Chapter 2

The backpack zipper was ripped open brutally.

In the dead stillness of the cold room, it was sharper than a blade scraping glass.

I lay in the shadows, deliberately flattening my breathing to the lightest possible trace. Through half-open eyes, I watched the woman who had just used that sugary voice over the radio.

Now she moved like a practiced scavenger.

She didn’t hesitate for even a second.

Those hands I had desperately protected with cold, terrified they might burn—

were now ruthlessly pulling the last two bottles of purified water out of my backpack.

Then the last few compressed biscuits we had.

She stuffed every lifeline we had into her own bag in one sweep.

No guilt. No struggle.

Only the feverish urgency of escape.

“Stop digging. There’s still half a syringe of antibiotics in the left inner pocket.”

I opened my eyes. My cracked throat forced out a hoarse rasp.

Irene froze.

The water bottle slipped from her hand and hit the concrete with a dull thud.

But the panic of being caught lasted only one second in her pupils.

One second.

Then she straightened. The muscles in her face reset quickly, pulling into an icy curve.

“Since you’re awake, I guess I don’t need to act anymore.” She kicked the empty backpack aside and looked down at me. “Kane’s car is outside. There’s enough cold air there. Clean food. I’m sick of your cooling cutting out any second. I’m not staying here to die with you.”

Every word landed exactly where it hurt most.

I looked at her. The crack in my ability core pulsed in my chest with a tearing pain.

I didn’t get angry.

I didn’t beg.

I just planted my bleeding hands on the floor and dragged this dying body up to standing.

“What are you doing?” Irene instinctively stepped back half a step, her hand reaching toward the iron rod at her waist.

I ignored her caution.

I shut my eyes and forcibly squeezed out the very last thread of life inside me.

Crack.

I heard it clearly—the crisp sound of crystal splitting deep inside my chest.

Pain blackened my vision, but I still bit hard into my tongue and forced the blood-scented cold toward my right palm.

The faint white mist cleared.

A tiny, pure block of ice—no bigger than my thumb—rested quietly in my hand.

I held it out to her. My fingers shook violently from weakness.

“It’s seventy degrees outside.” I stared into her eyes, my voice so light it felt like the hot wind could scatter it. “From here to the corner, you need to run one hundred and twenty meters. If you don’t keep this in your mouth, your mucous membranes will dry out before you get there. You’ll die at the car door.”

Irene froze.

She looked at the little block of ice in my hand—the one I’d traded life for. Something complicated flashed in her eyes.

Then she let out a shrill, ugly laugh.

“Spare me this self-sacrificing act, Jack.” She snatched the ice from my hand, her nails slicing my palm open. “You really think you’re some saint? You spent three months cooling me because I pushed you, because I nagged you. You just got used to being drained by me. That’s not some damn love.”

The words hit like a hammer and crushed the last bit of warmth in the cold room.

She spun and shoved the heavy steel door open with both hands.

Boom—

The heat outside, like a crazed beast suppressed for too long, came roaring inward all at once.

Seventy-degree air slammed into my chest.

I couldn’t stay standing. I crashed to the ground.

Irene didn’t look back once.

She sprinted into the boiling night.

From the floor, through the gap in the half-open door, I stared at her back.

She ran through warped waves of heat. Her skin flushed red almost instantly from the burn. At the street corner a hundred meters away, a modified vehicle plated with heavy insulation shone its glaring lights. Its door opened. A faint thread of cool air leaked out.

She dove inside.

And just before the door shut, I saw the thing that dropped me into the abyss completely.

She glanced at the tiny ice block in her hand—one I had condensed with my life.

Then disgust spread plainly across her face.

With a flick of her wrist, she threw it onto the burning asphalt like a disgusting piece of trash.

The ice didn’t last even a second.

It turned instantly into a puff of white vapor and vanished into the seventy-degree heat.

Bang. The car door closed. The engine roared away.

The cold room door was still open. Hot wind licked across my body wildly. The last trace of frost on my palms melted under the heat into muddy water.

Then from deep in my chest came a muffled sound only I could hear.

The ability core sustaining my life—

shattered completely.

Countless tiny crystal fragments stabbed into my organs. Blood surged from my mouth and nose, splattering onto the ground, then instantly evaporating into sharp red vapor under the heat.

Curled on the burning concrete, I clutched the hollow ruin in my chest. My vision blurred. The cold room ceiling twisted in the heat haze.

This brutal twenty-four-hour collapse felt like an absurd execution, skinning me alive and breaking me apart bone by bone.

My heartbeat grew slower and slower.

Each beat dragged on forever.

And so I lay in seventy-degree wind—

waiting for the ending called death.