Zero Visibility

Forty below zero turns the air into glass. Breathing is an act of violence. Stopping is death.

The air wasn't just cold. It was hostile. At forty degrees below zero, the atmosphere ceased to be a gas and became a solid, jagged thing that scraped the lining of the throat. Emily Torres pulled the wool scarf tighter until it bit into the bridge of her nose. Her eyelashes were already heavy with frost, welding together every time she blinked. She forced her eyes open. Keep moving.

Left foot. Right foot. The snow in the alleyway was old, hardened into a uneven topography of ice ridges and trash. Her boot slipped on a patch of black ice concealed beneath a dusting of fresh powder. Her core muscles seized, correcting the balance instantly. No wasted motion. A fall here meant a twisted ankle. A twisted ankle meant immobility. Immobility meant hypothermia in twelve minutes. Death in twenty.

She checked the strap of her backpack. It dug into her left shoulder, cutting through the heavy parka and the two layers of wool beneath. Inside the bag, the hard drives rattled softly against the padding. Three terabytes of encrypted leverage. Names of informants. Safe house coordinates. Evidence of the intake processing centers that didn't exist on any official map. The weight of it felt heavier than the metal casing suggested. It was the weight of four hundred lives hanging on a cryptographic key.

A sound cut through the howling wind. High-pitched. Synthetic.

Emily froze. She pressed her back against the brick wall of a derelict bakery. The brick sucked the heat right out of her spine, even through the coat. She held her breath. The cloud of vapor from her exhale would be a beacon.

The drone passed overhead. It was a Wraith-4 model, identifiable by the unequal rhythm of its rotors. The red scan-line of its thermal optic swept the alley floor. It moved like a predatory insect, twitching, searching. The beam hit the dumpster three feet to her left. The trash inside was frozen solid, emitting no heat signature. The beam swept right. Emily squeezed her eyes shut, visualizing the heat-shielding poncho she wore under her coat. It was supposed to mask 90% of her IR signature. Supposed to. But at -40, the contrast between a human body and the environment was blindingly bright. If the shielding failed, she was a flare in the dark.

The buzzing grew louder, then faded toward Lake Street. The wind reclaimed the silence.

She exhaled, a ragged gasp that hurt her teeth. Move. Now.

She pushed off the wall and navigated the rest of the alley. Her destination was three blocks east. A meatpacking plant that had technically been condemned six months ago but was still drawing power. The city grid was failing in the poor sectors, brownouts rolling through the neighborhoods like a slow tide, but the industrial zones stayed lit. Prioritized infrastructure. The irony wasn't lost on her. The meat stayed frozen; the people froze to death.

She crossed 31st Avenue. The street was empty. The curfew was absolute, enforced by the weather as much as the National Guard. Snowdrifts piled against the storefronts, burying the doors. A traffic light swayed violently on its wire, flashing a solitary, erratic yellow. It looked like a distress signal.

She reached the perimeter fence of the plant. Chain link, topped with razor wire. Someone—Carlos, probably—had cut a slit in the mesh near the ground, hidden behind a stack of pallets. Emily dropped to her stomach. The snow bit into her wrists where the gloves met the sleeve. She shimmied through the gap, the jagged wire snagging on her backpack. She yanked it free, hearing the fabric tear. Damage assessment later. Get inside.

The rear loading dock was a cavern of shadows. A single security light flickered, dying. She reached the steel door. It was locked. It shouldn't be locked. Protocol was 'unlocked but guarded' between 0100 and 0300 for runners.

Paranoia flared, hot and sharp in her stomach. A trap? Had they turned the manager? Or had the feds already swept the place?

She pulled off her right glove with her teeth, the cold instantly stinging her bare skin like acid. She knocked on the steel. Three quick taps. Pause. Two taps. The rhythm of the resistance. It felt small, pathetic against the roaring wind.

Nothing.

She knocked again, harder. The metal was so cold it felt sticky against her knuckles. 'Open up,' she hissed, the words snatched away by the gale.

A scrape of metal on the other side. The heavy thud of a deadbolt sliding back. The door cracked open two inches. A slice of yellow light spilled out, illuminating the swirling snow.

"Identify," a voice whispered. Shaking.

