Clinic Control Storage Room - Soltira Clinic
05:40 PM - Jan 14, 2534
—
Solan steps out first, shoulders tight as he forces the side station exit open just wide enough for his body. The hinges crack like bones under pressure, and a blast of frigid air slams them hard enough to sting his cheeks. The platform ahead stretches long and glazed, every tile sealed under a clear, rippling coat of ice that reflects the dim station lights like drowned stars. Beyond that, the Plaza Overhang rises in a gentle curve, half swallowed in drifting fog.
Kade slips out next and nearly loses his footing. His boot skates sideways before he catches himself with a sharp "Shit. Ice on ice. I hate this place."
Jessa comes last, shoving the door shut behind her until it thuds into place. She rubs her arms briskly. "Feels colder out here. Love that for us."
Solan lifts his slate, and the hard-light scan arcs out in a thin blue wash, barely cutting through the haze.
"N-n-no bodies. N-no heat spikes. J-just us."
Jessa peers down the platform. "So the tiger's gone. Or hiding. Or licking its damn paws somewhere."
Kade taps Solan's arm. "Keep scanning. If anything twitches wrong, I wanna hear about it before it hears about us."
They start moving, hugging the station wall as they cross the platform. The ice squeals under their boots. Every squeal echoes like a pulled alarm, bouncing off the steel pillars.
When they reach the staircase up to the Plaza Overhang, the entire flight looks like a frozen waterfall mid-cascade. Each step is a warped, translucent ripple, frozen over season after season. Kade tests one with his heel.
"This staircase is a lawsuit waiting to happen."
Jessa grabs the railing. Her fingers freeze to it for a breath before she jerks free. "Just don't fall. Or do. I'm not carrying you."
Solan moves carefully, planting each boot like he's negotiating with the ice. His breath comes fast in short, clouded bursts.
Halfway up, they hear it.
A roar.
Not loud. Not close. But deep enough to travel through the station shell like something scraping the metal from the inside.
Solan flinches so hard he hits the railing. "Th-that was a c-cat. A big c-cat. N-no way that w-was anything else."
Kade stares toward the plaza. "Either it's pissed, or our sexy hero is doing something stupid again."
They reach the top of the stairs, lungs burning from cold. The Plaza Overhang opens wide, a broad ring of half-buried storefronts under the swooping shell of the canopy. Snow and ice choke each entryway, piled in drifts thick enough to look like the building is trying to swallow its own face.
Solan starts toward the clinic. Before he reaches the doors, Jessa points sharply to their right.
"Hold up. Look."
Across the overhang, about sixty meters away near the far ledge, a dark shape drops straight off the upper train station ridge and vanishes into the gorge. It's fast. Too fast to be human. The fog catches it a second before it disappears, turning it into a smudged, falling shadow.
Something faint and distant hits the lower depths with a muted splash or crunch. Hard to tell.
Kade lets out a stunned laugh. "Was that...? Nah. No way."
Jessa's eyebrows climb practically into her hood. "If that was what I think it was, the slayer owes us a story later. And maybe a drink."
Solan swallows. His throat clicks. "L-let's hope that w-was one of them and not h-him."
The roar from earlier echoes again, but this time it's far away, deep in the gorge. A dying echo. Not a hunting one.
Solan forces himself forward to the clinic's main doors. A mountain of snow and fused ice smothers them completely, the layers stacked high and so densely frozen that the door looks like part of the wall.
He crouches and wipes frost from the clinic sign. "W-we're not getting in this way. N-not without an hour of hacking. M-maybe two."
Kade groans. "Awesome. Love it. Let's go see what other bullshit this building has for us."
They circle to the narrow metal catwalk mounted along the clinic's flank. The walkway hangs over a ten-meter empty drop into the gorge, and every gust of wind tilts them toward the railing like an impatient hand.
The steel plates creak under their weight. Frost dust crumbles with each step.
They reach the side door.
Solan grabs the handle and pulls. Nothing. He pulls harder. Still locked, still frozen.
"It's s-sealed f-from the inside," he says. His voice starts to shake. More stutter. More fear. "Either s-someone locked it or the f-frame's iced solid."
Jessa sighs. "I'm gonna take a wild fucking guess and vote ice."
Solan presses his slate to the seam. "We c-can't force it. The structure's brittle. If it collapses, we d-drop."
Kade leans his head back, staring up at the small rectangular window patched above the frame. Half-frosted. Half-cracked already.
He nudges Jessa. "Window."
She looks. Smirks. "Finally. Something I can hit."
Before Solan can protest, she slams her elbow into the glass. The pane shatters outward in a clean burst, shards spraying the catwalk and skittering off the edge into the gorge.
