COLD

Chapter 2

The whiteout was blinding, endless.

Stephan stood rigid by the window, watching the blizzard methodically bury the unfamiliar town. Upon his shoulders rested the intoxicating weight of the heavy backpack Xander had handed him just hours prior—a physical anchor to his new reality.

He was clothed entirely in black winter gear: a thick, long-sleeved turtleneck beneath a heavy wool overcoat, paired with deep blue trousers. Sinking his gloved hands deep into his pockets, his grey eyes scanned the roaring snowstorm. Through the white veil, towering grey monolithic buildings stood like silent titans against the winter sky.

The door creaked open behind him. Xander stepped into the room.

“Are you ready?” he demanded. His tone was technically warm, yet it carried the gentle, unyielding authority of a handler.

Stephan paused for a brief, hesitant second, his eyes meticulously reading Xander’s smooth, pale face. Finally, he gave a slow nod.

“Good. We have a single day to explore,” Xander said. He walked toward Stephan, his slender fingers reaching out to neatly adjust the collar of the young man's winter coat. Once satisfied, he turned. Both men walked out of the room, their synchronized footsteps clattering loudly against the sterile tiled floor.

Within moments, they reached the building's main exit. Xander pulled the heavy door open, and a violent rush of frigid air lunged forward to greet them.

The European weather felt entirely hostile to Stephan. The freezing wind bathed his newly manufactured, pale bronze skin, offering none of the natural warmth of his native home. Stepping fully into the storm, he extended an uncovered hand to gauge the elements. It was shockingly colder than the torrential rains of his homeland, the biting temperature clawing desperately at his newly improved, resilient body. He watched his breath leave his nose, curling into a dense cloud of white mist.

But it was the sight of the city itself that truly arrested his mind.

Despite the blinding whiteout, a network of pristine streetlights glowed endlessly down the avenues, painting the snow-slicked streets with a holy, mesmerizing spectrum of light. It looked like heaven on earth. His eyes drank in the manufactured beauty, tracing the lines of the architecture as the buildings stretched into the dark sky above his head.

Below, he watched the happy, orderly faces of the citizens marching to and fro. Their eyes were unnervingly uniform—an endless sea of crystalline light blue irises. The skin of their faces was completely pale, an exact match to Xander’s translucent complexion.

“Breathtaking, isn't it?” Xander observed, trailing a step behind him.

“It's beautiful,” Stephan muttered, his voice barely a whisper against the wind. “I never thought I'd see a world like this.”

Xander smiled smoothly. “There is much more to see,” he said, pivoting to the right.

Stephan followed instantly. His movements were hasty and sharp as he began navigating through the sea of hundreds of silent passersby.

“There are more places like this?” he inquired, a spark of genuine curiosity breaking through his shock.

“Yes,” Xander answered without hesitation. “Many people, few towns. This is merely a small settlement compared to the true cities of this world.”

“Wait… you call this beautiful place a small town?” Stephan reeled, his voice dropping dangerously low. “To me, this is like heaven.”

“Fortunately,” Xander murmured, cutting through the crowded sidewalk like a warm knife moving through butter, “this isn't heaven.”

They walked on in silence. Stephan’s gaze wandered across the glistening streets, captivated by the shimmering reflections of artificial light dancing on glass and packed snow. Everything felt entirely alien, yet strangely magnetic. He watched his own breath curl into the frigid air, and then his focus shifted back to the crowd.

A sea of black winter coats moved in quiet, perfectly orderly streams. The uniformity was striking—almost aggressively enforced. When he accidentally bumped into a passing woman, she did not stumble, pause, or demand an apology. She simply kept walking. Her face, however, lingered vividly in his mind: pale, flawless skin and those crystalline light blue eyes that caught the light like frozen sapphires.

“Sorry,” he muttered, but she was already swallowed by the crowd.

“Any problem?” Xander asked at his elbow.

Stephan shook his head quickly. “No… why?”

“You’re staring.”

He hadn’t realized it. Another passerby—a young man—walked past. The same sharp, pale features. The same striking, icy blue eyes. An uncomfortable, terrifying pattern was forming in Stephan's mind.

His steps slowed. His gaze flicked aggressively from face to face in the crowd. They were somewhat too similar. Somewhat too uniform. His eyes narrowed with a sudden surge of suspicion, his mind beginning to ponder the mathematical impossibility of it. Something is wrong.

“Xander,” he called out.