"Zero visibility," Emily said. The challenge phrase.

"Clear skies," the voice replied.

The door swung open. Emily slipped inside, and the heavy steel slammed shut behind her, sealing out the wind. The silence was sudden and ringing. The air inside was stale, smelling of bleach, old blood, and ammonia. But it was forty degrees above zero. To her shocked system, it felt like the tropics.

She leaned against the wall, gasping, her lungs expanding fully for the first time in twenty minutes. Her face burned as the blood rushed back to the capillaries.

"You're late," the man said. Hassan. The night shift manager. He was a small man, his face gray with exhaustion, wearing a blood-stained apron over a thick sweater. He was wringing his hands, a nervous tic that made him look like he was washing invisible stains.

"Drones were low on 28th," Emily rasped, struggling to get her glove back on before her fingers swelled. "Had to route through the yards. Is the package safe?"

Hassan nodded, jerking his head toward the massive walk-in freezers at the back of the processing floor. "It's madness, Emily. Pure madness. We have children in there."

"It's the safest place," she said, pushing off the wall. She didn't have time for his panic. She needed to be tactical. "The freezer insulation blocks the thermal scans. The drones see the whole building as a cold spot. If they were in the office, their body heat would light up the windows like a Christmas tree."

"It's five below in the freezer," Hassan argued, trotting to keep up with her as she strode across the slick concrete floor. Overhead, hooks on a conveyor track swung empty, clinking softly.

"Better than forty below outside," she countered. "Did you get the blankets?"

"Yes. And the heaters, but I can only run them for ten minutes an hour or the power spike will trigger a grid alert."

Emily stopped at the heavy freezer door. She could see the condensation dripping from the handle. She unslung her backpack. "Here."

She pulled out a vacuum-sealed bag. Inside were six burner phones and a brick of cash—small bills, non-sequential, used. "Distribution is one phone per family unit. Only to be used for emergency contact with the extraction teams. No browsing, no GPS, no calls to relatives outside the zone. If they turn the radio on, they die. Do you understand?"

Hassan took the bag, his hands trembling. "They are scared, Emily. They heard about Morales."

Emily went still. The name was a physical blow. Linda Morales. A nurse. A mother of three. Shot dead in her doorway yesterday morning during a 'welfare check.'

"What did they hear?" Emily asked, her voice low.

"That she had a gun," Hassan whispered. "That she lunged at the officers."

"She was holding a nebulizer for her asthmatic son," Emily said. The rage was a hot coal in her chest, burning brighter than the cold outside. "She didn't own a gun. She hated them."

"The news says—"

"The news is a script written by a committee in D.C.," Emily snapped. She grabbed Hassan's shoulder. He flinched. "Listen to me. Morales was murdered to send a message. The message is that nobody is safe, not even the ones who follow the rules. That's why those people are in your freezer. That's why you're risking your neck. Because compliance doesn't buy survival anymore."

Hassan looked at the freezer door, then back at her. The fear in his eyes shifted, hardening into something desperate. "They're asking when the trucks are coming."

"Two nights," Emily lied. She didn't know. The logistics were a mess. The river crossing was unstable. But hope was a resource, and she had to dispense it. "Tell them to sit tight. Tell them to keep the phones off."

She zipped the backpack. Lighter now. "I have to go."

"You just got here," Hassan said.

"Longer I stay, the more heat signature I leave. Wipe the floor where I walked. Bleach kills the scent for the dogs."

She didn't wait for an answer. She turned and marched back to the loading dock. She paused at the door, pulling her scarf back up, bracing herself. She had to become part of the ice again. She had to stop feeling. She pushed the bar and stepped out.

The wind hit her like a hammer.

The return trip was a blur of survival instinct. Her body was a machine, processing inputs and outputs. Wind direction: North-Northwest. Visibility: ten feet. Threat level: Critical.

Her pocket vibrated. A rhythmic pulse against her thigh. She ignored it until she reached the shelter of a collapsed bus stop on Lake Street. She huddled behind the shattered glass, pulling out her phone. It was a blocky, ugly thing—custom hardware, stripped of GPS, running a Linux kernel Carlos had compiled. Shielded.

Three alerts. The screen glow was dim, red-shifted to save night vision.

