The Zero Kelvin Betrayal

The machine died not with a bang, but with a wet, grinding cough that stripped the silence from the forest and replaced it with something heavier.

The belt snapped with a sound like a pistol shot muffled by a pillow. The sudden loss of torque threw Desmond forward, his chest slamming against the handlebars, knocking the wind out of him in a sharp, guttural wheeze. The headlight flickered—once, twice—casting jagged, dancing shadows against the wall of black spruce before surrendering to the dark. Then, the silence arrived. It was not a peaceful silence. It was the heavy, pressurized silence of a vacuum, rushing in to fill the space where the engine’s roar had been just a second ago. The sled drifted for another ten feet, carving a pathetic furrow into the powder, and then settled heavily into the drift, dead weight in a dead world.

Desmond gripped the handlebars, his gloved hands trembling not from cold, yet, but from the sudden cessation of vibration. The hum of the machine had been the only thing tethering him to the concept of civilization for the last three hours. Now, that tether was severed. He could hear the blood thumping in his ears, a wet, rhythmic squelching that sounded far too loud. He waited for the guide, Kiona, to say something. To curse. To hit the ignition. But there was only the sound of the wind hissing through the upper branches of the pines, a sound like dry paper sliding over stone.

“An unfortunate development,” Desmond said. His voice sounded thin, swallowed instantly by the vastness of the trees. He adjusted his scarf, a reflex of composure that felt ridiculous in the dark. “I assume you have a contingency for this specific mechanical failure.”

Kiona did not answer immediately. She was a shadow in the periphery, dismounting from the seat behind him. The snow crunched under her boots—a sound distinct and crisp, like stepping on sugar glass. She moved to the front of the snowmobile, her headlamp clicking on. The beam was a harsh, white cone that illuminated the cowling, revealing the scratches on the plastic, the grime of the journey. She unlatched the hood. It came up with a metallic groan.

“The belt is shredded,” she said. Her voice was flat, stripped of the panic Desmond felt rising in his throat like bile. She didn’t look at him. She was looking at the mess of rubber and fiber tangled around the clutch. “Must have seized.”

Desmond tapped his fingers against the grip. He was wearing Italian leather gloves inside of oversized mittens, and the layering made his dexterity clumsy. He felt foolish, a man in a three-thousand-dollar suit wrapped in nylon and Gore-Tex, stranded in a geography that didn’t care about his liquidity. He remembered the meeting in Montreal, the warmth of the brandy, the handshake that had sent him on this absurd detour. *Secure the asset,* they had said. *The northern route is unwatched.*

“Then we replace it,” Desmond stated, projecting his voice as if addressing a boardroom. “I observed you loading spares. Proceed with the repair.”

Kiona straightened up, the beam of her light cutting across Desmond’s face, blinding him for a second. He squinted, turning his head away, seeing the purple afterimage burned into his retina.

“I have a spare,” Kiona said. “But the clutch is jammed. The housing is cracked. Look at the oil.”

She pointed the light down. Even in the monochromatic glare, Desmond could see the dark, viscous slick spreading over the pristine white snow beneath the engine block. It looked like blood, black and thick. The smell hit him then—burnt rubber and hot metal, a sharp, industrial stench that polluted the crisp purity of the winter air.

“The machine is done,” Kiona said. She let the hood slam back down. The sound was final.

Desmond stared at the black stain. He felt a phantom vibration in his pocket—his phone. He knew there was no signal. He had checked twenty minutes ago, and twenty minutes before that. The battery was at twelve percent. The cold sucked the life out of lithium-ion faster than it did human flesh. He thought about the charger sitting on his desk in the city, the little green light that indicated safety, power, connection. Here, there was only the gray moonlight filtering through the canopy.

“Done?” Desmond repeated, the word tasting sour. “I am afraid that is not an acceptable conclusion to our contract. We are thirty miles from the extraction point. The package is sixty pounds. We cannot simply resign ourselves to the elements.”

“We walk,” Kiona said. She was already moving to the rear of the sled, unstrapping the cargo. “Or we freeze. It’s minus thirty. If we stop moving, the hypothermia sets in within the hour. Your fancy coat won’t stop it. It starts in the toes. Then the fingers. Then you get tired. Then you die.”