Solan jumps. "J-Jessa. That was loud."
"I'm loud," she says. "We're all loud. The world's loud. Come on."
She steps into Kade's cupped hands, climbs, and slips through the broken frame. Her boots scrape metal inside. A box shifts. Something clatters on a shelf.
Her voice floats out, muffled. "Storage room. Smells like old paper and freezer burn. One sec."
They hear her try the inner handle. Then the dull thunk of a bolt refusing to budge. She tries again. Harder. A frustrated grunt follows.
"This bastard won't move. Either the lock's frozen or the universe hates me personally."
Kade calls through the door. "Kick it."
"I did kick it. I kicked it three times. The door insulted my mother."
Solan rests his forehead against the cold metal. His breath fogs and freezes on the seam. "J-just... everyone be q-quiet a moment."
The wind howls across the plaza canopy.
Somewhere below, deep and echoing, another feline growl rolls upward through the gorge. It's faint. Distant. But not gone.
Jessa goes still inside. "That one didn't fall."
Kade mutters, "And that means he's somewhere up here with us."
Solan presses both palms to the door as if he can will it to cooperate. "J-just open. Please. J-just fucking open."
Something behind the hinges cracks.
Not the good kind.
Not the safe kind.
And the entire clinic frame seems to tense around them, as if deciding whether it wants to let them in or let them fall.
Kade stamps his boots against the catwalk and mutters, "I'm going in. She's taking too long."
Solan grips the railing so tightly his knuckles whiten beneath the frost. "K-Kade, w-wait, the f-frame's unstable, it c-could—"
"Yeah, yeah, I'll cry about it later." Kade plants one foot on Solan's thigh, then his shoulder, and hauls himself through the broken window in a graceless scramble of boots and metal scraping metal.
Inside, Jessa's voice cracks through the dark. "Watch your damn feet. This place is rigged like a booby-trapped pantry."
Kade lands in a crouch, slips on a loose folder, and bangs into a wall cabinet. "Door won't move?"
Jessa shoves her shoulder against the inner handle, teeth clenched. "Feels like they welded it shut with frozen misery."
He joins her. "On three."
They push. The old hinges creak but don't give. Frost drops onto their shoulders like powdered glass.
Outside, on the catwalk, Solan keeps watch, breath sharp and shallow as he scans the plaza with his slate. His nerves are frayed to threads. The wind keeps kicking shards of ice across the floor, making him jump every time one skitters past his boots.
Then he hears it.
A low, guttural rumble that vibrates straight through the metal under his feet.
He turns his head slowly.
A tiger steps out from behind the warped storefront of Lantern Stitch Repair. Huge. Striped. Shoulders rolling like tectonic plates under dense fur. Its coat is untouched by burns, unscarred. A fresh one. A different one. The third.
Solan's stomach drops hard. "K-Kade," he whispers, though his voice barely works. "K-Kade, we've g-got c-company."
Kade hears him through the window. "Shit. How close?"
Solan stares at the massive head lowering, nostrils flaring. "Too c-close."
The tiger takes one deliberate step toward him, claws cutting thin white arcs through the frost. Its breath fogs the air in thick ropes.
Solan's hands shake as he digs into his coat. He pulls out a small silver sphere, thumb trembling on the activator. "S-sonic disorienter. I-It's all I've got."
Kade shouts, "Solan, don't—"
But Solan's already thrown it.
The little sphere arcs through the cold.
The tiger lunges forward with terrifying speed and snaps it out of the air like it's catching a snowflake.
Crunch.
A tiny electrical spark fizzles between its teeth and dies.
No blast. No disorientation. Nothing.
The tiger swallows the remains and growls, a deep rolling sound that shakes the window frame.
Kade groans inside. "Fantastic. You fed it a snack."
Solan backs up until the railing hits his spine. "I— I— I didn't— I h-had to t-try—"
The tiger charges.
Solan yelps and sprints for the window, nearly slipping on the ice-coated catwalk. His boots slide, catching barely enough friction to keep him upright. The tiger's paws hammer behind him, claws gouging the metal plates, breath hot on his back.
Inside, Kade hears the pounding footsteps and curses. "Jessa, move your ass!"
They slam the door handle again. The frozen mechanism screams but doesn't give.
Solan reaches the window, tries to climb, slips, claws at the metal frame with numb fingers. "K-Kade—"
The tiger leaps.
Kade roars, shoves the door shoulder-first, and the whole frame jolts. Something cracks. Something gives. The door snaps open just enough for Jessa to grab Solan's coat and yank him inside like pulling laundry off a line in a hurricane.
