I lower Eli onto the cold floor and press my palm to his cheek. His fever-warm skin against the chill concrete makes something inside me twist.
"We're here, kid," I whisper. "Door number one. Lucky us."
The vault door isn't just a door. Up close, I see it now: embedded sensors, a thin grid of lasers, microscopic text etched into the metal like veins in stone. A small square panel wakes up beside my hand.
RETINAL SCAN REQUIRED.
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me," I mutter.
I lean in, pressing my face close. A beam rakes across my eyes, icy and invasive.
RETINA MATCH: PARTIAL.
PLEASE CONFIRM SECONDARY IDENTITY.
Secondary?
Of course, Lily had secondary.
"State your rank," the machine says.
My pulse spikes. "Uh…"
"Say it," Lily whispers. "Lieutenant-Commander. Doctor. Eden Division."
I grit my teeth. "Lieutenant-Commander. Dr. Lilith Thorne."
The machine hesitates. Too long.
VOICE MATCH: 82%.
FACIAL SCAN ENGAGED. STAND BY.
Light floods over my skin. I hold still, breathing through my nose, praying the system is old enough to be forgiving.
Another long, unbearable pause.
Then—
IDENTITY CONFIRMED. WELCOME BACK, LT-CMD DR. THORNE.
OPENING PRIMARY VAULT.
"Holy shit," I breathe. "Lily, you had titles? High-ranking, classified-level, save-the-world titles? And you didn't bother telling me?"
Silence.
"Lily. Fucking help me out bitch—now is NOT the time to go quiet."
A tiny tremor of sound:
"I… I don't remember everything, I'm confused," she continues, "the head injury, brain injury...brain death."
"Well, give me what you DO remember and let the high-tech equipment fill in the rest, right?!"
No answer.
I shove the pressure wheel with both hands. Gears grind, heavy and reluctant, then catch. With a deep metallic groan, the vault door pulls inward.
Cold light spills out, harsh and flat.
The room beyond stretches long and narrow, all steel and shadow. Glass-front compartments line both walls in neat rows. Some are empty. Others hold upright shapes blurred by frost—standing, human, and all wrong.
"Jesus," I breathe. "Lily… what did you do?"
Somewhere in the back, machines hum steadily, the low mechanical heartbeat of the place. This isn't a hideout. It's a system.
Eli lets out a thin, cracked sound. I snap back to him.
I drag him through the doorway and let the vault door thud shut behind us. The clang rolls through the concrete and cuts off the last faint echo of the world outside. Up there is chaos. Down here is a choice.
I heave him onto a narrow metal table. Restraints jut from the sides. I pretend not to notice as I smooth sweaty hair from his forehead.
He's so hot my hand recoils on instinct. I force it back.
"Stay with me, kid," I say. "You do not have my permission to die. That's non-negotiable."
His lashes flutter. "Cold," he whispers.
"Working on it," I mutter, and the broken laugh in my throat scares me more than the monsters ever did.
"Freeze him." I now repeat the mantra in my head.
The words don't arrive like a remembered line now. They punch through my skull, raw, shaking the edges of my vision.
Lily's voice. "You saw, she breathes, in the dream."
"Yeah, girlfriend, I saw. " I take a deep breath, trying to remove accusation and anger from my voice. "I saw you kill Mom." Then I pause, take another deep breath, "because you had no choice."
Lily spoke in a shaky voice. "Thank you. Please don't hate me."
White lights. A boy on a gurney. My mother's scream. "Give him the time I couldn't give her."
My stomach flips. I shove away from the table and stagger to a wall panel. It wakes under my fingertips, washing my hands in cold blue light.
"How did I know to do that?"
My memories are coming back. Lily continues, still broken, but hand washing is almost muscle memory.
WELCOME BACK, LT-CMD THORNE.
STATUS: STASIS PODS – 7 OCCUPIED, 5 AVAILABLE.