She hauled the black duffel bag—the package—off the rack and dropped it into the snow. It sank a few inches. Desmond looked at the bag. It contained plates. Engraving plates. Stolen from a mint in Europe, transported halfway across the world, and now sitting in a snowbank in the middle of nowhere. The absurdity of it made him want to laugh, but his face felt stiff. The cold was beginning to bite now. The adrenaline of the crash was fading, leaving behind the stark reality of the temperature. It wasn't just cold; it was an absence of heat so profound it felt like a physical weight pressing against his skin.

“We cannot carry the package and survive a thirty-mile trek,” Desmond said. “That is simple physics. We must prioritize.”

“You prioritize,” Kiona said. She tossed a pair of snowshoes at his feet. They clattered against his boots. “I’m walking. You can stay with your money plates if you want. The wolves will appreciate the company.”

Desmond looked down at the snowshoes. Aluminum frames, plastic decking. Modern, efficient, ugly. He bent down to strap them on. His fingers were already stiff. The fine motor control was going. He struggled with the buckles, the plastic rigid in the freeze. He cursed softly, a stream of invectives that felt small against the towering pines.

“You seem to be enjoying this,” Desmond muttered, finally snapping the buckle shut. He stood up, feeling the awkward width of his stance. “The native guide proving the incompetence of the city man. It is a tired narrative, Kiona.”

Kiona didn’t respond. She was adjusting her own pack, checking her compass. She didn’t use a GPS. She said the batteries died too fast. She trusted magnets and the stars. Desmond found it archaic and terrifying. He wanted a screen. He wanted a blue dot telling him where he was.

“North,” she said. “Keep up.”

She started walking. She didn’t wait for him. She moved with a strange, rolling gait, lifting her knees high to clear the powder, the snowshoes distributing her weight so she floated on top of the crust. Desmond tried to follow. His first step was clumsy; the tip of his left snowshoe caught the tail of his right, and he stumbled, barely catching himself on a low-hanging branch. The branch was frozen solid; it didn’t bend, it just scraped his palm through the glove.

He righted himself and lurched after her. The snow was deep. Even with the shoes, he sank six inches with every step. It was like walking through dry sand, but heavier. The effort required to lift his leg was disproportionate to the distance gained. His breath plumed out in front of him, a dense white fog that froze instantly on his mustache. Ice crystals were already forming on his eyelashes, gluing them together every time he blinked.

They walked in silence for what felt like hours, though Desmond’s watch—a Patek Philippe that cost more than the snowmobile—indicated only twenty minutes had passed. The woods were repetitive. Fractal. Every tree looked like the last one. Black trunk, white needles, shadow. Black trunk, white needles, shadow. It was a hall of mirrors constructed of timber and ice. Desmond’s mind began to drift, untethered by the monotony.

He thought about the heat in his apartment. The radiators that clanked in the morning. He hated that sound, usually. Now, he would pay a million dollars to hear it. He thought about the woman he had left in the hotel room in Quebec City. Marianne. She had red hair and drank gin. She didn't know where he was. Nobody knew where he was. If he died here, he would just be a lump under the snow until the spring thaw. The thought was intrusive, sharp.

“Slow down,” Desmond called out. His voice was breathless, ragged. “This pace is unsustainable.”

Kiona stopped. She didn’t turn around. She just stood there, a dark silhouette against the snow. Desmond caught up to her, his lungs burning. The air was so cold it felt like inhaling crushed glass. It scraped his throat raw.

“We have to keep the heart rate up,” she said. “But not too high. You sweat, you die. The sweat freezes against your skin. It becomes a layer of ice inside your clothes. Control your breathing.”

“I am attempting,” Desmond wheezed, “to control… everything.”

He leaned against a tree, gasping. The bark was rough, digging into his shoulder. He looked at Kiona. She wasn’t even winded. She was looking into the darkness, her head cocked to the side.

“What is it?” Desmond asked. “Wolves? Bears?”

“Too cold for bears,” she said. “They’re sleeping. Wolves… maybe. But they usually stay away from the machines. They don’t know the machine is dead yet.”

She turned to face him. The headlamp was off now—saving batteries, presumably. The moonlight was enough to see the planes of her face, the stoic set of her jaw. She looked like she belonged here. Desmond felt like a virus, an intruder that the immune system of the forest was trying to purge.

“Why did you take this job?” Desmond asked. He needed to talk. The silence was too loud. It let the fear in. “You knew the risks. You knew what was in the bag.”

