Ninety-Two Days Before the Ice

Ninety-Two Days

"How many times do I have to tell you I don't want cheap things?" Lexi jabbed a finger at the ring on the floor.

In his first life, Rhys had given her that ring as an anniversary gift. It was his family heirloom, and he had known exactly what it meant, but love had blinded him into thinking she deserved something just as precious. Thank heaven she had refused it.

He bent down, picked it up, and slid it into his pocket.

"Why would I stay with someone like you?" Lexi went on, wearing the wounded look of a woman auditioning for sympathy. "You can't even give me the life I deserve."

In his first life, that sentence would have broken him. Now it only made him tired.

"No matter what I give you," he said slowly, "it will never be enough. Will it?"

Her hand rose to slap him a third time, then stopped. She had met his eyes. There was no pleading in them anymore, only a patient, bone-deep disgust, and it frightened her more than she wanted to admit.

The door swung open. Henry Stowe barged in, shouldering past Ms. Whitaker with an entitled scowl. "What's all the shouting about?" He looked between his sister and his brother-in-law. "And more importantly, where's my million?"

"If you want money," Rhys said, "earn it like an honest man."

"The hell? Are you backing out? We had a deal!"

"There was never a deal. There was only a family that decided it had the right to spend my money whenever it pleased."

"You son of a bitch!" Henry stepped forward and raised his fist.

"Careful."

One word, quiet, almost gentle. But it carried the weight of a man who had killed monsters with his bare hands, and Henry's body understood that before his brain did. He stopped dead.

Rhys buttoned his coat and walked out.

Behind him, the Stowes found their voices again: his name, then threats, then something about Henry's company, echoing down the marble hallway like a very small dog barking.

"You'll come crawling back!" Lexi screamed after him. "You always do!"

None of it mattered. He had a clock to beat.

He walked until he found a deserted alley between two office buildings. He checked the street first, then the rooftops. Old habit. The only witness was a pigeon, unimpressed. Then he bit the tip of his finger and let one drop of blood fall onto the ring.

Light exploded.

When it faded, he was standing in an empty apartment.

The dimensional space. Two bedrooms, a living room, a balcony opening onto a small, bare garden. A hundred and twenty square meters of nothing, with a silence so deep it hummed. No water. No power. No furniture.

He knelt and pressed his palm to the floor. It was smooth and faintly warm. Ten years of losing everything, and this was the one thing the world had never managed to take from him.

Rhys's breath quickened. "This time," he whispered, "I'll fill every inch of you."

Anything placed here stayed exactly as it was. Food never rotted. Water never evaporated. Hot meals stayed hot, frozen goods stayed frozen. In the wasteland, that had been the difference between a funeral and a feast.

But the ring had a limit. A glowing timer hung in the air.

30:00.

The numbers began to fall, second by second.

Thirty minutes inside, then a twenty-four-hour cooldown before he could enter again. A hard limit, and one he had once cursed in the dark a thousand times. Rhys smiled anyway. For now, it was more than enough.

He stepped back out into the alley, and the roar of the city rushed in.

His pulse was racing. Not with fear, and not even with wonder. It was the cold, focused exhilaration of a commander who has received reinforcements one minute before the battle begins.

He walked onto the crowded street. A couple argued over where to eat. A delivery driver hurried past with a stack of steaming takeout boxes. Drivers drummed the wheel to the radio, bored in the safest, warmest world they would ever know.

Above them, the sky was clear and blue, as though it might stay that way forever.

Rhys knew it would not.

His accounts held the savings of an ordinary man: not enough to feed one family through a single winter, let alone to stock a shelter. He needed a fortune, and fast. He knew exactly one way to find it. It would have to wait until the divorce was done.

In his first life, he had spent the first winter learning what he should have stored. Rice, not flour. Antibiotics, not painkillers. Fuel, fuel, and more fuel. He still remembered every item. Now he simply needed the money to buy them, and the time to hide them.

He pulled out his phone, opened the calendar, and counted.

Ninety-two days.

Ninety-two days before that perfect sky came crashing down.

But first, there was one more thing he needed to confirm. A little boy with Lexi's eyes, and a question Rhys had spent a lifetime refusing to ask.