Seven.
My gaze drifts to the glass compartments. I walk along them, boots ringing dully on concrete. Each pod has a small glowing nameplate at its base.
SUBJECT 01 – VARGAS, N.
SUBJECT 02 – ELLERY, P.
SUBJECT 03 – THORNE, R.
I stop at a chamber tagged at the end of the line, another, "THORNE."
Thorne. "For me?" No answer.
I wipe frost from the glass with my sleeve. A boy's face sharpens behind it—sixteen, maybe, dark hair drifting in suspension, mouth parted like he fell asleep mid-sentence. I've seen him before, taped above Lily's bunk. In the nightmare she shoved into my skull.
"Rafi," I whisper.
"I had to," Lily's voice shakes through me. "They were going to cut him apart. Time him as he lost himself."
"So you gave him your chamber?" I let out a derisive chuckle, then realisation dawns on me. Anger flares, hot in the freezing room. "And whose chamber were you going to use..." I pause and look at the last chamber with my name. "Oh, you bitch!"
She doesn't argue.
Back at the panel, the menu blinks, patient and obscene.
PODS AVAILABLE: 5.
INITIATE NEW STASIS SEQUENCE? [Y/N]
My hand hovers.
If I freeze Eli, the infection might slow. If I don't, I'll watch him rot from the inside out like Mom. There is no third option labeled CURE in friendly letters.
"Was this your plan for me, too?" I ask the room. "For her?"
Silence. Then, brittle-soft:
"I didn't get to you in time."
Something in me cracks. On the table, Eli's fingers twitch, curling around nothing.
"Scared," he breathes.
I lean close enough to feel his breath on my lips. "Me too," I say. "But we keep going anyway. That's the rule."
"Freeze him," Lily pleads. Not a verdict now. A prayer.
Time. That's all this place sells—seconds in glass.
I hit the screen.
[Y].
A small siren chirps once, then cuts off. At the end of the row, an empty pod hisses open, mist spilling out in a low, cold curl.
"Okay," I tell Eli, mainly, to keep my hands from shaking apart. "New plan. You sleep. I fight. No dying. That's the deal."
He doesn't answer. His head lolls when I lift him again, lighter than he should be. I carry him to the waiting pod.
"Subject name?" the system asks.
"Eli," I say. "Just Eli."
"Confirmed. Begin preservation protocol?"
I press my lips to the side of his head, tasting salt and dirt and something stubbornly alive. "I'm coming back for you," I whisper. "Whatever Lantern wants, they don't get you."
"Begin," I say before I can think.
The glass slides down between us. For a heartbeat, my reflection overlays his—Lily's eyes staring back from both sides.
Two sisters. One body. One boy I refuse to lose.
The seal locks with a hiss, and the cold roars to life, a mist from those hundreds of holes within the lining of the interior chamber. Eli falls into a sedated sleep. I watched the process: several steps, maybe disinfecting, clocking his body temp, registering on the outside of the machine, and then something moved behind me.
A scent hits first.
Rot.
Chemical rot.
Like meat thawing wrong under a dead sun.
I turn.
One of the occupied pods—SUBJECT 06—stands open. Frost spills over the lip like a curtain being dragged aside. A figure stumbles out, barefoot, wearing the remnants of a lab coat stuck to its body like wet paper.
The skin is liquefying, as exposure to the air has accelerated the process of decay.
Sliding.
Dripping.
Bone glints through places where flesh should be. The jaw hangs unevenly, thin strands of melted cheek swinging like seaweed.
A badge still clings to the coat.
EDEN SCIENCES — CRYO DIVISION
DR. J. HARPER
Its head jerks toward me, and the sound it makes is not human anymore.
The smell hits harder. Sweet, rotted, chemical-filth.
"Lily," I whisper.
But the voice in my skull is gone.
The scientist takes a step.
Then another.
Flesh slaps the floor.
I reach for my blade.