COLD

Chapter 12

The gentle snowfall had turned vicious within minutes, transforming into a blinding whiteout that swallowed Whalsburger whole. Visibility vanished behind a roaring wall of white.

Yet inside the study, both men remained rooted in place, their breaths curling into faint clouds in the rapidly chilling air.

“What do you mean I’m wearing a dead man’s face?” Stephan demanded, his voice low and edged with authority.

Rheinhard’s lips curved into a slow, dangerous smile. He turned from the window with deliberate calm and moved toward the sideboard. “It seems we have a story to tell after all.”

“I don’t have time for games, Linchsteyn,” Stephan snapped. His breath misted heavily as the temperature in the room seemed to drop.

Rheinhard poured whiskey into a crystal glass, the amber liquid catching the dim light. “Some time ago, Xander found a young man—lost, but gifted. Intelligent. Strong. Fast.” He took a measured sip. “Much like you. Perhaps even better.”

Stephan’s fists tightened at his sides, knuckles cracking. “Where is he now?”

“He disappeared,” Rheinhard said flatly, swirling the glass. “Right after he learned that Xander’s loyalty had limits. That his so-called master was only interested in useful tools.” Another sip. A heavy, contemplative sigh escaped him. “That’s when Xander needed a replacement. He gave you the name. The face. The body. You’re nothing more than a carbon copy of the man who failed him.”

The words struck like a blade. For a moment, the furnace in Stephan’s chest flared violently, then twisted into something colder and sharper. Betrayal flooded through him, thick and nauseating. The man he had trusted to pull him from the mud — the one who had rebuilt him — had simply grafted another life onto his broken body.

He stared hard at Rheinhard, searching those crystalline eyes for any trace of deception. There was none. Only cold, satisfied truth.

Without another word, Stephan turned on his heel and marched toward the heavy oak door.

“Any more questions?” Rheinhard called after him, his voice laced with mocking amusement.

Stephan paused at the threshold, one hand gripping the doorframe. Part of him wanted to turn back and demand every detail — about the original, about Xander’s real motives, about the erased history and the pyramid beneath the ice. But the weight of it all pressed down harder than the blizzard outside.

He walked out.

Behind him, Rheinhard lifted his glass in a silent toast, a victorious smirk playing across his lips as the stolen SUV disappeared into the whiteout.

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12:59 PM.

Polaris Munchenberg stood rigid by the towering picture window, her arms locked tightly across her chest as the arctic snowstorm howled against the glass. Her presence had briefly steadied Xander earlier, but the reprieve was short-lived. With every ticking minute, the tension in the room grew heavier, suffocating and thick.

“Why didn’t you tell him the truth?” she asked. Her voice was calm yet sharp, laced with a quiet, simmering frustration. “He is not a child, Xander. He deserves to know exactly what kind of hell he is walking into.”

Xander kept his back to her, staring blankly into the blinding whiteout. His jaw was clenched so hard the muscle twitched. “I am bound by a ancient pact with Rheinhard. Revealing his secrets risks exposing my own. I cannot break it.”

Polaris studied the tense line of his shoulders, her dark eyes narrowing with razor-like focus. “And what secrets are worth sacrificing his trust? What are you hiding?”

He waved her off with a weary gesture, but Polaris stepped closer, refusing to let the matter drop. “Hiding the truth from Stephan will not protect him. It will only erode whatever fragile loyalty he still feels for you. Look out that window, Xander. This storm outside is nothing compared to the tempest you are brewing inside him.”

Xander exhaled a long, ragged breath. “When the time is right, I will tell him myself. Not before.”

Before Polaris could press further, the heavy front door creaked open, groaning against the wind. Stephan stepped inside. Thick snow clung to his broad shoulders, but the cold outside was nothing compared to the frost radiating from his presence. His face was drawn with a profound, hollow sorrow, yet his steel-grey eyes burned with a terrifying mixture of barely contained anger and raw betrayal.

Polaris moved to him instantly, cutting through the freezing air to pull him into a fierce, protective embrace. “Stephan,” she whispered, her voice cracking as her hand gently brushed through his snow-damp hair. “Are you hurt? Tell me what happened.”

He stood completely rigid in her arms for several agonizing heartbeats, a statue of ice, before he slowly but firmly pulled back. The sheer fury radiating from his gaze made her pause. She searched his fractured expression, then deliberately stepped a pace behind him—a silent, unwavering show of support. She was ready to intervene the moment things turned ugly.

“Leave us,” Stephan said quietly. He did not look at her, his eyes locked entirely on Xander. The words were soft, but they carried a dangerous, vibrating strain.

Polaris hesitated, her protective instincts screaming at her to stay. “I will be in the next room,” she said finally, her tone composed but laced with an unspoken warning. She shot Xander a meaningful, razor-sharp look before withdrawing just far enough to remain within earshot.

The air between the two men thickened, heavy with the crushing weight of years of unspoken history and buried lies.

After a long, painful silence that stretched until the room felt devoid of oxygen, Stephan spoke. “Was there anyone else… with this face?”