Solan tumbles onto the icy floor. Kade tries to slam the door, but a massive striped limb wedges through the gap. Claws tear straight into the metal, curling inward.
"Push!" Jessa screams. "Fucking push!"
All three of them slam their weight against the door. The tiger snarls on the other side, muscles bulging under snow-dampened fur as it forces its arm deeper through the frame, swiping at the air just inches from Solan's face.
Kade roars in frustration and grabs his stun pistol. "Move your head, Sol!"
He jams the muzzle straight into the tiger's forearm and fires.
The bolt detonates in a violent arc of blue light. The tiger shrieks, a sound like metal being ripped in half. Its arm spasms hard enough to rattle the doorframe, then jerks backward, claws scraping deep gouges as it withdraws.
The moment the limb is gone, Jessa throws her entire body into the door. It slams shut with a hollow boom.
Kade fumbles for the manual lock, slaps it down with shaking hands, and the bolt thunks into place.
Silence crashes down. Heavy. Total. Their panting fills the room like steam.
Kade collapses backward onto the ice-cold floor, arms sprawled, breath coming in ragged bursts. "I'm so sick of this shit. If we don't kill these things, we're so fucking dead." He drags one hand over his face and mutters, "Where's the catnip when you need it."
Solan's still trembling, sitting with his back against the wall, trying to get a full breath through the panic closing his throat.
Jessa leans on the door, listening for the tiger's return. Her voice is tight. "We're not out of it yet. That thing knows we're in here."
And the cold, silent clinic waits around them, all shadows and frost and stale air, like the building itself is holding its breath for whatever comes next.
Solan rolls onto his stomach, dizzy, checking his head with a shaky hand. "E-everyone... i-intact?"
Jessa pushes up with a grunt, rubbing her shoulder. "Physically? Sure. Emotionally? I'm suing the universe."
Kade lifts a hand, still flat on his back, pointing past them. "Uh. Guys."
They finally take in the room.
This isn't a forgotten chamber or some half-collapsed ruin. It's a storage room, one of the storage rooms, wide and rectangular, tall enough for a grown person to climb a cabinet and still not touch the ceiling. Metal cabinets run the full length of the left wall, doors latched shut with ice-curled padlocks. On the right side, reinforced crates rise in precarious, towering stacks, labeled with faded clinic stencils and scribbled twin graffiti. The temperature sits in that eerie middle-space, cold enough to keep food from rotting, warm enough not to kill anyone who falls in by accident.
Shelves overflow with rope coiled into harsh little nests, sealed medkits, half-disassembled tech rigs, weapon parts wrapped in cloth, spare wiring bundled like veins, and clear sacks of filtered snow waiting to be melted. Everything is perfectly categorized the way Rhea insists on doing it, and slightly off-kilter in that subtle, chaotic way Kade and Jessa always leave behind.
"This is..." Solan whispers, pushing himself to his feet. "The clinic's supply cache. One of the b-b-big ones."
Jessa looks around with widening eyes. "We landed in Rhea's version of heaven and Kade's version of a toy box."
But Solan's attention has already snapped to the back of the room. The far wall is lined with a row of sleek, flat-panel heaters, dozens of them, stacked with almost reverent precision. They gleam faintly under the dim emergency lights, each coated in a delicate frost sheen.
Solan crosses the room too quickly and nearly trips over a crate. He steadies himself on the heater stack, breath steaming in front of him. He wipes the frost from a power pad. His gloved thumb presses the activation strip.
A soft internal hum stirs to life.
A pale red glow blooms beneath the surface, slow and steady like a heartbeat waking from hibernation. The tiny digital display flashes awake: BATTERY: 100%. Another button unleashes the solar collectors, sleek black panels that feather upward like mechanical wings.
"They're ch-charged," Solan says, staring as if the panels might vanish. "F-Fully c-charged. They never got-got used. The clinic w-was prepping for a system collapse and... it-it happened too fast." His voice thins with awe he doesn't have time for. "This isn't j-just a stabilizer alt-alternative. This is... warmth. Heat. L-Life."
Jessa steps closer, palms hovering near the gentle warmth radiating from the panel. "Forget the DMSO," she murmurs. "We just hit the jackpot."
But Kade is still staring toward the far corner.
Not at the heaters.
Not at the cabinets.
Something else.
"Kade?" Solan says, heartbeat quickening. "What is it?"
Kade lifts a hand again, slower this time, pointing toward a cluster of tall crates pushed against the back wall, crates that had been arranged deliberately, as if to block something from view.
They move toward it together.
The crates don't hide a creature.
They hide a memory.
