Frozen Retribution

CHAPTER 1 — Meat Still Warm

The knife wasn't sharp. That was the worst part.

It sawed instead of cut, catching on tendon, dragging through muscle Bagas Wirawan had spent thirty-four years growing without once imagining it would end up on a chipped ceramic plate. He screamed until his throat gave out and produced only a wet whistle.

Above him, lit by a single dying flashlight, Lara knelt with the blade in both hands like she was carving a chicken for Sunday dinner.

"Don't hate us, Bagas." Her voice trembled — but not from cold. The apartment was fifty-two degrees below zero outside the reinforced walls; inside, wrapped in three layers of stolen coats, she was warm enough to sweat. "It's been six days. Kenan hasn't eaten in two."

"That's — " Bagas's voice broke apart into static. "That's not — Lara, that's my leg —"

"You've kept us alive this long." Kurnia Adiputra's voice slid out of the dark, unbothered, almost bored. He crouched beside Lara and pressed his lips to her temple, right there, an inch from Bagas's dying eyes. "You won't mind being useful one more time."

Bagas's mind refused the words. Refused all of it. Kurnia — the university friend, the "harmless" neighbor, the man Lara had sworn on Kenan's life meant nothing to her — had his hand resting possessively on her hip like he owned the bones underneath.

"Kenan," Kurnia called into the shadows. "Come hold the bowl, son. Catch it before it cools."

Son.

"Okay, Ayah," said the small voice that used to call Bagas that name.

Something in Bagas's chest cracked apart that had nothing to do with the knife.

Lara watched the understanding bloom across his gray, dying face, and for the first time in nine years of marriage, she didn't bother hiding her satisfaction. "Kenan was never yours," she said softly, almost kindly, the way you'd tell a child the truth about Santa Claus. "He's Kurnia's. Now that you have nothing left to live for, Bagas — you can finally rest."

She raised the knife again.

It came down on his thigh, and this time the sound it made was the sound of a butcher's stall.

Bagas tried to scream and only blood came out.

He thought of his parents' house, sold room by room to fund Handoko's fantasy tech company. He thought of the frostbite scars on his own hands from six different scavenging runs while Marwan sat by the heater complaining that the soup was cold. He thought of every payslip he'd handed to this family like a dog dropping a stick at its owner's feet, tail wagging, waiting to be told good boy.

He had thought he was building a family.

He had only ever been livestock with a mortgage.

"I swear," he rasped, forcing air through a throat that no longer worked like one. "Even if I die — even if I come back as a ghost —"

Lara tilted her head, almost curious.

"I will come back. For every last one of you."

The dark took him whole.

"Sir?"

A voice, gentle, worried, entirely wrong for the apocalypse.

"Sir, are you alright?"

Bagas's chair screeched backward across polished marble as he lunged upright, gasping, hands flying to a stomach that was — whole. No wound. No blood. No frost creeping up through the floorboards.

Sunlight. Floor-to-ceiling windows. The hum of an air conditioner instead of the howl of a dying wind.

A woman in a bank uniform stared at him, one hand hovering near the phone on her desk like she was deciding whether security was necessary.

Bagas's hands shook so hard he nearly dropped his phone twice before the screen lit up.

August 10, 2026. 2:31 PM.

He read it. Read it again. A laugh tore out of him, half sob, half something closer to madness — the laugh of a man who had crawled hand over hand out of hell and found the door unlocked.

"I'm alive." His voice cracked. "I'm alive."

The bank manager took a small, careful step back.

Bagas didn't care. Ninety-two days. He had ninety-two days before a solar storm tore the sky apart and dropped the entire planet into a frozen grave — before ninety-five percent of humanity starved, froze, or ate each other in the dark.

"Mr. Wirawan?" The manager's voice pulled him back. She glanced down at the folder open on her desk. "Would you still like to proceed with the mortgage application?"

Ah. Today. Of course — today was the day. In his old life, he'd sat in this exact chair and signed away his childhood home to fund Handoko's "guaranteed" startup.

The office door banged open before he could answer.

"What's taking so long?" Lara swept in, hair perfect, dress clinging to a body that, in another timeline, was going to carve his off the bone. Her smile was already arranged for the manager's benefit — sweet, patient, the loving wife accompanying her husband on unpleasant business.

Bagas's stomach lurched. For one terrible second the phantom knife found him again, and the pain was so real he nearly doubled over.

"Bagas, sign it." Lara pressed the pen into his fingers like she was handing a toddler a crayon. "It's not like we're stealing the house. Handoko's company is going to be huge. Think of it as an investment."

An investment.

He'd heard that sentence before. Word for word. And like a fool, he'd believed it — right up until Handoko lost every rupiah at the tables in three weeks and vanished from every family gathering for a year, leaving Bagas to drown alone in debt no one else remembered signing for.

Not this time.

Under the bank manager's confused stare and his wife's growing impatience, Bagas picked up the mortgage agreement.

And tore it cleanly in half.

The sound was small. Clean. Final.

Lara's practiced smile fell off her face like a mask coming unglued.

"Have you completely lost your mind?!"