Ice-choked Highway Remnants
01:02 PM - January 14, 2534
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The wind claws at the world with a hunger that feels personal, stripping heat from skin and patience from bone. The sky above has the thick, swollen look of old bruises. It hangs low over the frozen highway ruins as if waiting for someone to make a mistake. Kaius moves through it like he owns the damn place. He is fast in a way that ignores the laws governing the rest of the group.
His boots cut across black ice and fractured concrete with a precision that should not be possible for a man whose left arm is strapped tight against his ribs. Blood still seeps through the inner sleeve of his jacket, but whatever pain radiates from that injury does not slow him. He keeps his gaze forward and his jaw locked, shoulders squared in a shape that communicates he will not be stopping for anything, or anyone.
The others drag themselves behind him in a messy procession. They hate how far he gets ahead, and hate worse that he is the only thing keeping them alive out here. The frozen air rings with the staccato rhythm of their breaths, each inhale sharp enough to wound.
Solan is the one suffering the most. His body is large and solid, built for endurance in a lab or on a quiet trek, not this frantic scramble through terrain that might snap an ankle at any moment. The sled rope digs into his gloved palms. Each step feels like hauling a frozen anchor attached to regret. His breath rips in short bursts. The cold bites at the raw edges of his lungs and sets off the familiar tremor in his voice. His stutter starts light, the way it does when he's frustrated.
He mutters under the wind, mostly to himself, partly to the universe, partly to whatever gods he hopes are real. "This is... this is not... optimal. It is s-supposed to be... a straight path, not... not whatever this is."
He stumbles again when the sled catches on a chunk of ice. His knees buckle. His breath turns frantic, and the next words come out in a harsher, more tangled stutter. "C-c-could someone... please tell the man in front that I am not... engineered for this kind of... glacial chaos?"
The twins weave around him like two over-caffeinated ghosts, bright jackets flashing between frost-coated rubble. Jessa is already laughing too loud, unable to tell the difference between fear and fun. Her breathless cackle shoots up into the air as she trips over a half-buried sign.
"You seeing this, Kade? I swear Four Eyes just tried to fuse with that ice ridge like it owed him rent. Looked like a baby giraffe discovering betrayal."
Kade flicks snow out of his braids and grins at Solan. "Sexy stranger up there better be worth it, because I am one skid away from letting gravity decide my future."
Kaius's reply cuts through the cold. His voice is smooth, deep, and merciless. "It's faster, Neon. We lose more time trying to coax a geometry lecture out of him than we gain from a safer route."
Solan throws a desperate glare at the back of Kaius's head, barely keeping upright as he clears a chunk of rebar jutting from the ice. His voice comes out strained and trembling, the stutter jumping to its medium level now that panic crowds his throat.
"My model was... was completely s-s-sound. It was the unaccounted... the unaccounted pheromone variable that shifted the stress points. And I told you already, stop calling me Four Eyes. It is Solan. I have been introducing myself as Solan f-for four hours, a-a-are you even listening or d-do you just enjoy t-treating-treating every... every interaction like a d-disciplinary hearing?"
Kaius does not bother looking back. "Conversation wastes breath. Breath keeps you alive."
"C-congratulations," Solan pants. "You found the most infuriating response imaginable. Truly award-w-winning logic."
Behind them, Evin pushes the broader family sled while Mariel shields Tovin's face from the slicing wind. "Forget Solan's math. What worries me more is the fact that this man, this stranger, walked us through a dead transit artery like it was a paved sidewalk. No map. No hesitation. Like he grew up here." Evin is panting hard enough to taste iron, and the raw rasp in his voice scrapes across the air.
Mariel glances at the stranger's distant silhouette and gives a soft, worried puff of breath. "He moves like he's counting every inch. That kind of knowing doesn't happen by accident."
Evin nods grimly. "I lived near the industrial basin for thirty years. Nobody moves like that through the old arteries. You don't just walk them blind."
Kaius finally responds, his voice low but steady as a heartbeat. "I was hunting. Tracked the pack for two days. Learned the dens. Learned the tunnels. Learned where the ice lies and where it does not. It is not complicated."
The dismissal only tightens the knot of suspicion forming in Evin's stomach. "Nobody tracks predators anymore."
Thora Nyx, tall and silent, strides beside him. Her breath fogs around the fur trim framing her hood. She raises her hands and signs something quick and clipped, the shape of it sharp with concern. Evin watches, baffled. He never understands her signs. He never has. But the stranger up ahead glances back once, eyes narrowing at her gesture, and he answers with a slight nod, as if her words are loud and clear to him alone.
Jessa notices. She snorts through chattering teeth. "Yeah, see, that's comforting. The guy who doesn't speak nicely knows the signs none of us know, and the rest of us are the idiots running after both of them."
Kade elbows her. "Wouldn't be our first bad decision."
The wind rises again, colder, heavier, dragging a low growl across the distant ice. Kaius hears it first. His entire spine stiffens. The shift in his posture rolls backward through the group like a warning bell.
