In the Frigid Apocalypse My Husband Lost His Wife With His Own Hands Chapter 12

In the Frigid Apocalypse My Husband Lost His Wife With His Own Hands Chapter 12

His throat tightened.

“Nothing”

1 only came to tell you.”

Then you’ve told me.”

Ethan turned and walked away.

After only a few steps, he collapsed into the snow.

Maisie looked at me anxiously.

“Should we help him?”

I checked his temperature.

It was seventy-nine degrees Fahrenheit.

He was severely hypothermic.

“Get him into the medical tent.”

When Ethan woke, I was treating the frostbite on his hand.

He watched my hands, his eyes slowly reddening.

“You would still save me.”

“I’d save anyone.”

That answer was crueler than leaving him to die.

He closed his eyes and made no further attempt to win my pity.

That evening, Haven sent a negotiating delegation.

Haven’s geothermal core was beginning to fail.

Only members of the cryogenic network could enter the core zone and make the repairs.

The representative looked at me.

“Ms. Hale, if you refuse to help, two hundred thousand people inside Haven will die.”

Ethan stood at the back of the crowd.

In the past, he would have said Nora was kind and would never stand by while people died.

This time, he walked in front of me and blocked me from everyone’s view.

“She can refuse.”

The representative stared at him.

“Captain Mercer, some of your former teammates are in there!”

“She has saved people before. That doesn’t mean she has to keep saving them forever.”

“She’s a victim, not a public resource you can deploy whenever you please.”

Ethan took the structural plans for the core zone.

“So I’ll go.”

I watched him walk away.

A strange stab of pain pierced the cryocore in my chest, even though it had no heartbeat.

Ethan entered the geothermal core zone alone.

The temperature inside exceeded two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit.

An ordinary human would be burned almost instantly.

I did not stop him.

It was his choice.

Three hours later, his ragged breathing came through the communicator.

“The main valve is damaged.”

“Someone has to seal it manually from the inside.”

The engineer’s face tightened.

“Once it’s sealed, whoever is inside won’t be able to get out.”

The people from Haven all looked at me.

No one said anything.

But their meaning was obvious.

If I ordered the cryogenic beings into the core zone, Ethan would not have to die.

I did not move.

Ethan’s voice came through the communicator.

“Don’t pressure her.”

“I’ll close the valve.”

The geothermal shaft began to shake.

Broken images suddenly flashed before my eyes.

I saw someone wrapping a scarf around my neck.

I saw someone sprawled beside a storm drain, reaching in to retrieve a ring.

I saw someone holding me and saying, “Don’t be afraid. I’ll recognize you.”

Then came the image of him breaking my finger.

The image of him fastening the detonation collar around my neck.

The image of him signing the personhood-erasure authorization after I had clearly refused.

Love and pain surged through me at once.

The cryocore shook violently.

At last, I understood why I had forgotten him.

The procedure was not what had made me forget him.

Before I fell into the fissure, I had deliberately deleted every feeling I had for Ethan from the neural network.

I did not want to love him anymore.

Only one minute remained on the main-valve countdown.

I opened the communication channel.

“Ethan Mercer.”

The other end went silent.

“You remembered me?”

“Some of it.”

His breathing faltered.

“Don’t misunderstand.”

“Saving you does not mean I forgive you.”

Ethan answered quietly, “I know.”

“I used to think the worst thing that could happen was that you would die.”

“Later, I realized your death was not the worst outcome.”

“The worst was that you survived and finally no longer wanted to love me.”

“But this isn’t you punishing me.”

“It’s the choice I made for you with my own hands.”

I led three hundred cryogenic beings into the core zone.

We were not sacrificing ourselves for Haven.

The engineers had found a third solution: the cryogenic beings could share the thermal load, with each of us losing only a small portion of our own cryocore.

The institute had never considered that option before.

To them, the frost-dead were not people.

They were expendable tools.