Chapter 2

The world returned not as light, but as a muffled cacophony of panicked voices and the relentless shriek of the wind. I was lying in a shallow depression in the snow, a hastily dug pit. Bryan and Kelsi were crouched over me, their forms blurry silhouettes against the swirling white.

"She just went limp!" Kelsi was saying, her voice a high-pitched wail that grated on my ears. "She tore her own jacket and then just... passed out. I think the altitude is getting to her."

Bryan was shaking me, his grip rough on my shoulders. "Alex! Alex, wake up! Stop this nonsense!"

I tried to speak, to tell them they were murderers, but my jaw was locked. My lungs burned with every shallow, ragged breath. The cold was an invasive presence now, inside my chest, my skull, my marrow. It was no longer a sensation; it was what I was becoming.

"She's faking it," a new voice sneered. One of the other climbers, a friend of Bryan's, peered down into my snow pit. "She's just pissed you gave Kelsi the blanket. What a child."

Bryan let out a huff of exasperated breath. He looked down at me not with concern, but with utter contempt. "I knew it. She's trying to manipulate me. Trying to make me feel guilty."

"Bryan, she's not moving," Kelsi said, a note of genuine panic now coloring her fake sympathy. "Maybe we should..."

"Maybe she should learn that not everything is about her," Bryan snapped. He grabbed me under the arms and dragged me more fully into the snow pit, my boots scraping uselessly against the ice. He packed snow around the edges, effectively entombing me. "She needs a timeout to cool off. Literally."

He stood up, brushing the snow from his expensive gloves with an air of finality.

I tried to grab his leg, my fingers closing on the fabric of his snow pants with the last of my strength. "Bryan... please..."

He looked down and kicked my hand away, his expression one of pure disgust. "You're pathetic."

Through the roaring wind, I heard Kelsi's soft voice. "Don't be too hard on her, Bryan. She's just not as tough as she thinks she is."

"You're too kind, Kelsi," he replied, and the warmth in his voice was a physical blow. "Let's go. She'll come crawling to the main tent when she gets hungry enough."

Their footsteps faded, swallowed by the storm.

I was alone.

Utterly, completely alone. Left to die by the man I had promised to marry.

The cold was a predator, sinking its teeth deeper. My body had stopped shivering now, a terrifying milestone. I knew what it meant. My core temperature was critical. My muscles were freezing, my organs beginning to fail.

My gaze fell on my suit. The rip was just below my shoulder. A long, jagged gash about eight inches long, exposing the inner layers to the elements. The wind funneled directly into the breach, a constant, brutal assault on my already failing body. Kelsi hadn't just sabotaged my gear; she had delivered a death blow.

A primal, desperate need to survive surged through me. My satellite phone was gone. But there was one last chance. A secret I had never even told Bryan.

My suit. The one I was wearing. It wasn't just a standard OmniClimb suit. It was a secondary prototype, designed to interface with the smart blanket. And hidden within the cuff of the left sleeve, stitched into the seam itself, was a tiny, pressure-activated emergency beacon. A redundant system. My own private insurance policy.

I had to reach it.

My left arm was an alien thing, a log of frozen meat. I tried to command it to move, to bend toward my face, but it barely twitched. My right arm was slightly more responsive. With agonizing slowness, I dragged it across my chest, my gloved fingers clawing at the opposite sleeve.

The fabric was stiff with ice. My fingers, numb and useless, couldn't find purchase. I couldn't get a grip.

Tears froze on my cheeks. This was it. This was how it ended. Betrayed, abandoned, and frozen solid in a ditch dug by my own fiancé.

Rage, pure and undiluted, gave me a final burst of strength. I wasn't going to die like this. I wasn't going to let them win.

I brought my left wrist toward my mouth and bit down, hard, on the cuff. My teeth clamped onto the thick material, ignoring the jarring pain in my jaw. I used my head to drag the sleeve up, exposing the seam.

There it was. A small, almost invisible bump in the fabric.

I bashed my wrist against the icy wall of the pit. Once. Twice. Nothing. The pressure sensor was frozen. It needed a sharp, localized impact.

With a guttural cry that was stolen by the wind, I smashed my wrist against my own helmet.

A tiny, almost imperceptible red light blinked once from inside the seam.

It was active.

Relief washed over me, so potent it was almost painful. It was followed immediately by an overwhelming wave of exhaustion. My body had nothing left to give.

My head lolled back against the snow. My eyelids felt impossibly heavy. The world was fading to a peaceful, numbing white. It would be so easy to just close my eyes. To sleep.

Just as the darkness began to claim me, a shadow fell over my snow pit.

I blinked, my vision blurry. It was Kelsi. She was peering down at me, the blue light of my blanket illuminating her face. The fake tears were gone. Her expression was one of cold, calculating curiosity.

"Still alive?" she murmured, her voice barely a whisper against the wind. "You're tougher than I thought."

She held up the ice axe. A small, cruel smile played on her lips. "Bryan is so gullible. He really thinks you're just having a tantrum. He told me he's resented you for years. Hates living in your shadow. Hates that everyone knows you're the real genius at OmniClimb. He was just waiting for a reason to cut you down to size."

The words were icicles, piercing the last warm part of my heart.

"He was glad to do it," she whispered, her smile widening. "Glad to watch you fail."

She tossed the ice axe into the snow beside me, a final, contemptuous gesture. "Don't worry. I'll take good care of him for you."

She turned and walked away, disappearing into the whiteout, leaving me with the terrible, frozen truth of my own destruction.

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