“Money,” Kiona said simply. “My sister needs surgery. The clinic in the reserve can’t do it. You pay cash. You don’t ask questions.”

“A transactional relationship,” Desmond nodded. “I can respect that. Honest. Unlike the men who sent me.”

“Save your breath,” Kiona said. “We have a hill coming up. It’s steep.”

She started moving again. Desmond pushed himself off the tree. His legs felt heavy, like they were filled with lead shot. The cold was seeping through his boots now. His toes were numb. He wriggled them, trying to feel them, but there was only a dull, distant sensation, like touching his foot through a thick blanket.

The hill was a nightmare. It wasn’t a hill; it was a cliff face covered in snow. They had to scramble up, using their hands to grab onto roots and rocks buried under the drift. The duffel bag, which Kiona had strapped to her back, looked heavy, shifting her center of gravity. Desmond slipped, sliding back ten feet, his snowshoes scraping uselessly against the ice beneath the powder. He clawed at the snow, his gloves filling with ice crystals that melted against his wrists, sending trickles of freezing water down his sleeves.

“Damn it!” he screamed. The sound was swallowed instantly.

Kiona reached down from a ledge above him. She extended a hand. “Grab on.”

Desmond looked at her hand. It was small, gloved in worn deerskin. He hesitated. To take her hand was to admit total dependence. It was a surrender of his status, his power. Here, his money meant nothing. His connections meant nothing. He was just meat.

“Take the hand, Desmond,” she said. “Or stay there.”

He reached up. She gripped his wrist with surprising strength and hauled him up. He scrambled over the lip of the ridge, collapsing into the snow on top. He lay there for a moment, staring up at the sky. The stars were brilliant, hard diamonds in a black velvet setting. They looked indifferent. Beautiful and indifferent.

“Up,” Kiona kicked his boot. “Don’t lay down. You lay down, you don’t get up.”

Desmond groaned and rolled over. He forced himself to his knees, then to his feet. His body was screaming at him. Every muscle ached. The cold was a constant, throbbing pressure on his temples.

They crested the ridge and the wind hit them. It was a physical blow, a wall of moving air that stripped the heat from their bodies in seconds. Desmond gasped, turning his face away, pulling his scarf up over his nose. The wind chill must have been minus fifty. It was a killing wind.

“There,” Kiona pointed.

Desmond squinted. Down in the valley below, across a frozen lake, there was a shape. A cabin? A structure of some kind. It was dark, no smoke from the chimney, but it was walls. It was shelter.

“Is that the extraction point?” Desmond shouted over the wind.

“No,” Kiona shouted back. “Trapline cabin. My uncle’s. We can rest there. Make a fire.”

The prospect of fire was so intoxicating Desmond almost wept. He stumbled forward, gravity doing the work now as they descended toward the lake. The descent was easier, but the lake was the danger. Open expanses meant wind. And ice. You never knew how thick the ice was near the edges.

They reached the shoreline. The wind howled across the flat surface of the lake, driving snow in horizontal sheets. It was a whiteout. Desmond couldn't see Kiona anymore, just the faint glow of her headlamp which she had turned back on. He followed the light like a moth.

He stepped onto the ice. It groaned. A deep, resonant booming sound that traveled through the soles of his boots and up his spine. The lake was singing.

“Spread out!” Kiona’s voice drifted back to him, snatched away by the wind. “Don’t walk in my tracks!”

Desmond moved to the left, his heart hammering against his ribs. He imagined the black water beneath him. The shock of the cold. The weight of his clothes pulling him down. The ice was swept clear of snow here by the wind, slick and dark. The snowshoe crampons skittered on the surface.

He looked down. In the beam of his own headlamp, which he finally fumbled to switch on, he saw bubbles trapped in the ice. Frozen in time. White streaks in the black glass. He saw a fissure, a white crack running deeper than he could see.

Suddenly, the light ahead of him vanished.

“Kiona?” he called out.

No answer. Just the wind.

“Kiona!”

He stopped moving. He stood perfectly still on the singing ice. Had she fallen through? Had she left him? The paranoia flared again, hot and bright. She had the plates. She knew where the cabin was. If she left him here, he would freeze in twenty minutes. It would be the perfect crime. The elements as the murder weapon.

He spun around, looking for her tracks. The wind was already erasing them. A fine dust of snow skittered across the ice, filling in the depressions.

