whispering hiss, like a radio tuned between stations. And beneath the crackle of static, she could hear them. Voices. A layered chorus of whispers, indistinct and distant, but undeniably there. They rose and fell in a discordant murmur, the sound of a thousand hollow conversations happening at once. Then, one voice, clearer than the rest, slid through the static, a cold, gravelly whisper that she recognized with a jolt of pure, electric dread.

…collection is not complete…

Dahlia slammed the receiver back into its cradle as if it had burned her. She backed away from the phone, her breath catching in her throat. It wasn't in her head. It wasn't a memory. It was real. He was in the wires. He was in the static. His influence wasn't bound to that impossible house; it followed her.

The weight of what she had done, and what it had cost, crashed down on her. She sank into Shelby’s sagging armchair, the one she’d been sitting in what felt like a lifetime ago when she first opened that manila envelope. She had killed two people. Two monstrous, inhuman people who had sold her for power, yes. But the act itself was a heavy, indigestible stone in her gut. She felt no remorse, no guilt—they had given her no choice. But she felt the profound horror of it. Her hands, resting on her knees, were the hands that had done it. Her mouth, which still housed the alien prosthetic, was the weapon.

She pulled the broken silver locket from her jeans pocket, the chain snapped, the casing dented. It fell open in her palm. The tiny, faded picture of Shelby looked up at her, her eyes seeming to hold not just love, but a deep, sorrowful understanding. She had known this would be the price.

Exhaustion finally began to claim her. She curled up in the armchair, too terrified to lie in her bed, pulling a worn afghan over herself. Sleep, she hoped, would be a temporary oblivion.

But as the city outside grew quiet and the last of the traffic faded, a new sound began.

It was faint at first, so subtle she thought it was the hum of the refrigerator.

tick… tock…

She sat bolt upright, her ears straining in the darkness. The sound was gone. She held her breath, listening.

There.

tick… tock…

It was coming from the television, a faint, rhythmic pulse from the standby light. She stared at the tiny red dot, and with every blink, it seemed to pulse in time with the sound.

She scrambled out of the chair and yanked the television’s plug from the wall socket. The red light died. The sound stopped.

Silence. Blessed, absolute silence.

For a moment.

tick… tock…

This time it was different. Slower. It was a wet, heavy sound, like a dripping tap. It came from the kitchen sink. Each drop hit the metal basin with a precise, metronomic beat.

tick… tock…

Panic clawed its way up her throat. She ran to the sink and twisted the faucet handle as hard as she could. The dripping stopped.

She stood panting in the center of the room, her eyes darting from one object to the next. The internal clock that had defined her existence was gone, but now, pieces of it were manifesting around her. The Collector wasn't just watching her or whispering to her. It was re-establishing its claim, rebuilding its clock not inside her, but in the world around her, marking her, reminding her.

Her gaze fell on the manila envelope still sitting on the coffee table, along with Shelby’s letter and the oilcloth that had held the teeth. Her heart hammered against her bruised ribs. Shelby had given her a weapon and a mandate. But a woman that cunning, that brilliant, a woman who had planned this for twenty years… surely she had left more. She had to have left a contingency. An explanation. A way to fight what came next.

The desperate need for answers, for another piece of Shelby's posthumous guidance, became her new desire. Because she finally, truly understood. She hadn't won. She had just survived the opening move of a terrifying new game, and the Collector was already setting the board for the next.