I shut the door to my room and took maybe three steps before I felt it.
Cold.
Not the mild chill of an air conditioner. Not the bite of winter wind. This was the kind of cold that made your bones ache, the kind that turned breath into fog and made you wonder if you'd wandered into someone's cryogenic freezer by mistake.
My room had become a goddamn meat locker.
Purple light pulsed across the walls in slow, rhythmic waves. Like a heartbeat. Like something alive and furious was breathing in the darkness.
Natalia sat on my bed.
She wore nothing but my dress shirt from yesterday. The one I'd worn to the mainland. The one that still carried the faint scent of Carmen's perfume and Skylar's clove cigarettes and Monica's weird organic tea.
The shirt hung open. Not a single button fastened.
