Chapter 4

The cold air outside seemed to have physical mass, crushing every street of the city. The blackout happened without warning—a dull boom that felt like a beast biting through the spine of the city, followed by a total, suffocating silence.

I stood by the window, watching the neon civilization of the city center vanish, replaced by a creeping darkness that looked exactly like an advancing polar glacier.

Within six hours, I saw the first "things."

Stumbling through the snow below was a man in a janitor’s uniform. He moved with a jerky, snake-like speed, his eyes a sickly, cataract-white. He wasn't freezing; he was starving. And when a passerby slipped on the ice, he didn't offer help—he lunged like a predator and tore into them.

The first frost-dead. The price tag of the Great Freeze.

My phone buzzed. It was an anonymous landline.

"Mr. Grant?" A mechanical, cold voice asked. It was the security chief from the research institute.

"Speaking," I said, sounding appropriately disoriented, like an engineer panicked by a massive power cut.

"Regarding the record for the serum in your possession, we need verification. That material must be relocated for security."

"Oh, you mean that sample?" I sounded flustered. "It's in the office safe, but the power's out and the digital lock is dead. I'm working on it."

Five seconds of dead silence on the other end. "Do you know where your brother is?"

"He?" I feigned confusion. "He took some stuff and left last night to volunteer. Why?"

Silence again. They were tracking him. They didn't just find his location; they had already calculated how to "utilize" this unexpected "perfect candidate."

"Nothing. Good luck, Mr. Grant."

The line went dead. I pocketed the phone, watching the city spiral into chaos. Luke, you’re on the board now. I can’t wait to see your expression when you realize the rule-makers don't care if you're a hero or a pawn.

Three days later, the absurdity of this new order was laid bare.

I stood in a long line at a food distribution point, the air thick with the smell of cheap bio-fuel. A TV chained to a wall, running on a generator loop, played a heavily edited propaganda clip.

On screen, Luke, wearing a tactical vest, looked young, tough, and beautifully tragic, shielding a frozen child in the ruins of a collapsed building. The music was heroic, and the headline read: The Guardian of the City: The Young Hero Luke.

People in the queue sighed in awe. "Thank goodness for heroes," someone mumbled from behind a gas mask. "Or we’d all be dead."

I stood at the end of the line, clutching a bag of flour I’d risked my life for. I watched Luke on the screen, shaking hands with a high-ranking official, looking honored and resolute.

He was still enjoying the light. He thought it was honor, a class ascension earned by luck and serum. He was a hero to those losing hope. But I watched the camera cut to him being loaded into an armored transport—not toward a hospital, but toward the "Tower Command Hub."

I knew that road. It was the road to being a consumable "combat asset," to being abandoned in a frozen field for a newspaper clipping.

I tucked the flour into my jacket to shield it from the wind. "Just a disposable product," I muttered, my voice lost to the gale.

Nobody cared about the expiration date of a hero in the end of the world.