The wind thickens around them, dragging ice through the air like loose shrapnel. The ruined highway sways with pale light, and the snow under their boots crunches with a brittle, glassy sound that keeps everyone's nerves drawn tight. Mariel moves closer, her hood nearly swallowing her face, but her voice finds a steady clarity that cuts through the gathering argument.
"Alright, enough. If you tracked them, fine. That explains your pathing. But why were three frost tigers heading toward Hawkelin? They don't push that deep into the basin. Something forced them inward. What changed out here?"
Kaius doesn't pause. He reaches a section of mangled barrier, kicks aside the unstable chunks, and leaps the gap. The rest follow. Some gracefully, some not. Solan definitely not. He lands crookedly, one knee cracking against the ice. The sled jerks behind him like it's personally offended.
Kaius's voice slices through the chaos, cold and certain. "They were heading toward warmth. Tigers don't migrate toward cold. They'd go somewhere that's not a freezer to settle. Now move!"
The bluntness shuts everyone up.
Solan forces himself upright with a grunt, snow clinging to his glove. He quickens his steps until he's beside Kaius again. Too close for Kaius's comfort. He's breathing hard, but the irritation fires him hotter than the cold can smother.
"You... you n-need to stop," Solan says, low but firm, like a doctor laying down final warnings. "J-just thirty seconds. That's all. You're b-bleeding through your second layer. Your arm's losing temperature faster than you can c-compensate."
Kaius doesn't break stride. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Solan fires back, louder, angrier. "I w-watch people's bodies for a living, and your dominant arm is dragging. Don't argue—your gait changes every time your shoulder spasms. If that wound opens more, you will lose control of your dominant arm. You're too small to compensate with brute force, so you rely on s-speed and leverage—both of which require full motor function."
Kaius finally looks at him, glare sharp enough to flay bone. "I can still kill a tiger."
"And then d-die of s-s-shock," Solan throws back without blinking. "Which helps p-precisely no one, i-including your ego. You're putting us all at risk j-just to avoid a-a stitch."
Even Jessa stops laughing. Calyx stares, her mouth slightly open, watching the collision of wills.
The wind knifes between them, snow swirling like it knows tension when it smells it.
Kaius steps closer, voice dropping into something dangerous. "I didn't ask you to stay behind or follow me."
Solan's jaw tightens. "Yeah, well, I d-didn't ask you to save my life either, but here we fucking are. We're b-bound n-now, aren't w-we? Like it or not, your body's my problem."
Kade whistles under his breath. "Oooh, Mom and Dad are fighting."
Kaius snaps, "Move," and surges ahead again.
But Solan stays right beside him, refusing to give an inch. He doesn't care how dangerous Kaius looks. Not right now. Not when the man's arm is leaking heat like an open vent.
"J-just stop, damn it," Solan insists, voice shaking with anger, fear, and something harder to admit. "L-let me check the wound. Thirty seconds. I'm not asking for a d-debate, I'm issuing a medical imperative."
Kaius doesn't answer. But his steps, for the first time, hitch. He skids to a halt, snow spraying around his boots. His face, usually masked by fierce control, tightens with suppressed pain. He turns, his eyes dangerous, acknowledging the undeniable threat Solan's correctly calculated.
Kaius's voice is quiet, lethal, a challenge. "Make it fast."
The group collapses around them in a ragged, wheezing cluster, bodies folding to their knees, backs slamming into ruined concrete and snow-slick steel. The moment Kaius stops, they look like they've been unplugged from life support. Jessa's bent over, hands on her thighs; Kade's sprawled on a fractured pipe, mindlessly thanking every ancestor he's ever denied believing in. Even Evin lets out something that isn't quite a groan and not quite a prayer.
Solan doesn't waste a second. He drops the sled so fast it thuds into the ice like a body, then rips open his medical kit with the desperation of a man tearing open a lifeboat. His voice slices the air, sharp, authoritative, jittery with adrenaline.
Solan is professional, focused. "Th–Thora, block the wind. P–please. Evin, scan the highest ruins."
Thora steps forward without complaint, her massive armored form settling like a fortress wall. The wind slams into her plating and splits, creating a small pocket of blessed, imperfect stillness.
Kaius stands inside that pocket, breath heaving, blood dripping steadily down his forearm. His jaw is locked.
Solan drops into a crouch the moment he hears Kaius suck in a tight, painful breath. Kaius already has both hands hooked in the front of his jacket, trying to yank it off, but the insulated layers are stiff with ice and the whole thing refuses to move. He drags the zipper down a few inches, then the teeth jam, and he growls low in his throat, tugging harder like he can brute-force the pain away.
"Stop—stop, you're just g-gonna piss it off," Solan says, sliding closer. His gloved hands nudge Kaius's aside before Kaius can argue.
Kaius's jaw flexes, breath steaming between his teeth, but he lets him.
Solan works the zipper free with a firm pull, then peels the heavy jacket open. The inside is crusted where blood soaked through and froze, and the fabric clings to Kaius's arm like it doesn't want to let go. Kaius tries again to shrug out of it, shoulders jerking, but the motion sends a shock of pain through him and he flinches hard.
