The stench of ozone and rust was abruptly overwhelmed by the hot copper tang of gushing blood. Tadas’s eyes, wide and unfocused, stared past Mantas’s shoulder at some unseen point on the grimy concrete ceiling. His body, still slumped over Laima, gave a final, convulsive shudder. The rebar, a gruesome antenna, protruded from his chest, its tip now stained a dark, glistening scarlet. A soft, wet gurgle escaped his lips as his head lolled to the side, a crimson string tracing a path down his stubbled jaw. His arms, still protectively cradling Laima, went slack. The child, smeared with her father’s life, let out a small, choked whimper, her eyes squeezed shut. [KARDIAK ENGINE: ANOMALY DETECTED. ETHIC COMPONENT: REMORSE OVERFLOW. CRYOGENIC OUTPUT: PEAK. AMBIENT TEMPERATURE DROP: -18.7°C.] The air in the ward plummeted, a violent plunge that stole the warmth from Mantas’s lungs. Rime crept across the exposed pipes, crystalline frost crusting the grimy metal. The subterranean apparatus, for the first time since its activation, rang with a complex, brass chime that rattled the concrete deck. Tadas’s final act, fused with years of caustic regret for his mockery of Mantas’s warnings, had discharged an astonishing burst of refrigeration. Mantas knelt, his knees cracking on the slick concrete. He reached for Tadas, but his hands hovered, trembling. The rebar was still there, a cruel monument to his incompetence. His failure. He had built this place, designed its merciless logic, and in doing so, had created the stage for his own kinsman’s sacrifice. Laima slowly opened her eyes, staring at her father’s lifeless face, then at the spreading pool of blood that now touched the tips of her small boots. A silent tear traced a path through the grime on her cheek. Oskars Berzins, still clutching the bloodied rebar, watched the scene with an almost clinical detachment. The sudden chill made him shiver, but his face remained impassive. There was no flicker of fear, no hint of remorse for the brutal act he had just committed. He looked from Tadas’s corpse to Mantas, a sneer twisting his lips. “Look at this, engineer. Your precious machine sings for dead men. Who knew a lifetime of being a pathetic failure could be so… profitable?” [KARDIAK ENGINE: COMPONENT IMBALANCE. ETHIC COMPONENT: REMORSE NULL. CRYOGENIC OUTPUT: DEGRADATION. VENTILATION: SHUTDOWN IN SECTOR K-7. AMBIENT TEMPERATURE RISE: +0.4°C/minute.] The resonant chime fractured into a dry, grinding shriek. Overhead strips in Wing K-7 flickered and settled into a jaundice yellow. Dampers slammed shut inside the shafts with a dull iron clatter. The brief frost evaporated into stagnant warmth that slicked Mantas’s forearms. Air turned soupy with iron and sweat. “You!” Mantas roared, his voice hoarse, raw with a fury that momentarily eclipsed his grief. He surged to his feet, the stun baton a negligible weight in his hand. “You feel nothing? For this? For *him*?” Oskars merely shrugged, the rebar still in his hand, a casual, almost bored gesture. “He was in the way. Collateral. What’s it to you, Kaminskas? Another dead fool in your guilt factory. And look, your little chime box doesn’t like it when I don’t feel bad. So what? You going to force me?” He laughed, a short, bitter bark. “Your machine is broken, engineer. It expects feelings from a shark. You might as well ask the ocean to apologize for drowning a sailor.” The climbing heat and the apparatus's blaring diagnostic exposed an immediate failure: Oskars harbored no self-reproach, leaving the mechanism nothing to harvest. The penalty fell on the entire bay. Mantas scanned the bulkheads until his vision locked onto a hatch set flush into the foundation—a maintenance airlock built for scrubbing lines. The Valian cubicle. It barely fit one upright man and ran on dedicated seals. “Ruta!” Mantas barked into his collar mic. “Status on the Valian cell! Can it be sealed and isolated?” Ruta’s voice crackled, laced with urgency. “Affirmative, Mantas! But why? The atmospheric scrubber… it’s not designed for sustained human occupancy! It’s for inert gas containment!” “No, not the scrubber,” Mantas muttered, keeping his weight centered toward Oskars. “The heat transfer. What’s its insulation rating against the open bay?” A pause, then Ruta’s voice cracked over the channel. “Zero. It’s bare conductive plate. It matches the surrounding wing almost instantly.” “Perfect,” Mantas said. He leveled the stun baton, boots grinding on grit. “You want to burn, loan shark? Step inside.” Oskars stepped back, raising the iron rod. Mantas closed the distance before the swing peaked, catching the man’s forearm and slamming it against the door frame. The rebar clanged against the floor plate. Mantas drove the heel of his boot behind Oskars’s knee, throwing his shoulder into the man's chest. The loan shark stumbled backward across the threshold of the Valian cubicle. Mantas hauled the pressure slab shut against Oskars’s boot, catching the latch and spinning the dogs tight. The bronze gears seated with a dull thunk. He braced both forearms against the hot outer steel, drawing ragged air. Without independent ducting, the small cell would trap every joule radiating from the unventilated bay. Through the reinforced quartz port, Oskars slammed his palms against the seal. Convection currents wavered inside the small space. Shouts filtered out as tinny thumps. He tore off his outer vest, his shirt clinging black with perspiration as his neck flushed purple. Over the speakers, the system continued its alarm pulses while the surrounding air swelled past sixty degrees. [KARDIAK ENGINE: CRITICAL CORE CAPACITY FAILURE. PRIMARY CAPACITOR: 0.03% CHARGE REMAINING. PROJECTED THERMAL ENVELOPE BREACH: 38 MINUTES. RECTIFICATION PROTOCOL: IMMEDIATE ETHIC COMPONENT RECALIBRATION REQUIRED. AMBIENT TEMPERATURE RISE: +1.2°C/minute.] A red warning grid lit Mantas’s wrist console alongside another shrill blast from the central horn. Ruta cut in, her voice ragged. “Mantas! The capacitor! It’s bottoming out! Tadas gave us a single surge, but it dissipated into the coils! We need sustained draw. Something massive and permanent, or the whole shelter cooks!” Oskars hammered bloody knuckles against the quartz, his voice muffled behind the plate as the warning horns screeched in sequence. Gauges in Wing K-7 climbed toward eighty degrees, and the airlock was superheating toward ground-level scald. Tadas had bought them minutes, not survival. Mantas stared at the telemetry, calculating the thermal curve. To stop the core from baking them alive, he had to locate an inexhaustible reservoir of guilt, and locate it before the conduits fused.

Critical Failure