April 15th. 6:47 AM.
Jae-min woke up screaming.
His hands flew to his throat. Whole. His chest. Whole. His legs. Whole.
The bedsheets were tangled around his legs, soaked in sweat. The air from the HVAC vent was crisp. Twenty-two degrees. The smell of lavender and gun oil filled the room.
He scrambled out of bed. Bare feet hitting the concrete floor.
He walked to the window. The polycarbonate panel was thick, slightly distorting the view, but he didn't need perfect clarity to see what was happening outside.
Manila was burning under a brutal, blinding sun.
The sky was a flat, sickly yellow. Thirty-eight degrees. The peak of Philippine summer. The streets below were packed. People in shorts and tank tops. Kids running through open fire hydrants. A man selling ice candy from a wooden cart.
Normal life. Beautiful, fragile, temporary life.
Jae-min pressed his palm against the cold polycarbonate.
In twelve hours, the water from those hydrants will freeze solid. In fourteen hours, the kids will shatter on the sidewalk.
"Oppa."
Ji-yoo stood in the doorway. Black hair in a messy ponytail. Dark circles under her eyes.
"It's time?"
Jae-min looked at his watch. 6:48 AM.
"It's time."
8:00 AM. Living Room.
The four of them sat around the bare dining table.
The table was covered in gear. Plate carriers. Chest rigs. Pouches. Ammunition. Medical kits. Radios.
Jae-min picked up a Level IV ceramic plate. Heavy. Dense. Slid it into the carrier vest.
"Everyone suits up," he said. "Now."
No one argued.
They moved like a machine. Rico helping Ji-yoo adjust the straps on her smaller vest. Alessia checking the seal on the medical pouches. Jae-min loading magazines. The sharp click-chunk of bullets seating into the magazine was the only sound in the room.
Jae-min stood up. Slung the plate carrier over his shoulders. The Surgeon Scalpel rifle went over his back. Two Glock 19s into the drop-leg holsters.
He looked at the others.
Rico looked like a soldier. M4 carbone slung across his chest. Ji-yoo struggled with the heavy vest, but her jaw was set. Benelli M4 shotgun in her hands. Alessia looked out of place in the gear. Like a doctor wearing armor. A Glock 19 in her hands.
"I don't know how to use this," Alessia said quietly.
"Point and shoot," Jae-min said. "Pull the trigger until it clicks."
"I'm a doctor. I heal people. I don't—"
"Alessia." Jae-min looked at her. "In a few hours, the people outside this door will try to kill us for a can of beans. You will shoot them. Or you will die."
Alessia stared at him. Swallowed. Nodded.
"I'll shoot them."
11:00 AM.
The heat was unbearable.
Twenty-nine degrees inside. Thirty-seven outside.
"Seal the blast plates," Jae-min ordered.
Rico walked to the control panel. Flipped a heavy switch.
A deep, mechanical WHIRRRR filled the room.
The steel blast plates dropped from their tracks. They slammed down over the polycarbonate panels with a thunderous BOOM.
The room went dark.
The only light came from the battery-powered LED strips along the floor. Cold, blue light. Clinical.
The outside world was gone. All that remained was a thin slit of light at the very top of the plates where the polycarbonate wasn't covered.
Jae-min looked at the slit. The sky beyond it was still yellow. But at the edges... it was starting to turn white.
"Seal the door," Jae-min said.
Ji-yoo walked to the bulkhead. Engaged the final locking mechanism. A heavy steel bar slid across the frame.
The apartment was a tomb.
2:00 PM.
The temperature inside the bunker was dropping.
Twenty-four degrees. Then twenty-two. Then twenty.
Through the thin slit at the top of the blast plates, the sky was changing. The yellow was gone. Replaced by a pale, sickly white. Like bleach poured into water.
The light was fading. Fast.
"Oppa." Ji-yoo pointed at the window slit. "Look."
The sun was a dim, pale disc behind a veil of unnatural white cloud. The light it cast was dying. Shadows crept across the buildings like living things.
The temperature reading on Jae-min's phone said it was thirty-two degrees outside.
It had dropped five degrees in an hour.
"It's starting," he said.
4:00 PM.
The screaming started.
Jae-min couldn't hear it through the sealed bunker. But he could imagine it. The panic. The confusion. People stepping outside to grab lunch, only to find their breath freezing in their lungs.
The temperature outside was twenty degrees. And dropping fast.
Inside the bunker, it was fifteen degrees.
Through the window slit, the sky was a flat, dead white. No sun. No clouds. Just white.
And the wind had started.
A howling, screaming banshee of air that tore through the streets of Manila. Jae-min could feel it. Even through the sealed blast plates. A deep, subsonic vibration that rattled the fillings in his teeth.
"What's happening?" Alessia asked. Shivering on the couch.
"The atmosphere is collapsing. Cold air from the stratosphere is rushing down."
"How cold?"
"Minus twenty. Minus thirty. Dropping."
The LED lights flickered. Once. Twice.
"The grid," Rico said. "It's failing."
The building's lights went dark. Floor by floor.
Manila was going black.
5:30 PM.
Minus sixty degrees.
The world outside the blast plates was dead.