"Yeah, t-that's what I th-thought," Solan mutters, voice tight. "Let me—just h-hold s-still."
He eases the jacket off Kaius's shoulders one inch at a time, careful not to drag the frozen lining across the swollen spot near his upper arm. When the last sleeve finally slips free, Kaius is already reaching for the shirt underneath, fingers trembling. He tries to pull it over his head, but the fabric catches halfway, bunching around his ribs.
Solan's hand lands on his wrist. "I g-got it."
Kaius exhales, shaky, and drops his arm.
Solan pulls the shirt up and over him with steady, sure movements, peeling the cold, sweat-damp fabric away until it clears Kaius's head. Underneath, Kaius is down to the thermal, thick, insulated, cold-tech material, short-sleeved, its panels warm against his skin. The injury sits just below the sleeve line, angry and dark, exposed now in the freezing air.
The moment Solan sees it, he stops breathing for half a beat. His face loses color, the kind of blanch that has nothing to do with the storm around them. He doesn't say anything at first, he just stares at the wound like the temperature dropped again, like the sight of it cut straight through every layer he's wearing.
He swallows hard. "Okay," he mutters, voice too thin for a moment. "Okay. N–nope. I hate this. I'm telling you right now, I-Iabsolutely hate seeing this much blood, and it's extremely unprofessional to say that out loud, but here we are. Don't move."
Kaius goes still, though his expression doesn't soften. It calcifies. "Just patch it, Solan." The use of the name is clipped, a grudging acknowledgment of the power dynamic Solan's momentarily seized.
Solan works quickly, cleaning the wound with purified water, the liquid shimmering silver before it freezes at the edges. Kaius barely flinches, but his breath stutters once. Solan cleanses the wound for several agonizing seconds, his own body shaking slightly, determined to maintain control.
Then the nanite foam hits the wound. It hisses like acid on metal. Kaius's jaw flexes hard enough to crack teeth.
Solan talks to fill the space, to keep his brain from spiraling into the blood and heat of another time. "You d–didn't have to do that," he says, voice crowding the silence. "T–the demolition charge definitely did its job. Why risk death for theatrics?"
Kaius tilts his head down slowly, eyes glinting like a blade catching sunlight. "You think that was theatrics?"
"I t-think it was stupid," Solan fires back. "A f–fever will kill you before the cold gets a chance. You were leaking b-b-blood like a reckless, injured i-idiot."
Kaius snorts, the smallest sound, but sharp enough to sting. "I call it securing the perimeter. Something you can't do with a log sheet."
"It wasn't a l-log-log sheet ," Solan counters, his voice rising in professional indignation. "It was a dynamic thermographic r-readout, and you don't even know what a a log sheet looks like."
"Then stop explaining it like you're trying to validate your existence."
Solan nearly drops the foam applicator. "Excuse me?"
Kaius doesn't blink. "You're talking a lot. Maybe focus on the part where you're supposed to keep me alive."
Solan exhales hard through his nose, seals the wound with a flexible patch, and seals it with a band that molds to Kaius's skin and flickers with faint blue diagnostics.
"You w-went in to p-prove something," Solan murmurs, tone no longer sharp but cutting all the same. "Not to secure the perimeter. You needed to w-win. And you needed an audience."
Kaius's eyes flick up. A short, lethal pause. "You talk too much."
"You a-argue too much," Solan counters, matching his stare.
The world chooses for them.
The wind shifts. Violently.
The calm pocket Thora created collapses with a boom of displaced air. The sky above, once just an angry smear of grey, seems to rip open along an unseen fault line. A high, sharp whine builds in the air, like metal being twisted apart.
Then the rain hits.
Rhea's eyes widen as she scans the comm. "Cold front just slammed the ridge," she says, voice tight. "Temperature dropped five degrees in about ten seconds." These aren't drops, but pellets of supercooled water.
Jessa cries out, surprised by the sudden pain. "Ow! Oh, that stings! It's like running through a hail of tiny, sharp glass!"
Kade shouts, his voice edged with panic, though he maintains his sarcasm. "Fantastic. Now we get shot by the sky. We definitely needed this, didn't we?"
Solan snaps the medkit shut. The moment of vulnerability is over, replaced by immediate, terrifying threat.
Solan's voice is urgent, final. "We're... we're d-done. The nanites are active, b-but that wound needs a controlled environment. We've gotta... gotta reach that thermal signature now, before this turns into a total w-white-out."
Kaius nods, pushing himself to his feet. He feels the thrumming pain in his arm, the cold seeping into the wound, but his focus is back on the hunt.
Kaius's voice is clipped, commanding. He grabs his jacket back from Mariel, pulling it over his left shoulder. "Move. Fastest route. Follow my boot prints. No stopping."
The rain thickens behind them, peppering the rocks in rapid, icy bursts. By the time Kaius takes the lead, kicking open a path through the shallow drifts, it's already loud enough to drown their footsteps. They run after him, bent forward, arms up, jackets hissing under the growing onslaught, every breath stinging as the cold chews its way deeper.
The storm chases them like a living thing.
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