The Sound Beneath Her Skin

The Sound Beneath Her Skin
Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Sound Beneath Her Skin

The night was a bruise stretched across the city.
Everything pulsed beneath it neon veins, broken glass, the ghosts of sirens that no longer mattered. I could taste metal in the air, the kind that sticks to the back of your throat and doesn’t let go.

Beckett drove with one hand on the wheel, the other gripping a half-empty flask like it was a weapon. His eyes were bloodshot, jaw clenched tight enough to crack. He hadn’t spoken in ten minutes. Neither had I.

My sister sat in the backseat, head against the window, lips moving soundlessly. I didn’t need to hear her words. They were the same as mine. Evelyn.

Every time I blinked, I saw her face under that water. The silver bleeding from her eyes. The way her hand had reached for me before she dissolved into the current.

I tried not to think about what came after how that same silver had crawled into my veins, how the hum hadn’t stopped since. It sat under my skin like static, faint but constant.

Beckett broke the silence first. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine.”

“Bullshit.”

“I said I’m fine.”

He glanced at me, then at my hands gripping my knees. The faint tremor gave me away. He sighed, turned the wheel, and pulled into a half-collapsed gas station. The lights flickered, dying one by one.

“Get out,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re about to pass out.”

He was right. The hum was getting louder.

I stepped into the cold air. The city’s skeleton loomed around us buildings gnawed by fire, windows staring blankly into the dark. My reflection in the cracked glass beside the pump shimmered faintly, like the light couldn’t decide whether to obey me.

“Grace.” Beckett’s voice was low, careful. “What happened down there?”

I looked at him. “You saw it.”

“Not like you did.”

I almost laughed. “You don’t want to know.”

“I need to. Because whatever’s inside you”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t call it that.”

He stepped closer, his boots crunching glass. “Then tell me what to call it.”

I stared past him at the broken horizon, the slow creep of dawn behind clouds that refused to lighten. “It’s Evelyn. Or what’s left of her.”

He froze. “You’re saying she’s”

“Alive? No. Not in the way you mean.”

The hum deepened, rolling through my ribs. I could feel her there like she was whispering through the blood itself.

Grace, her voice murmured. He doesn’t understand.

I pressed my hands to my head. “Stop.”

“Grace?” Beckett took a step forward.

I stumbled back. “Don’t come closer.”

He hesitated. The radio in his coat pocket crackled to life dead frequency whispering my name. He ripped it out and threw it against the wall. It shattered, sparks dying on contact.

The hum faltered. Then steadied.

My sister opened the car door. “Grace, what’s happening to you?”

Her voice was soft, broken. I wanted to answer, but the truth was too big for words. I was becoming something else something that remembered Evelyn’s last breath, the way the bloom had wrapped itself around her like a lover, the way it had chosen me next.

“I’m fine,” I lied again.

She stepped closer. “You’re not.”

“I said I’m”

The ground vibrated. A deep, wet sound rolled from beneath the earth, like the river itself had taken a breath. We all froze.

Beckett’s eyes darted toward the horizon. “Tell me that’s not”

“It’s her,” I said.

“No,” he muttered. “No, you said she was gone.”

“She is.” I turned toward the river, though we couldn’t see it from here. “But she’s not alone anymore.”

The first tremor hit like a heartbeat. The second one cracked the asphalt. Water leaked through the seams, black and viscous. It shimmered under the faint light mercury again.

My sister screamed. Beckett grabbed her, pulling her back. “We need to move now!”

I didn’t move. Couldn’t. The hum inside me had synchronized with the tremors. Pulse for pulse.

The water rose from the cracks, forming tendrils that reached like searching hands. And then, for a second, they froze midair, as if listening.

They were listening to me.

“Grace!” Beckett yelled. “Get in the damn car!”

I turned to him, slow. “If I move, it moves.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think it’s connected.”

He cursed, eyes wild. “Then disconnect, because it’s about to kill us.”

I wanted to. God, I wanted to. But the thing inside me Evelyn’s whisper, the bloom’s pulse it didn’t want to stop. It wanted to learn.

The water surged higher, smashing into the side of the gas station. Metal screamed. Beckett shoved my sister into the car. “Grace!”

I raised my hand without thinking. The water hesitated. The hum grew louder. I felt it control, sharp and cold.

“Holy hell,” Beckett breathed. “You’re”

“Don’t say it.”

He didn’t. But his eyes said enough.

I lowered my hand, slow. The tendrils dropped, splashing harmlessly against the concrete. The hum quieted barely.

Beckett didn’t move for a long moment. Then he spoke, voice rough. “If that thing’s in you, Grace… you need to end it before it ends you.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I looked down at my hands. They were shaking again. But the water shimmered faintly where it touched my boots, like it was waiting for me to decide.

He stepped forward, jaw hard. “We burn what’s left of the bloom. The core. The lab. All of it. Tonight.”

My sister’s voice trembled from the car. “And if she can’t control it?”

He didn’t answer.

I did. “Then you finish it.”

They both looked at me like I’d just written my own eulogy. Maybe I had.

The sky finally cracked open, spilling a weak strip of dawn across the ruins. I felt Evelyn’s whisper again soft, almost kind.

You can’t kill what remembers, Grace.

“Watch me,” I muttered.

We drove toward the river. The roads were half-submerged, glistening with that same silver hue. The hum grew stronger the closer we got. It wasn’t just under my skin anymore it was in the air, in the rain, in the way the world breathed around me.

By the time we reached the old bridge, the water below wasn’t water anymore. It shimmered like liquid glass, alive and waiting.

Beckett parked. “This is suicide.”

“Probably,” I said, stepping out.

The bridge groaned beneath my feet as I walked to the edge. The river rippled, mirroring my movements. I could see my reflection again eyes glowing faintly, skin catching light where it shouldn’t.

My sister cried behind me. Beckett loaded his gun.

“Grace,” he said. “One more step and I”

I turned. “You’ll do what you have to.”

And then I smiled, the same broken smile Evelyn had given me before she vanished. “But so will I.”

The hum rose to a scream. The river erupted upward, swallowing the bridge in silver fire.

When the light faded, Beckett and my sister were gone flung backward, smoke curling around their bodies. The bridge was gone too. Only I remained, standing on air that shimmered like heat.

Below, the water formed a shape a face, familiar and wrong. Evelyn’s.

Welcome home, she whispered.

The world cracked open beneath me.

And then everything went dark.

Cliffhanger.