In the Frigid Apocalypse My Husband Lost His Wife With His Own Hands Chapter 10

In the Frigid Apocalypse My Husband Lost His Wife With His Own Hands Chapter 10

I crawled into Sophie’s hospital room and tore the wedding ring from around her neck.

Sophie woke with a start. Before she could scream, I held the ring up in front of my eyes.

The inscription inside the plain silver band had been worn almost smooth.

Only a blurred A remained from the words, “Always find your way home.”

I stared at it for a long time.

Then I snapped the ring in two and threw it into the medical-waste bin.

By the time Ethan arrived, all he saw were two twisted pieces of silver.

At last, his expression changed.

“Nora, what are you doing?”

I turned to face him.

“I don’t want it anymore.”

It was the clearest sentence I had spoken since the infection.

Ethan bent down and picked up the broken ring.

“It’s only a ring.”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll buy you a new one someday.”

I looked at him.

“I don’t want a new one.”

He still did not understand.

The ring had never been what I was giving up.

Ethan lowered his head and tried to fit the broken band back together.

While he was distracted, I smashed through the glass of the emergency exit.

Bitter wind roared into Haven.

I jumped from the platform nearly a hundred feet above the ground.

“Nora!”

Thousands upon thousands of frost-dead waited below.

They reached up and caught me.

Countless minds flooded into mine.

One belonged to Megan Ward, a mother of two.

Another belonged to Grant Nolan, who had been an engineer in Haven before he froze to death.

And there was Maisie, seven years old.

She had never forgotten that I was the one who saved her in Cold Storage Seven.

We were not mindless monsters.

The living had simply never tried to listen.

I connected what remained of my cryocore to the collective network.

The icy blue commands appeared across my vision again.

[Subject has deviated from predetermined trajectory.]

[Forced homing protocol activated.]

[Homing target: Ethan Mercer.]

Those words had never been prophecies.

They were behavioral directives the institute had embedded in the cryofungus.

They were designed to turn me against Sophie, drive me to attack humans, and end with Ethan killing me

himself.

As long as I lost control exactly as programmed, the institute could claim that cryogenic beings had no

personhood.

I tore out the final neural probe.

[Homing protocol deleted.]

The entire horde turned as one.

They followed me toward the Northern Icefields.

Ethan led a convoy beyond the walls and blocked our path.

“Come back with me.”

I did not stop.

“Sophie is stable now. I won’t take any more of your cryocore.”

“A subzero habitat has been built outside the walls.”

“If you don’t want to see her, I can keep the two of you apart.”

He spoke as though he were making concessions.

Yet he still had not terminated Sophie’s dependent registration.

He had not even asked whether I wanted to return.

“Nora, stop being stubborn.”

“Outside the walls, you have no legal identity, no subzero habitat, and no one who will treat you as human.”

I raised my hand and pointed to the cryogenic beings behind me.

“They don’t need me to prove that I’m human.”

Ethan froze.

The ice beneath us suddenly collapsed.

Explosives planted in advance by the institute detonated all at once.

Sophie stood on top of Haven’s wall with a black controller in her hand.

It was not the collar remote Ethan had already taken from her.

It was the institute’s emergency master controller, issued to her under her replacement-dependent status.

After my status as Ethan’s wife had been erased, the woman registered in my place had gained the authority

to decide whether I should be destroyed.

“Nora can’t leave!”

“Without the prime cryocore, the frost-dead outside the walls can never be controlled!”

Ethan barked an order.

“Stop!”

Sophie shook her head through her tears.

“Didn’t you promise you would keep me alive?”

She pressed the button.

Explosions raced across the ice beneath my feet.

I shoved Ethan toward safety, but the fissure swallowed me.

My body plunged into a subglacial current.

In the final moment, I heard the institute’s announcement.

[Subject 001: vital signs lost.]