The Coldstart hummed across the road like it was the first thing to touch it in fifty years.
Everything looked exactly as it had the day the world stopped.
Signs still stood tall at every mile marker, proud and pointless. A billboard overhead promised a new electric future. The paint hadn't faded. The air was too still for that.
A half-eaten hotdog sat on a diner counter behind cracked windows. Steam never rose. The ketchup still gleamed.
An overturned tricycle lay at the edge of a crosswalk in the middle of nowhere, its tire frozen mid-spin.
There was no decay. No rust. No rot. No vines. No wind. No birds. The grass hadn't grown. The trees hadn't dropped a single leaf. Even the clouds hung motionless above, stretched in place like a painting done in poor perspective.
Time hadn't passed out here.
It had simply chosen not to continue.
Katra adjusted her grip on the wheel. The leather was smooth, uncracked, preserved like everything else. This was how the world had always looked to her—paused, pristine, unmoving.
Beside her, Tock stared out the window, eyes steady. He watched the still fields, the locked leaves, the sky that never turned.
There was no word for what he felt. Just the sense that something about this—about all of it—was held in place when it shouldn't be.
And in that silence, the ticking in his chest—soft, even, like an engine left gently at idle—was the only sound that moved forward. The only thing that didn't match.
It wasn't loud. But it was there. Steady. Certain.
Like the world wasn't dead, only waiting.
Like it might remember how to move—if it heard something that could.
The Coldstart rolled to a stop on the outskirts of nowhere.
The gas station stood intact beneath the violet sky, just off the old highway. Red trim. Clean windows. The kind of place that used to hum with life, now perfectly silent—not from age, but because time had chosen not to continue here.
Katra killed the engine. Tock opened the passenger door before she did. He stepped out with slow, deliberate motion—like something had caught him.
The sky hung overhead, colorless to her eyes but painted violet to the world. She had never seen it any other way.
The pumps out front still waited with frozen prices. The signs were bright. A paper stuck to the wall read "2 for $4 — While Supplies Last!" Nothing had yellowed. Nothing had moved.
The glass door opened without resistance.
Inside: stillness.
Cooler lights buzzed faintly. A fan near the register rotated, but only halfway—stuck in a half-turn that never finished. It would never finish.
Katra scanned the shelves absently. She'd seen places like this in her travels. She was born in this world, after all. She knew how to navigate spaces that had forgotten how to move.
Tock froze.
By the counter.
Katra didn't see what stopped him until she followed his gaze.
There was a man behind the counter. Not alive. Not present. A Death Echo—like the one she'd once shown Tock in her garage. A faint, translucent image of someone locked in his final task.
The cashier stood with one hand extended, as if handing over change. His lips moved, silent. Over and over. A performance without audience.
Tock took a single step forward. Not afraid. Just… watching.
He tilted his head.
Another one.
Katra didn't say anything. She let him have the moment.
She moved instead toward the back.
That's when she saw the doll.
It was resting near the cooler shelves, tucked against the corner like someone had set it down gently. Blue overalls. A stitched smile. One button eye missing.
Not ruined. Not broken. Just... forgotten.
It could have belonged to anyone. A boy no one remembered. A girl who never tethered. Someone who had once been part of the world—until the world decided to stop including them.
Katra picked it up. Held it for a second longer than necessary. Then set it back down in the same position.
Only then did she see the symbol—painted above the cooler door in dark, faded pigment.
A perfect circle. Unbroken. Violet.
The Violet Halo.
Ignitor territory.
"We're in it now," she said softly.
Tock joined her, still silent from the echo. His ticking had softened again.
She stared at the symbol for a long moment, jaw tight.
"I've heard the name," she murmured. "The Ignitors. Mostly gossip. Warnings. A few stories Renn didn't joke about."
She didn't know what they truly were. Just that they had territory no one walked through twice. And that for women like her—untethered—it wasn't safe.
Tock glanced at her, but didn't speak. His presence felt smaller here, like he instinctively understood this was not a place that welcomed anomaly.
She stepped back, eyes still on the mark.
"We can't be seen here," she said. "Not by anyone who brands that halo."
Katra let the door fall shut behind them as they stepped out into the violet light.
The Coldstart waited at the edge of the lot, engine still warm.
She'd barely taken two steps when Tock paused—his head tilted, faint ticking steady.
Then she heard it too.
Not boots. Not engines. Just a low, rhythmic hum—like precision breathing made mechanical.
A patrol.
She pulled him behind the outer pump bay, crouching low. He followed, quiet as shadow.
They came into view a moment later—three women, gliding silently across the road on sleek mobility platforms, their long robes unmoving despite the motion.
Each one was tethered.
Not with gestures. Not with wires.
Their machines followed them like extensions of will.
The first trailed a floating dish no larger than a dinner plate—a long-range communicator, spinning slowly in the air beside her like a halo turned on its side.
The second had a small, beetle-shaped device that pulsed with faint light underneath its shell—a restraint unit, ready to immobilize without warning, built to fire and anchor without missing.
The third towed a folding transport capsule behind her, open and empty, its interior lined with smooth restraint loops that waited without judgment.
None of them spoke. None scanned the area. Their expressions were unreadable—serene. Devoted.
Each machine they bonded to did exactly what it had been made for.
Nothing more.
They didn't look like hunters.
They looked like statues that had chosen to move.
And Katra, crouched behind rusted steel and stillness, realized in her chest what the air had been telling her since they arrived:
She wasn't in her shop anymore.
And these weren't pilgrims.
Katra didn't watch the patrol disappear. She just listened until the hum faded, then got in the driver's seat and turned the key.
The Coldstart responded without hesitation.
She didn't speak, and neither did Tock.
They were too deep in now to turn back. Too exposed to keep moving forward tonight.
She traced a finger down the margin of the map, past the red mark they'd just left behind. There—just off the road—a thin line curved into a valley. No name. No buildings marked. Just enough room for shadows to exist.
She didn't know if it would be safe.
But it was the best kind of place to sleep in a world where time didn't pass:
Forgotten.
Katra parked the Coldstart beneath the jagged remains of a collapsed overpass, half-buried in the dirt and angled just enough to hide them from the road. It wasn't shelter, not really. But it would do.
Tock shifted beside her as she killed the engine. The ticking in his chest slowed—calmer now. Almost thoughtful.
She didn't unpack. Just sat there a moment longer, map still open in her lap. The red marks seemed farther apart now. Or maybe she was just starting to feel the weight between them.
She rested her hand on the dashboard. Closed her eyes. Listened to the world that wasn't moving.
Tomorrow would come. Somehow.
But for tonight, stillness would have to be enough.