“I know,” Derek said. His voice had changed. The businesslike warmth was gone. What was underneath it was cold and flat. He looked at his men. “He has made his choice to fight back instead of joining and work for me.” He nodded slowly. “We cannot leave him walking around after this. He knows too much and he is angry enough to actually do something about it.”“Obviously,” Serena said. She looked around the room. Her eyes landed on something leaning against the wall in the corner.A baseball bat.One of the security men had brought it in earlier. Nathan had not thought about it until now.Serena walked over and picked it up.She held it with both hands and felt the weight of it.Then she looked at the security men. “Hold him properly,” she said. “Do not let him move.”Two men grabbed Nathan's arms and pressed them down hard. A third man put his knee into Nathan's back and pushed him forward so he was bent toward the floor, his face turned sideways against the cold marble.He could

“He is a monster,” she said. Her voice was shaking now. “I have three weeks of evidence that he is a monster and you are not listening to a single word. Grandfather what is happening to you? Why will you not hear me?”“Because you are not saying anything worth hearing,” he said simply. “You are a young woman who is scared and so you are inventing reasons to say no. I am not going to keep having this conversation. The decision is final, and I expect you to come to full reality, and understand none of this excuses will work.”At that moment Vivienne couldn't say anything, and she knew why her grandfather wants to ship her out.She understood it perfectly and that was the worst part.Her medical condition was called **Extreme Cold Condition.** Her body generated almost no natural heat. Her core temperature ran dangerously low regardless of the weather outside. She needed medication every single day just to maintain a temperature that would not shut her organs down. She wore layers in

There was no light, no sound and Nathan Cross existed somewhere. He was not standing. He was not lying down. He simply was — a consciousness floating in absolute darkness with no reference point for up or down or here or there."Am I dead?"The thought arrived calmly. No panic attached to it. Just a genuine question from a mind that was trying to make sense of its situation.“Is this what dead feels like?”Then it started, It hit him like a wall.Information, pure raw information crashing into his mind at a speed that had no comparison to anything he had ever experienced. Not like reading. Not like studying. Not like learning something new.Like a download, it was as if someone had connected his brain directly to an ancient library the size of a universe and opened every file simultaneously.**Ancient scrolls.**Thousands of them. He could not see them exactly they were not images. They were knowledge arriving fully formed inside his mind. Characters he had never studied. Languages h

The nurse stared at him.He could understand why. From the outside this made no sense. A man brought in barely conscious in the middle of the night, standing up the next morning like he had slept well and was ready for breakfast.“It is a miracle you survived,” the nurse said. She sounded like she meant it. “The lady who brought you in — she said she found you collapsed on the road. When the attending first saw you he thought” She stopped herself. “You should not even be standing right now.”“I know,” Nathan said quietly. “But I am. Thank you for looking after me.”He looked around the room for his clothes.They were folded on the chair in the corner. Someone had done their best with them but they were still torn. He picked them up.The smell hit him immediately.Underneath the blood and the sweat underneath all of it there was a fragrance. Subtle but unmistakable. Rich in a way and he could tell this wasn't an ordinary cheap perfume. Like something made from rare things by someone

But when it destabilizedWhen the condition spiked without warning triggered by stress or cold or extreme emotional disturbance the body's temperature could drop to genuinely dangerous levels fast. Not just uncomfortable. Dangerous. Organ-threatening. The kind of cold that spread outward from the person's skin and affected the immediate environment around them.Anyone who touched her right now without preparation would find their own body temperature dropping at the point of contact. Not frostbite. Not immediate danger for a healthy adult. But disorienting and unpleasant enough that untrained people would instinctively pull back.And for her without intervention she will die.He started walking toward the circle..“Sir.” A wall of suit appeared in front of him immediately. One of the bodyguards. A big man who moved with quiet professional efficiency. “This area is restricted. Please keep moving.”“I need to get through,” Nathan said. “The woman on the ground. I can help her.”“Sir.”