Xander’s shoulders sagged as the horrific realization dawned on him. Rheinhard had baited him perfectly. The pact was shattered, ruined beyond repair. He nodded slowly, the movement costing him immense effort. “Yes. There was someone. A long time ago.”

Stephan’s jaw clenched, his knuckles turning stark white. Inside his chest, a metaphorical furnace roared to life, fueled by decades of stolen identity. “What happened to him?”

Xander drew in a deep, shaky breath, his voice dropping into a heavy, gravelly register. “He felt exactly what you are feeling right now. The blinding anger. The paralyzing betrayal. He eventually learned that I had given him the name and the face of a dear friend—a man who died long before the great purge.”

Stephan did not explode. He stood entirely motionless, processing the cosmic horror of the revelation.

Xander continued, his voice dripping with genuine remorse. “When the engineered virus struck, it wiped out most of the global population. I was desperate. I tried to recreate what I had lost, to defy death itself. You are the third, Stephan. The first clone chose suicide to escape the ghost. The second vanished into the wastes.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Stephan’s breathing grew sharper, a ragged wheeze as his grey eyes narrowed into a storm of conflicting emotions—grief for a life he never lived, rage at the man who stole it, and a terrifying confusion. He looked down at his own pale hands, flexing his fingers as if they belonged to a corpse.

“Why?” he finally growled, the word ripped from his throat, low and raw. “Why keep copying a dead man onto new bodies? Why force us to wear an identity we can never truly own?”

Xander’s face twisted with agonizing guilt. Before he could offer an excuse, Polaris stepped forward from the shadows. Her usual unflappable composure was utterly cracked. Shock and uncharacteristic anger flashed across her sharp features.

“Is this true?” she demanded, her voice vibrating with profound disbelief. “All of it? You engineered them as replacements?”

Xander gave a miserable, pained nod. “I couldn't let go of my closest friend after the calamity. I thought I was preserving something beautiful.”

Polaris turned her gaze to Stephan, her concern deepening into outright fear for his sanity. She could practically see the psychological war raging behind his eyes—the ghost of the forgotten boy he used to be clashing violently with the engineered, synthetic man standing in the room now.

Stephan exhaled a shaky, rattling breath. “Was I ever… anyone real? Did I have a soul, a will of my own, before you wiped it away?”

Xander’s gaze softened, drifting back into the archives of his memory. “You were a dark-skinned boy in Sierra Leone. You were grievously injured, dying in the blood-soaked mud of a war-torn village. As I pulled you from the wreckage, you begged me to take you somewhere safe. Then you closed your eyes, waiting for death.”

The words struck Stephan like a physical blow, stealing the air from his lungs. He instinctively raised a hand to touch his own pale, porcelain cheek, the agonizing dissonance of his rewritten existence crashing over him like a tidal wave.

“I never saw you as property,” Xander pleaded quietly, taking a tentative step forward. “The others in the lab might have viewed the projects that way. But you… you needed healing. I wanted to give you a chance to move beyond the cruel world that had destroyed your childhood dreams.”

Stephan stood silent for what felt like an eternity, the furnace within him burning low and unsteady, reduced to smoldering embers. He wanted to tear the room apart. He wanted to walk out into the blizzard and let the frost claim him. But something deeper—a profound exhaustion, a fragile thread of tragic understanding—held his boots to the floor.

“I do not forgive you,” he said finally. His voice was cold, flat, and steady. “Not yet. Because I still do not truly understand why you thought you had the right.”

Polaris watched him closely, stunned by his sudden, chilling restraint. “Stephan… after everything he just admitted, you aren't going to strike him down?”

Stephan’s eyes flicked toward her, then settled back onto Xander with piercing clarity. “Rheinhard told me this specifically to drive me away from Hildegard. He wanted my rage to isolate me. He was using the truth as a weapon to break our alliance.”

Polaris frowned, her tactical mind instantly working through the new data. “Who is Hildegard, really? What is her role in this?”

Xander hesitated, knowing he was pulling back another heavy curtain, then answered carefully. “She is not Rheinhard’s biological daughter. She is the tragic product of what Rheinhard's father did to Elisabeth—her mother.”

Stephan paused, contemplating deeply about Xander's revelation. He slowly reaches into his heavy coat and pulled out a weathered photograph. It depicted Elisabeth holding an infant, a fierce, protective man standing guard beside her.

Xander studied the image. A deep, physical pain throbbed in his chest, his eyes widening with instant, painful recognition.

“Do you know him?” Stephan demanded, his brows furrowed with deep suspicion.

Xander nodded, his voice cracking with old grief. “Haglund. He was a good, honorable friend. He chose to raise a child that was never truly his, nor anyone’s. He protected Hildegard with his life.”

Polaris stepped closer to look at the photo, her brow furrowing as she noticed the uncanny, mirror-like resemblance between the infant's mother and the girl they knew. “And the child? What is she?”

Xander’s voice dropped to a horrifying whisper, competing with the roar of the wind outside. “She isn't just a daughter, Polaris. She is Elisabeth’s direct clone. Grown from infancy to repeat the cycle.”

The room fell into a heavy, absolute silence. Outside, the blizzard continued its indifferent, deafening roar, burying the secrets of the past under a blanket of unyielding white.