Xander kept walking, but turned his head slightly toward him. “Yes?”

Stephan scanned the busy, whiteout-blinded streets, watching the residents glide past. “Did you notice something strange about the people's faces?”

Xander smirked, a calculated glint in his eye. “It is nothing, Stephan. In time, you'll get used to it.”

Xander walked ahead, vanishing slightly into the snowy distance. Stephan paused, isolated in deep contemplation of his handler's words. His breath moved in and out of his lungs like a living being trapped in a machine. He turned around one last time, staring back at the sea of uniform faces. They were technically different individuals, yet they all shared a haunting, manufactured resemblance.

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19:56 PM.

They finally reached their living quarters.

Stephan climbed the wooden stairs, his heavy steps thumping rhythmically against the structure. Scanning the room, he felt an immediate wave of artificial warmth that relieved his skin from the bitter European winter—his very first taste of the cold world.

The backpack remained tightly strapped to his torso, its weight pulling down on his broad shoulders with an exhausting force. Unbuckling the straps, he released the pack, letting it drop heavily against the soft, bouncing mattress. The warm, ambient lighting of the room cast a soothing radiance over his new sanctuary. Walking to the window, he adjusted the heavy curtain, his eyes once again drinking in the beautiful, chaotic spectrum of the never-ending whiteout outside.

Instantly, his mind was intruded by memories.

The world he once knew. The blistering sun he used to hide from. The warm rain he used to play under. The endless avalanche of memories continued to colonize his thoughts, and he couldn't stop staring out into the snow.

Stephan felt a crushing, sudden weight of loneliness sink into his soul, burying him deeper than the pristine white drifts outside. It was as endless as a dark ocean—cold, sharp, and predatory. He felt the isolation draining away the final remnants of the innocent child living inside his chest.

The dark memories of his loved ones, violently massacred by the faceless rebel factions, now exerted their haunting weight without a shred of consideration or pity. The images denied him any semblance of peace. He saw the faces of those who had given him a childhood filled with love, collapsing face-first into the dirt, their features masked by dark crimson stains.

He heard the deafening echoes of men shouting in terror. He heard bullets flying through the air with death-stroke precision. People he knew, relatives he had loved, brothers and sisters he had played with—all giving up their final breath as their bodies were violently torn apart by the deafening roars of machines of death.

His eyelids fluttered violently. The memory snapped.

The past vanished like smoke disappearing into a hurricane.

Breathing slowly and gently, a settled, sober realization finally dawned on his mind. He accepted his reality. He accepted the name given to him by a man who claimed to show him mercy. He accepted a world much colder than his native home, and a face entirely different from his true one.

Walking away from the window, his footsteps thumping against the wooden floor, he sank his mass onto the soft mattress. Letting out a deep breath, the cloud of mist from his lungs instantly dissolved into the heated air of his new room.

A sudden, involuntary stroke of laughter spread across his lips as he remembered sharing a single, cramped room with his three brothers. He remembered their endless, chaotic arguments over clothes, food, and sleeping space. He remembered their playful fights over cleaning routines. His heart warmed delightfully as he visited those blissful fragments of time, feeling an intense, desperate surge to travel back to those days.

Within a minute, the laughter died.

The joy evaporated, leaving him utterly alone with his bitter, endless loneliness. The pain that followed that sober realization ruined the bliss of the memory. His heart throbbed bitterly; his old world had died with them.

However, the loneliness did not come to him like a wolf seeking to devour him. Instead, it arrived like a comforting friend—a quiet, expected company.

He laid his back flat upon the mattress, his eyes slowly sliding shut behind his eyelids. His breath became slow, rhythmic, and controlled.

In a sudden, violent flash of time, his eyes fluttered open.

The warm room had completely disappeared.

He was lying inside an abandoned, decaying concrete shaft. The soft, warm mattress beneath him had turned into cold, rotting, and creaking wood, spoiled by decades of neglect. His breath was slow, his vision sharp. His eyes narrowed, hardened by years of brutal experience with the bitter, unrelenting cold.

He rose from the frozen wood, his spine stretching with an adult ache. Stepping out of the shaft, he looked out into a completely empty, dead village. The wooden structures around him were abandoned, deserted of all life, while the sight of endless, un-sculpted snow remained a tragic, permanent norm.

He began to trek through the empty, frozen world, his eyes scanning the bleak horizon for any sign of hidden life. Around him, the freezing winds howled like a starving beast.