The sidearm's click cut through the sub-zero wind, sharp enough to scrape Zavrina's temper down to raw survival. Her fingers dropped toward the custom slug thrower tucked into her boot leather. But it was too slow. This was no neon-lit street brawl; the gunman already had iron leveled straight at her sternum. “Last chance, girl,” the man rasped, his voice rough as gravel. “Where’s the cargo? The tavern singer won’t last long in the drifts.” Cargo? Zhevan? None of it lined up with the quiet mountain haven she had run to. Before she could formulate a hot retort, a shrill, insistent vibration buzzed against her hip. Her burner phone. She’d almost forgotten she had it. “Don’t even think about it,” the thug warned, his finger tightening on the trigger. But the caller ID flashed ‘Yelva’. Her gut plummeted. Yelva never called her on the burner unless something was truly dire. This couldn’t wait. With a move born of instinct and desperation, Zavrina feigned a reach for her comm-link. As the thug’s gaze flickered to her hand, she pivoted, throwing her full weight into a brutal kick that connected with his knee. A wet snap, a guttural roar of pain. He staggered back, the barrel dropping toward the ice. That was all she needed. Her fingers flew to her hip, pulling the cheap burner phone free, flipping it open. “Yelva? What the hell is going on?” “Zavrina! Thank the Ice Mother you picked up!” Yelva’s voice was frantic, laced with a manufactured panic that Zavrina, in her heightened state, took for genuine terror. “It’s bad. They know you’re in the Drezhal. I heard whispers, just now, from Kaelus’s crew. They’re sending a clean-up team. Six, maybe eight men. Heavy hitters. Heading for the mountains. Get out of there, Zav! Now! Before they find you!” “Who is ‘they’?” Zavrina demanded, scanning the lot's frozen perimeter. The man clutched his smashed kneecap, gasping, his weapon arm rising again. “The syndicate. The *old* crew. They think you know too much about the… the last job. They’re closing in! Don’t trust anyone!” Yelva’s voice dissolved into a choked sob, then the line went dead. Yelva had covered her six through every bloody run in the lower boroughs; she wouldn't break like this without cause. The syndicate never let an asset retire clean, but finding her out here made no sense. No time for answers. The thug was back on his feet, hobbling but enraged. He swung the heavy slide at her temple. Zavrina ducked under the blow, spotting an oil-blackened iron cylinder block propped against the rig's chassis. Heavy. Solid. Perfect. With a grunt, she hauled the iron chunk up, biting through her leather gloves, and drove it sideways into his jaw. Bone gave way with a dull crack; his head snapped back, and he crumpled into the churned powder, the weapon skidding away. Zavrina dragged in ragged breaths of sub-zero air. Yelva's warning rang clear: a hit team was already deployed. Her focus jerked toward the taproom door. Zhevan was still inside, and she refused to run while an innocent bystander took the fall for her past. Amber porch light spilled across the snow as three figures burst through the taproom exit into the lot. Heavy carbines hung across their chests, boots moving with trained efficiency. “Look alive!” one of them yelled, his voice carrying clearly in the crisp air. “She’s out here. Find her!” Zavrina ducked behind the haul rig's dual rear tires, dropping the grease-caked iron. Three long rifles against an empty fist was suicide, even with her temper running white-hot. A shadow cut across the doorframe behind them: Zhevan. His stringed instrument was gone, replaced by a snub-nosed wheelgun drawn in one unbroken sweep. The easy slump of an itinerant player had vanished into hard, balanced aggression. He fired. No warning. Just a sharp crack that shattered the night. The lead thug, mid-stride, stumbled, a dark stain blossoming on his chest. He hit the snow, lifeless. Zhevan didn’t hesitate. He swung the revolver with fluid ease, another shot, another man falling. The third thug, startled, tried to raise his rifle, but Zhevan’s bullet found his head before the weapon could clear his shoulder. Three rounds, three dropped bodies, spaced by less than a heartbeat. Nothing moved except drifting snow and the tail ends of gunsmoke. The man who had teased her over mulled cider was holding a smoking cylinder like an executioner. Zhevan scanned the open drifts before his stare locked onto her. “Get on that sled,” he said, pointing toward a dual-carburetor machine parked by the woodshed, steam rising from its cowl. “Now.” She swung behind the saddle while Zhevan vaulted over the front bars. He hit the electric ignition, and the twin cylinders barked to life, ripping through the quiet. Leaning low over the running board, he stripped an encrypted handheld radio off the nearest fallen body. “Hold on,” he snapped, pinning the thumb throttle. The cleated rubber track hooked into the packed crust, rocketing them past her rented cabin and straight onto the logging trail cutting into the upper peaks. Down in the hollow, high-compression exhausts snarled in pursuit. “Pursuit group,” Zhevan said over the wind. “Your friend wasn't lying about the numbers.” “How did you…?” Zavrina started, but the words were stolen by the biting wind. The sky, which had been clear, was suddenly spitting thick, heavy flakes. Within minutes, the world dissolved into a maelstrom of white. A full whiteout. Visibility dropped to mere feet. The machine bucked against hidden scree, Zhevan leaning hard into the skis to keep them off the sheer drops. He drove like a man possessed, navigating by instinct through a landscape that had vanished. The chasing throttles wavered, then spiked louder. Zhevan banked hard into a crevasse between sheer slate walls, cowlings scraping granite beneath the powder as Zavrina dug her fingers into his heavy coat. Finally, with a desperate lurch, Zhevan veered off the main trail, plunging into a dense thicket of frosted pines. The branches lashed at them, tearing at their clothes. He thumbed the kill switch. The quiet settled instant and thick, covered only by wind shear and the throaty hum of trailing sleds skirting past on the lower ridge. “Move,” he muttered, hauling her off the seat and leading her behind a wall of hanging ice into a tight fissure. It opened into a small, surprisingly dry ice cave. The air inside was still, frigid, but offered shelter from the blizzard’s fury. The faint blue light filtering through the ice walls cast an ethereal glow. Zavrina collapsed onto a patch of frozen rock, shivering, the adrenaline beginning its slow, painful ebb. Zhevan leaned against the cave wall, breathing heavily. His face was stark in the blue light, a network of lines etched around his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before. He looked… haunted. Every trace of the tavern's wandering minstrel had peeled away, leaving only scarred caution. “They won’t find us here for a while,” he said, his voice raw. He held up the radio he’d snatched. “This frequency… it’s encrypted. Same protocols as the *Korvan* Syndicate. Your old crew, Zavrina.” He looked at her, his gaze piercing. “This wasn’t a random hit. This was an inside job.” job.”

Whiteout