First: A message from 'Echo-7' (Linda Perron). *'Feed is live. They're scrubbing the body cam footage. I have the raw file. It's bad, Em.'*

Second: A global news push notification that had managed to penetrate the firewall. *'BREAKING: Insurgent Cell neutralized in Sector 3. Suspect Linda Morales confirmed armed. DHS warns of retaliatory violence.'*

Emily stared at the words. *Confirmed armed.* The lie was efficient. It was already spreading, infecting the narrative before the truth could even put its boots on. They were painting a nurse as a terrorist to justify the tank rolling down the street.

Third: A proximity alert from the police scanner app. *'Code 10-33. Civil Unrest. All units mobilize. Sector 4 grid lockdown imminent.'*

She shoved the phone back into her pocket. Sector 4. That was here. They weren't just patrolling anymore. They were closing the net.

She started running. Not a jog, but a hard, desperate sprint, trading silence for speed. The snow crunched loudly under her boots. She didn't care. She had to get to the apartment. She had to secure the hard drives.

She cut through a playground. The swing set was buried in drifts, the chains frozen into rigid bars. She vaulted a fence, landing hard, the impact jarring her teeth. She scrambled up the back stairs of her building, a tenement block that smelled of boiled cabbage and mold.

Third floor. Apartment 3B. She fumbled with the keys. Her fingers were useless claws now. She used both hands to turn the lock, gasping with effort. Click. The door opened.

She tumbled inside and slammed it shut, throwing the deadbolt, the chain, and the floor brace. Safe. For a given value of safe.

The apartment was freezing. The radiator hissed feebly, leaking steam but no heat. Emily didn't take off her coat. She dropped the backpack on the kitchen table and went straight to the window. She peeled back the blackout curtain a fraction of an inch.

Outside, the street was a white void. But through the swirling snow, she saw lights. Blue and red strobes reflecting off the ice. Distant, but getting closer.

She moved to her desk. A chaotic spread of maps, printed schematics, and a police scanner that was currently spitting static and clipped voices.

"...moving to containment pattern... check points established at..."

She picked up a framed photo propped against the monitor. Her cousins, Mateo and Sofia, grinning at a summer barbecue three years ago. The sun in the picture looked alien. Mateo was nineteen now. Undocumented. He worked construction, off the books. If they found him, he wouldn't go to a holding cell. He would go to the camps. And in weather like this, the camps were a death sentence.

The fear wasn't abstract anymore. It wasn't data on a hard drive. It was Mateo's smile. It was Morales's nebulizer.

Emily sat down. Her chair creaked in the silence. She pulled the keyboard closer. Her gloves were off, her hands raw and red, shaking uncontrollably. She forced them to still. She had to get the truth out. Linda Perron had the video, but Emily had the context. She had the names.

She opened a terminal window. The cursor blinked. A green pulse in the dark.

She started typing. A manifesto? No. A witness statement. A scream recorded in binary.

*They claim we are the danger,* she typed. *They claim we are the chaos. But chaos is a mother shot in her doorway. Chaos is a city freezing while the command center burns power to fly drones.*

The keys clacked loudly in the silent room. *gunshot*. *gunshot*. *gunshot*.

*We are not insurgents. We are neighbors. And tonight, we are watching you.*

A sound from the street stopped her fingers.

Heavy tires. Chains crunching on hard-packed snow. Multiple vehicles. The sound wasn't passing by. It was slowing down.

Emily stopped breathing. The police scanner went silent, then a voice cut through, crystal clear.

"Target structure identified. approach with caution."

She lunged for the floor, flattening herself against the dusty floorboards just as a beam of intense white light blasted through her window. It cut through the blackout curtain like a laser, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the freezing air. The light swept the room. It touched the desk, the photo of Mateo, the half-typed screen.

Emily pressed her face into the wood, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The vibration of heavy engines rattled the floor beneath her.

The light lingered. It didn't move. They weren't scanning. They were aiming.

Outside, the heavy thud of armored doors opening echoed off the brickwork. Boots hit the pavement. Not the scuff of beat cops. The heavy, rhythmic stomp of tactical gear.

They hadn't just found the neighborhood. They had found her.