Prologue: A Strange Meeting amidst a Pause

Breaking into a run, my shoes pounded the asphalt road. My chest stabbed at me as my heart thundered, painfully breaking free of the unchanging tempo that had held it for months. 

My loud panting breath burned in my throat and my pulse hammered in my ears.

The pause’s silence had carried the voices’ sound from over a street or two away and I was racing to catch up to them.

Almost colliding with a fence as I tightly rounded the corner, my shoulder bounced off wood without me slowing at all as I tried to catch up to the voices. The first voices I had heard since I had woken up.

Another street. Another corner.

I could barely hear their voices over the sound of my own exertions to track them. What I could make out was enough to know I was getting closer.

Dodging a time frozen body, I spun as turned into an alleyway. 

Almost there.

A little further.

Nearing the end of the alley, I heard the voices stop. They must have heard the clapping of my shoes made on the ground with every footfall.

Bursting out of the alley, I pushed off a parked car redirecting my momentum to turn ninety degrees. 

My pace slowed to jog and then to a walk.

Coming to a halt in front of the source of the voices, I found myself collapsing into a hunched over position. Legs bent and hands resting on my thighs, I bent over huffing and puffing trying to find my breath.

Slowly the silence’s reign returned. A silence free of voices speaking, of birds chirping, of the distant sounds of construction, of the rumble of traffic, of the beeping of horns, or of the sound of music coming from vehicles or buildings.

The owners of the voices looked as surprised to see someone else still moving about as I was at hearing their voices earlier breaking the pause’s silence. My lungs and muscles burned as I forced myself upright to face them. 

Yes, them. 

Two women. 

One a girl who looked above my age with green eyes, a light smattering of freckles and raven hair. Who despite only reaching my chin, stood with a presence that felt as if she should have towered over my almost six feet in height. 

The other was best described as a sweet little old lady or grandmother. Plump and grey haired with a back that was slightly hunched with age causing her to only reach my shoulder. It was her eyes that really stood out the most. Framed with crow’s feet that gave her a mirthful look, her pale blue eyes were sharp and penetrating despite her kindly gaze.

The voices I’d heard had to have come from these two speaking with each other. 

“Teacher… Why aren’t you frozen like the rest?” the younger of the two demanded. “There shouldn’t be anyone still moving inside the cyst. Who— What are you?”

It wasn’t a terrible question. I’d been wondering as much since I’d first noticed the pause three days ago. Every human, plant and animal had been frozen in place as they had been when the pause started. Even the weather was paused. There was no wind to rustle leaves or rain to fall and the same clouds had been frozen in place the entire time. 

If it hadn’t been for the continued cycle of night and day I would have suspected time was paused too.

So why wasn’t I frozen too?

“Interesting…” muttered the elder of the two before I could reply.

“Teacher?” 

“I’ve never seen one this animated, this alive before,” said the teacher, still seeming to stare through me. “Normally their kind are more passive and incurious, it should be still acting out its routine as if nothing has happened or just milling about lost. Even ones that have learned how to ignite and maintain a state of emotional hyperarousal should have already petered out and returned to dormancy in these conditions. Nothing I have ever heard or read on the subject would account for one seeking us out like this.”

Her words felt something like stones thrown into a pond. I could see how they applied to me and I could sense the ripples of something disturbing my emotional stillness, like there was an emotional response hiding just under the water. Annoyance, maybe? If that was the case I especially didn’t like her use of the pronoun ‘it’ to describe me.

I didn’t really have words to reply with, but it seemed the girl didn’t either. “Huh?” she uttered, sounding confused.

“It— No…,” her teacher started, only to stop after looking my way. 

Oh! I was frowning.

“He’s a hollow.”