“This is not amusing!” Desmond shouted, his voice cracking. “I demand you reveal your position!”

Nothing.

He was alone. The center of the universe was a cold, dark void, and he was standing in the middle of it. He took a step forward, tentatively. Then another. He had to get to the cabin. He had to visualize the line she had been walking. Straight across. Aim for the shadow of the trees on the far bank.

He walked. One step. Two steps. The ice boomed again, louder this time, directly under his feet. He froze. A crack shot out from his left snowshoe, a lightning bolt of white fracturing the black surface. He held his breath. He didn't weigh enough to break it, did he? He was a man of substance, yes, but physically he was average. The plates were heavy, but Kiona had them.

Wait.

If Kiona had fallen in, the plates would drag her down like an anchor. Sixty pounds of metal.

Desmond looked to his right. He saw something dark on the ice, twenty yards away. A glove? A hat?

He shuffled toward it, terrified of the cracking sound that accompanied every movement. As he got closer, the shape resolved. It wasn't a glove. It was the duffel bag.

Sitting there on the ice. Alone.

Desmond stared at it. Why would she drop it? Unless she went through. Or unless she was baiting him.

He crouched down next to the bag. He unzipped it. The plates were there, wrapped in oilcloth. Cold, hard, valuable. Useless.

Then he saw the tracks. Boot prints, not snowshoes. She had taken off her snowshoes? Why? To run? To move quieter?

The tracks led away from the bag, back toward the shoreline he had just left. Back into the woods.

She wasn't crossing the lake. She was circling back.

She was leaving him.

Desmond stood up, rage warming him for a fleeting second. She had dumped the weight to move faster. She had tricked him onto the ice. She knew the ice was bad here. She wanted him to fall.

“Kiona!” he screamed, turning back toward the treeline. The wind threw his voice back in his face.

He grabbed the bag. He didn't know why. Greed? Habit? Spite? He slung it over his shoulder. The weight nearly buckled his knees. He turned back toward the cabin. If she was gone, he still needed shelter. He would make it. He would survive. And then he would find her.

He took a step. The ice didn't crack. It shattered.

The world tilted. The horizon went vertical. Desmond felt the stomach-dropping sensation of freefall, followed instantly by the shock of the water. It wasn't cold; it was a burning, searing agony that felt like fire. The air was punched out of his lungs. The darkness closed over his head. The bag was a stone around his neck, dragging him down into the black.

He thrashed, his mittens clumsy in the water. He couldn't find the surface. Which way was up? The thermal suit was buoyant, but the bag counteracted it. He had to let go. He had to drop the plates.

His fingers clawed at the strap. The water was in his nose, his mouth, tasting of ancient mud and decay. His brain screamed at him. *Let go. Let go.*

He struggled with the buckle. It was jammed. The cold had stiffened the plastic mechanism. He was sinking. He could see the faint light of his headlamp fading above him, a dying star.

He kicked, his snowshoes acting like anchors, dragging against the water. He was a masterpiece of inefficiency. A sinking ship of expensive fabrics and stolen metal.

Then, something grabbed his collar.

A jerk. A violent heave. His head broke the surface. He gasped, sucking in air and water, coughing, retching. The cold air felt like a blessing.

Kiona was there, lying flat on the solid ice, holding him by the scruff of his neck with one hand, the other digging a knife into the ice for leverage.

“Drop the bag!” she screamed. “Drop the goddamn bag, Desmond!”

“I… can’t!” he sputtered. “It’s… stuck!”

She cursed. She reached down, the knife flashing in the moonlight. She slashed the strap. The weight vanished instantly. Desmond bobbed up, buoyant as a cork.

She grabbed his arm. “Kick! Kick your legs!”

He kicked. She pulled. It was an ugly, desperate struggle. He slid onto the ice like a landed fish, flopping and gasping, water pooling around him and freezing instantly. His clothes were heavy, sodden, turning into armor as the air hit them.

“Move!” Kiona shouted, dragging him to his feet. “You have to move! Run! If you stop, you freeze solid! Run to the cabin!”

Desmond couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel his hands. He was a consciousness trapped in a block of ice. But he ran. He stumbled, he fell, he got up. He ran toward the dark shape of the cabin. He didn't look back at the hole in the ice. He didn't look back at the millions of dollars sinking into the muck.

He just ran toward the promise of walls.