Chapter 71: The Social Fracture
The frost crept past the heavy oak doors of the coastal mansions, turning entryways into dead storage rooms where the weakest residents curled into tight balls and stopped breathing. Weeks of negative fifty degree temperatures had exhausted the last reserves of firewood, propane, and candle wax across the entire district. In the grand hallways where guests had once gathered for champagne receptions, absolute silence took over the space.
The central heating boilers had cracked weeks ago, their cast iron water jackets bursting under the expanding power of frozen pipes. Without thermal regulation, the interior walls absorbed the ambient chill of the outside storm until plaster began to flake off the lath in frozen sheets.
People who had spent their lives iss