No light. No sound. No movement. Just absolute, suffocating white darkness. The ice on the polycarbonate was an inch thick.
Inside the bunker, it was ten degrees.
A loud CRACK echoed through the apartment.
"Concrete," Rico said quietly. "The freeze is causing thermal contraction. The building is shifting."
Another crack. Louder. Closer. A fine dusting of concrete powder drifted down from the ceiling.
"The building's plumbing is destroyed," Jae-min said. "Good thing we're independent."
7:00 PM.
Minus seventy degrees.
The official temperature. The apex of the gamma burst.
The generator coughed. Sputtered. Recovered.
"Fuel level?" Rico asked.
"Eighty percent," Jae-min said. "At this rate... fifteen days. Maybe twenty if we ration."
"Then we ration."
Ji-yoo was sitting at the table. Wrapped in a blanket.
"The food," she said. "How much do we have?"
"Enough," Jae-min said. "Thousands of meals. Enough for years."
Ji-yoo stared at him. "You emptied the whole warehouse."
"Every pallet."
"You almost died."
"But I didn't."
"Stupid," she muttered.
"Probably."
Alessia was on the couch. Wrapped in three blankets. Shivering.
"The people next door," she whispered. "Are they...?"
"Dead," Jae-min said. "Most died in the first hour. The rest are dying now."
Alessia closed her eyes. A tear rolled down her cheek.
"And the city?"
"Gone."
9:00 PM.
Minus seventy degrees.
The LED lights flickered. The generator hummed. The cold seeped through the walls.
Jae-min sat on the edge of the bed. Phone in his hand.
He opened the flight tracking app.
A small blue dot was moving across a map of the South China Sea.
Flight KE627. Incheon to Manila.
The dot was approaching the coastline of Taiwan. The Alishan Mountains loomed in its path.
"Oppa."
Ji-yoo sat beside him. Close enough that their shoulders touched.
"It's on time," she whispered.
"Yes."
"They'll land in an hour."
"Yes."
Ji-yoo's hand found his. Squeezed. Hard. Her fingers were ice cold.
"Do you think they knew?" she asked. "At the end."
"I don't know."
"I hope they didn't. I hope it was fast. I hope they were looking at each other."
Jae-min stared at the blue dot.
Because he knew the truth.
Inside the cockpit of Flight KE627, the temperature gauge was reading minus fifty-eight degrees.
The captain looked out the windshield. The glass was frosting. Spiderwebs of ice forming.
"We need to climb!"
"Altitude is not responding. The trim is frozen."
The plane was sinking.
The left engine flamed out. Ice in the intake.
"Left engine is dead!"
Five thousand feet.
The right engine coughed. Died.
Silence.
The plane was a glider. Fifty tons of aluminum falling out of the sky.
Two thousand feet.
Inside the cabin, Hermano Del Rosario looked at Eun-Hae.
She wasn't screaming. She was just looking at him. Tears on her cheeks. But calm.
"Hermano."
"Eun-Hae."
"I love you."
"I love you too."
He squeezed her hand.
"I'm sorry," Hermano said. "About Jae-min. About Ji-yoo. We should have listened."
"Don't." Eun-Hae squeezed back. "We did one thing right."
"What?"
"Ji-yoo. We let her stay. She's not on this plane."
"No regret?"
"Yes." Eun-Hae smiled. A sad, beautiful smile. "No regrets."
Hermano smiled back.
"No regrets."
One thousand feet.
The ground hit.
9:09 PM. Unit 1418.
The blue dot stopped moving.
Zero altitude. Zero speed.
Ji-yoo saw it happen.
"No..." she whispered. "No, no, no..."
She collapsed against Jae-min. Her fists beating against his chest.
"Oppa... no... they can't be..."
Jae-min caught her fists. Held them.
"They're gone, Ji-yoo."
"NO!"
"They're gone."
Ji-yoo broke.
She screamed. A raw, primal sound that tore through the apartment.
She collapsed onto the floor. Curled into a ball. Sobbing. Beating the concrete with her fists.
Jae-min sat on the floor beside her.
He just sat there. Let her break.
Alessia appeared in the doorway.
"What happened?"
"The plane," Jae-min said. "It went down. Over the Alishan Mountains."
Alessia walked over. Knelt beside Ji-yoo. Wrapped her arms around her.
Jae-min stared at the phone. The blue dot. Still there. Unmoving.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
The screen dimmed.
11:59 PM.
April 15th was over.
Jae-min stood by the window. Looked up at the thin slit.
The white darkness was absolute. No stars. No moon. Just void.
He pressed his hand against the ice-covered polycarbonate.
"Day one," he said quietly.
Ji-yoo walked up beside him. Wrapped in a blanket.
"We made it."
"Day one," Jae-min repeated. "Only forty-two more to go."
He turned away from the window. Walked to the dining table.
The rifle was clean. The ammo was stacked. The bunker was holding.
They were alive.
His phone buzzed.
"Congratulations, Mr. Del Rosario. You survived the first night. So did we. Let's see who survives the year. - N"
Jae-min stared at the message.
"Try me."
He set the phone down.
The Frozen Apocalypse had begun.