I had just picked up a slice of beef when Rhys walked over, his expression grim. "Boss, I checked the generator. We’re running low on backup diesel."

Garrick froze. "How low?"

Rhys lowered his voice, "Three days, at most. In three days, the heat’s gone. The cameras go dark. This place turns into a steel coffin."

Silence fell over the office.

I set my cutlery down. "Meeting."

I gathered them in front of the surveillance screens and pointed at the dozens of semi-trucks stalled out in the snow.

"Those trucks?" I said, tapping the monitor. "They’re our fuel depot. We strip the tanks and bring the fuel back before the power cuts."

"We've got to go outside?" Garrick’s face went pale. "It’s almost -100 out there! What if there are still people—"

Rhys cut in, "At those temperatures, you’ve got minutes outside. Fifteen, tops."

"Then we do it fast. And we do it hard." I looked at them. "We need weapons."

We didn’t have guns.

I had Garrick bring a few long pry bars to the loading dock. I turned on the fire hose and aimed it at the tips.

"Declan, what are you doing? Washing them?"

I didn’t answer. I kept the water flowing over the steel. The moment it hit the air, it froze layer by layer, building outward. Within minutes, each bar had grown a long, tapered spike of solid ice.

An ice spear.

Garrick stared, wide-eyed.

I grabbed a few stab-resistant vests, put one on, then sprayed water over the surface. A thin layer of frost formed almost instantly, hardening into a crude shell.

Ice armor.

"Ice spears. Ice armor!" Garrick swung one experimentally, grinning. "How does your brain even work? This is better than an axe!"

Rhys tested the tip against the ground. The frozen surface cracked easily under the strike. He nodded, satisfied.

Only one person stood apart. Tamsin stayed back, watching us turn tools into weapons.

There was confusion in her eyes, and something deeper. Fear.

"Mr. Mercer…" she finally stepped forward, her voice trembling. "Do we really have to do this? The people outside… maybe they just need help…"

I was adjusting a manual fuel pump, not even looking up. "It’s just a precaution. You don’t need to do anything. Stay in the office."

We were preparing to move at dawn the next day when something appeared on the surveillance feed.

Delilah and her family.

The three of them stood outside the compound gates like ghosts, pounding against the alloy doors, screaming, begging.

Tamsin could see the same feed from the control room upstairs. She saw Delilah’s mother, Mrs. Helena Carrington, drop to her knees in the snow while bowing over and over toward the warehouse.

We were downstairs, checking equipment.

Then suddenly, every emergency light in the warehouse snapped on. A blaring alarm tore through the entire facility.

I spun around.

Through the reinforced glass of the second-floor control room, I saw Tamsin standing at the console with both hands pressed down on the red unlock button. Her face was set, almost resolute.

"Mr. Mercer, we can’t just let them die. One day, you’ll thank me."

The moment the words left her mouth, the massive alloy door we depended on for survival shuddered.

With a grinding, bone-rattling screech, it opened.