Below Zero: The Isolation Cell"

Emily’s breath fogged the air as she woke with a violent shiver. Her eyelashes were stiff with frost, and her fingers ached with pain sharp enough to make her want to scream — but she couldn’t. Her throat was too dry, her lips cracked and bleeding.

She was in a room.

Not just any room — a freezing cell lined with steel walls, rimmed with frost. There were no windows. No lights. Just the constant, low hum of machines and the eerie blue glow from a single overhead LED panel that flickered like it was about to die. The temperature was beyond cold — the kind of cold that eats through skin, then bone, then will.

She had no idea how she got there.

The last thing she remembered was walking out of her university’s library late at night, her phone buzzing with a message from her boyfriend, Noah: "Can’t wait to see you. Be careful, Em."
Then… darkness.
Then… this.

Her breath hitched as she stumbled to her feet. The floor burned with cold. She’d lost a shoe. Her fingers reached for the steel walls — but her skin stuck to them with a faint sskkt of flesh freezing to metal. She jerked her hand back and cried out.

“Hello?!” she screamed. Her voice echoed off the walls. “Is anyone there?!”

Silence. Then… a click.

A speaker in the corner of the room crackled to life. A voice — distorted, male — said, “Do you know what happens to a body in hypothermic isolation?”

Emily froze.

The voice continued:
“First, you shake. Then your body starts to slow. Your blood thickens. You hallucinate. Finally, your heart stops. It’s slow. Silent. Peaceful… in a way.”

“Why are you doing this?!” Emily shouted. Her teeth were chattering now.

“Because someone has to test the limits. And you… were chosen.”

The speaker went dead.

Emily sank to the floor, pulling her knees into her chest, trying to conserve warmth. Her fingers were numb. Her skin was pale blue. She was dying — slowly, deliberately.




Meanwhile

Miles away, in a dimly lit security control room, Emily’s father, Dean, stared at a blinking tracker. He was a retired intelligence officer — old school, but dangerous. When Emily hadn’t come home that night and her phone went dark, he went hunting.

Using old contacts, he’d traced her to an abandoned government research facility — a place that had been condemned for illegal experimentation two decades ago.

Beside him, Noah was pale and furious. “We’re not waiting,” he said, jaw clenched.

Dean nodded. “Then we go in fast, or she freezes to death.”




Back inside the ice-box

Emily’s mind was slipping. Her body trembled violently one moment and went limp the next. Time no longer made sense. Her thoughts were disjointed — memories of summers with her father, campfires, Noah’s arms around her after her mother’s funeral. Warmth. Safety.

Now it all felt like dreams.

Then — something strange.

A creaking sound. A vent shifted.
She looked up and saw something drop through — a small black sphere. A second later, it exploded with a soft puff of smoke.

Warmth.

The freezing cold in the room began to retreat just slightly — like a dying breath reversed. The LED above flickered and went dark.

A red light blinked through the fog.

Then a crash.

The door burst inward, and a silhouette stepped through — rifle up, face masked. Another followed.

“Emily!” someone shouted. A familiar voice.

“Noah?” she whispered.

The man ripped off his mask. “I’ve got her!” Noah shouted, racing forward. Dean came in right behind, scanning corners like a soldier.

Emily collapsed into Noah’s arms, eyes fluttering. “I thought I was gone.”

“You almost were,” Dean said, pressing a thermal blanket over her. “Let’s move. They’ll try to shut this place down.”

Noah scooped her up.

As they rushed out of the room, alarms blared across the compound.

Sirens. Footsteps above. Voices on radios. Someone was trying to erase the evidence — and them.


---

Final Confrontation

As they neared the exit, a steel door slammed shut in front of them. From the shadows, the distorted voice echoed again:

“You weren’t supposed to make it out.”

Dean stepped forward. “Who are you?”

A figure emerged — a man in a lab coat, face twisted with obsession. “This was all data. You ruined years of research. She was the perfect subject.”

“She’s my daughter,” Dean growled, raising his gun.

“But you’re too late,” the man said. “She’s already changed. The cold rewires the mind. You’ll see. You—”

Bang.

Dean didn’t wait.

The man fell.

Dean turned. “Move. Now.”

They blasted through the last door. Snow and wind greeted them outside, but compared to the cold they’d left, it was heaven.

A helicopter waited on a hilltop nearby — emergency lights blinking.


---

Hours later

In a hospital bed wrapped in layers of warmth, Emily woke to the sound of her father arguing with doctors and Noah’s soft humming beside her.

She turned her head. “I’m… alive?”

“You damn right you are,” Noah said, gripping her hand tightly. “We’re not letting you go that easy.”

Emily managed a weak smile.

Dean stepped in. “They’ll bury that place again. Like they always do. But we have enough to expose it. I’m not letting them take another person.”

“What if it’s not over?” Emily whispered. “What if… something’s still in me?”

Dean and Noah exchanged a glance.

Whatever that room had started, the real test might still lie ahead.

But for now — she had survived the freeze.
And that was enough to begin again.




End.