Chapter 1

My fiancee sat inside the evacuation train wearing my coat, while I froze outside with my hands on the locked door.

The last heat pack in my pocket had already gone cold.

“Liana,” I rasped. “Open the door.”

She stood under the emergency lights, warm and dry, with my parka zipped to her chin.

Her brother Nolan wore my climbing boots. Her mother clutched the medical kit I had carried across six miles of ash-covered road. Beside Liana, one hand resting on the seat that used to be mine, stood Caleb Frost.

Her old boyfriend.

The man she had sworn was “just someone from before.”

Nolan leaned toward the intercom. “Don’t make this ugly, Owen.”

My fingers slipped on the frozen metal. “That’s my seat.”

“Not anymore.”

“I paid for the thermal battery system.”

Caleb’s voice came through the speaker, soft and clean. “And everyone appreciates that. But the train is at capacity.”

“At capacity?” I laughed, and the cold tore the sound apart. “You’re standing in my place.”

Liana flinched.

For one second, I thought she might still choose me.

The siren above the platform screamed through the ash storm.

Thirty seconds until departure.

The world had ended in layers. First came the warnings: volcanic tremors, black rain, crop failures, summer frost. Then the chain eruption turned noon into midnight. Ash buried roads. Power grids failed. Cities froze from the outside in.

I had bought the batteries. I had fixed the route. I had found the train.

They had reached it first.

“Liana,” I said again. “Look at me.”

She did.

Her eyes were wet, but her hand stayed on the inside rail.

“My mother can’t survive outside,” she whispered.

“I carried her here.”

“Nolan’s leg is bad.”

“I carried him too.”

“The train won’t wait.”

“Then open the door.”

Nolan slammed his palm against the glass. “The second we open this, the car loses heat. You want us all dead?”

Caleb lifted my silver emergency flask and drank from it.

“That flask is mine,” I said.

He smiled. “Was.”

The train lurched.

I threw myself at the door. My shoulder hit reinforced steel. Pain flashed through my skull.

“Please,” I said.

It was the last word I should have given them.

Liana closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “There isn’t room for everyone.”

The train began to move.

I stumbled after it, one hand dragging across the frost-covered glass. Inside, warm yellow light washed over their faces.

Outside, the ash storm swallowed mine.

Caleb raised my flask in a little toast.

Nolan laughed.

Liana turned away.

The platform vanished under my knees. Cold entered my lungs like broken glass. My hands stopped hurting first. Then my feet. Then the place in my chest where I had kept forgiving them.

My final thought was not fear.

It was the memory of numbers.

Three years of paying Liana’s debts. Two years of covering Nolan’s failed deals. A year of pretending not to notice Caleb’s name buried in transfer records.

I had called it love.

They had called it useful.

The world went black.

I woke choking on warm air.

I shot upright in bed, clawing at my throat.

There was no ash in my mouth, no platform under my knees, no sealed train door in front of me. Only morning light on the floor and my own hands shaking around the phone.

May 3, 2041.

I stared until the numbers blurred.

One year.

Exactly one year before the Yellowstone chain eruption turned the northern hemisphere into a frozen grave.

The television murmured in the living room.

“Scientists continue to downplay concerns after unusual seismic activity across several volcanic zones. Officials say there is no immediate risk to the public...”

I laughed once.

It came out broken.

The bedroom door opened.

Liana walked in wearing one of my white shirts and carrying coffee in the blue mug she had bought with my card.

“Morning,” she said. “You look awful.”

I looked at her hand.

The same hand that had stayed on the rail while I froze outside the train.

She came closer. “Bad dream?”

“You could say that.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and reached for my forehead.

I turned my head before she touched me.

Her fingers paused in the air.

“Owen?”

“I’m fine.”

She studied me for a second, then smiled the soft smile that had once emptied my bank accounts.

“Good. Nolan called early.”

Of course he had.

I kept my face still. “What does he need?”

“It’s not like that.” She gave a small laugh. “His alpine resort investment has a timing issue. Just a bridge loan. Two hundred thousand. He said you’d understand.”

Two hundred thousand.

Last life, I had wired it before lunch. Then another three hundred thousand. Then I had guaranteed his debt. Then I had sold stock to cover the lawsuit he caused.

Liana tilted her head the way she always did before asking for money, already sure I would make the answer easy for her.

“Tell Nolan I’ll call him,” I said.

Her shoulders relaxed. “I knew you would.”

“I said I’d call him.”

The smile thinned.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I need to check my accounts.”

She blinked. “You never check accounts for family.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”

Silence spread between us.

Liana stood slowly. “Did I do something wrong?”

That question would have worked on me once.

I got out of bed and walked past her.

“Owen?”

“I need a shower.”

I entered the bathroom and locked the door.

The click sounded small.

It was enough.

I turned on the sink and splashed cold water over my face. In the mirror, I saw a younger man. Alive, rich, and still useful enough for them to keep smiling at.

That would help.

I opened the encrypted folder on my phone. The file was still there, buried under old feasibility studies.

GEOTHERMAL CIVIL DEFENSE HABITAT: REDSPIRE RIDGE.

Liana had laughed at it last year.

“A bunker in a dead mountain?” she had said. “Owen, please don’t turn into one of those disaster people.”

I had deleted the proposal.

Then the sky froze.

Not this time.

One year was enough to sell every visible asset, bury the money under shell contracts, buy the abandoned mountain transit tunnels, and turn the dead geothermal plant beneath Redspire Ridge into the only warm city left when the sun disappeared.

I wiped my face and looked at myself.

“You want a bridge loan, Nolan?” I whispered. “I’ll build you a bridge.”

Then I opened my lawyer’s number and hit call.