What if Your General Store Shipped to Ancient Rome?

§PROLOGUE

The GPS had died an hour ago, surrendering to the Appalachian rain with a final, pathetic beep.

Now, Ayla Redding was navigating by myth and a dying flashlight beam on a map her grandfather had apparently drawn on a cocktail napkin.

The road, a ribbon of mud and betrayal, finally ended not at a destination, but at a dare.

The building slumped against the mountainside, more shadow than structure.

Lightning split the sky, and for a single, heart-stopping second, the sign became horribly clear, swinging on a single rusted chain like a hanged man: THE ECHO EXCHANGE.

And in that same flash, Ayla saw it—a flicker of movement in a second-story window.

She wasn't alone.

§01

Hours earlier, her grandfather Walter Redding's will had been read, and the world had ended.

All of the liquid assets, the family home, everything of tangible value, went to her cousin, Derek.

The relatives had smirked, their whispers sharp as broken glass.

“Who ever heard of a granddaughter inheriting anything? Daydreaming! The old man wasn’t senile! Of course it all goes to the grandson!”

Derek, his face flushed with victory, had immediately stormed the small house Ayla shared with her mother.

“Grandpa gave me the house,” he’d snarled, dangling a set of keys. “You have until sundown to get out.”

Her mother, Carol, had pleaded with him, her voice cracking. But Ayla had pulled out Walter's codicil, a single, handwritten page.

“Who says Grandpa left me nothing?” she’d retorted, her voice shaking but defiant.

“He left me the old general store up in Haven's Hollow. The Echo Exchange.”

Derek had thrown his head back and laughed, a cruel, barking sound.

He’d leaned in, his eyes, small and mean, boring into hers. “That's just some crazy story the old man made up to keep us in line! He tricked everyone, and you were the only fool who fell for it!”

But Ayla remembered.

Ten years ago, her father had stumbled home, his body a canvas of blood and bruises, collapsing on the living room floor.

Walter had been the only one who seemed to understand, cradling his son's head. "Why were you so foolish? Didn't I tell you not to meddle? Why... why didn't you listen?"

Her father, unable to speak through the pain, had just looked at Ayla and her mother, tears streaming down his face, refusing to close his eyes.

Walter, his own face a mask of grief, had pulled Ayla close and made a promise to his dying son.

"I will leave the Exchange only to Ayla. I see it in her... she has a good heart. She's the right choice... You can rest now. I'll take care of her."

Her father had let out a soft sigh, and the agony on his face had finally smoothed into a peaceful stillness.

That night, she lost her father.

And her grandparents' hair seemed to turn white overnight.

"Don't you worry, child," they had whispered, holding her tight. "We'll protect you."

From that day on, Walter had made it a ritual. He always saved the best for last, waiting until Ayla came home to share it.

A grandfather who loved her that much wouldn't lie.

He couldn't.

§02

Her mother didn’t believe it.

“He was a liar, Ayla! A cruel old liar! Now we don’t even have a roof over our heads!” Carol sobbed as they packed their lives into cardboard boxes.

“I should have remarried when I was younger, when someone still wanted me! Now I’m too old and I don’t even own a house!”

Ayla hated when her mom talked like that, as if there was some cosmic law that forbade women from buying their own property.

“Mom! So what if he lied? We have hands and feet. We can earn our own money! We don’t need a man to grant us the right to buy a house!”

Her mother’s wails only grew louder, which seemed to delight Derek even more.

He appeared in the doorway, jangling the keys to a brand-new muscle car.

“Still here?” he sneered. “Need a ride? Grandpa left me a pretty sweet Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. I could give you parasites a lift to the curb.”

Ayla stared at the snarling cat logo on the key fob. “We don’t need anything from you,” she spat.

She grabbed her mother’s arm, pulling her toward the door. “Grandpa was not that kind of person... Trust me, Mom. Let's just go see it. What do we have to lose?”

The moment they stepped outside, Derek slammed the door behind them with a triumphant crash.

“Get lost and stay lost!” he yelled through the wood.

“You two leeches!”

§03

Dragging their overstuffed suitcases, Ayla and her mother began their pilgrimage.

A bus to a train, a train to another bus, and finally, a rusty pickup truck driven by a grizzled local who dropped them at the base of a muddy, serpentine road with a sympathetic grunt.

Hours later, guided by Walter's napkin-map, they found it at the desolate peak of the mountain.

The Echo Exchange.

Her mother’s last sliver of hope died.

“Ayla, I told you that old man tricked you! You did all the dirty work for him when he was bedridden, changing his bedpans, spoon-feeding him mush, and what did you get? He gave Derek the gold and you a pile of splinters! It’s not fair!”

Ayla jammed the old, ornate key into the rusted lock of the roll-up metal door.

With a deafening screech of protest, the door rattled upwards.

Sunlight, a stranger here for years, pierced the decaying wooden building.

Inside, rows of listing shelves were draped in cobwebs, but strangely, the few products left on them seemed... new.

She picked up a package of military MREs, blowing off a thick layer of dust.

“That’s weird,” she said, her voice echoing in the silence. “The dust is an inch thick, but this ration pack doesn't expire for another five years.”

She checked a few other items—a dusty box of Spam, a glass bottle of Mexican Coke.

All of them were fresh.

Her mother surveyed the two-story structure. “Well, the upstairs could be livable if we clean it up. The downstairs can be a storage area. But we’re in the middle of nowhere. It's nothing like the life your grandfather had.”

Then, while sweeping a corner, Carol let out a sudden gasp.

“Ayla! Look what I found!”

In her hand was a single, heavy, gold coin, stamped with a design she'd never seen before.

“Ayla… what if your grandfather… what if he wasn’t lying after all?”

§04

Ayla felt a strange hum in the air, a low thrum of energy that seemed to emanate from the very walls of the building.

It drew her towards the back, past the dusty shelves and forgotten inventory.

There, behind a stack of rotting crates, she found it.

A hidden door, disguised to look like part of the wall.

As she pushed it open, she felt a gust of cool, conditioned air.

She hadn't stepped into a back room; she had stepped into another world.

It was a cavernous space, a terminal of impossible size and design.

Instead of shelves, the walls were a dizzying, multi-story lattice of gleaming brass pneumatic tubes and intricate railway tracks, all crisscrossing in a pattern that defied conventional geometry.

Cylinders and small cargo containers shot through the tubes with soft whooshes, moving with a silent, automated purpose.

It was like standing inside a giant, mechanical beehive.

“Wow,” she breathed, turning in a slow circle. “Stay here and you’d never have to worry about a thing.”

Her throat was dry from the dust and surprise.

Spotting a glass bottle of Mexican Coke in an open container ready for dispatch, she grabbed it.

She twisted the cap off, the hiss of carbonation ridiculously loud in the cavernous silence.

The cold, cane-sugar sweetness was a shock to her system, a jolt of pure, uncomplicated reality in this impossible place.

She took another long swallow, leaning against a massive brass console that looked like something out of a Jules Verne novel.

“Okay,” she said to herself, grabbing a whole six-pack. “Just one of these for the road.”

The moment she lifted the pack, the entire terminal went wild.

Red lights flashed from unseen sources, bathing the vast space in a pulsating, crimson glow.

A klaxon blared, a sound from a bygone era, like an old submarine diving.

And a voice, smooth as aged bourbon but crackling with the static of a bygone era, surrounded her.

“Now, now, dollface. That’s a violation of the Inventory Integrity Protocol.”

Download the Novellia app, Search 【 564091 】reads the whole book.

MotoNovel

App Store

Google Play

Novellia

App Store

Google Play