In the corner stands a perfect, terrible monument: a thick column of ice, crystal-clear, reaching from floor to ceiling. Suspended inside is a family, a man, a woman, a small child, locked together in a frozen embrace. Their clothes are light, festive, something out of a summer simulation space. Their faces are contorted mid-scream, eyes wide and glassy, a silent terror preserved in liquid gel that hardened around them during the Avalanchion Event.
No rot. No decay. Just a moment sealed forever and left as a warning.
Solan's voice cracks. "I-I-I-Ignore it. P-p-please. We—we can't—" He swallows, forces his gaze back to the practical world of supplies and survival. "Seventeen years of history isn't the mission. W-w-we need the chemical compound. And that cr-crazy man is out there stalling death."
He moves quickly, grabbing two flexible clinic packs from a toppled shelving unit. "Take anything that looks good. Extinguishers, aerosols, anything with pressure seals. Load fast. The clinic core is still our target."
The climb down the vent shaft leaves their bones humming. Frost shakes loose from their coats in pale shivers as they drop into the dim storage bay of the clinic. The place stretches around them like a forgotten lung: cold, silent, but still breathing in slow mechanical hiccups. Smiling nurses, med-tech slogans, little animated icons point toward nonexistent warmth.
Kade squints at one of the posters glitching over the entrance vestibule. "Man, even the ghost ads look depressed."
"That's because this was a med-tech center," Solan says, sweeping his light across the narrow bay where a dormant med-drone hangs from a ceiling mount like a gutted insect. His voice trembles with something between exhaustion and excitement. "Pre-collapse... H-H-Hawkelin used places like this for overflow response. See the triage loop?" He gestures toward the circular corridor branching off the vestibule, its color-coded doors untouched except by nearly two decades of cold. "It routed patients automatically. L-l-like cargo."
Jessa taps one of the cold doors with her boot. The ice responds with a muffled, crystalline chime. "Sounds like they shipped 'em express."
Solan lets out an unamused breath through his nose. "Please d-don't kick the m-medical infrastructure. Some of it m-m-might still be functional."
Kade's flashlight skates across another hallway and lands on six cramped chambers arranged in a ring. Beds lie within them like empty shells, each one fitted with skeletal scanner arms frozen mid-reach.
"Vitals Ring," Solan murmurs. "Each c-c-chamber used for rapid di-diagnostics. If I can get the Med-Core online, like, even halfway, those scanners could stabilize infections, burns, nerve damage..."
Jessa turns a slow circle. "So what you're saying is... this place is basically our apocalypse u-urgent-care?"
"Don't trivialize it," Solan says, swatting her shoulder without looking. "This is a g-g-godsend."
They push deeper, their boots crunching through frost that has settled like powdered glass. The corridor opens into a dark, wide-bellied room with tiered platforms, an amphitheater, small but unmistakably surgical.
The overhead arrays of lights hang crooked, the panels fractured, but the place looks untouched.
Kade whistles low. "Damn. That the murder theater?"
"D-D-Deep-Care Theater," Solan snaps, adjusting his glasses. "And if the AI is salvageable, this becomes... everything. Wound management, surgeries, frostbite reversal—"
"Murder theater," Jessa repeats, flicking one of the fused switches.
Solan groans into his hands.
Past the theater, a locked hatch bears a frost-etched label: CRYOSTORE VAULT. Solan sweeps his gloves across the surface, revealing stacked drawers behind the glass window, many still full.
"That's food," Kade says instantly.
"That's blood p-p-packs, organ gels, p-preserved s-synth-meats," Solan corrects. "But... y-yeah. Food."
Jessa elbows her twin. "Look at that, science boy finally learning how to talk like us."
They press on until they reach a long corridor washed in pale, frosted light. A line of beds runs along the windowed wall, each one intact, each one looking like the closest thing to peace any of them have seen in months.
"The Recovery Gallery," Solan whispers. "This is where we'll tend people once we... once we survive a little longer."
Kade sits on one of the beds and watches the frost puff from his breath. "Feels creepy, but like... the good kind."
Jessa wanders toward a smaller archway tucked in the back. "What's this? Looks like a junk closet."
"That—don't touch that," Solan blurts, sprinting to her. "Robotics Alcove. D-D-Dormant drones, exo-frames... auto-gurneys that sometimes move on their own. We leave this sealed until I can review the OS."
"Can't move without power," Jessa says. "Which this place doesn't have."
"F-Fair enough," Solan mutters with the most exhausted triumph.
Finally, at the very end of the main corridor, they find the sealed door humming faintly behind a veil of frost, the Med-Core. A network of processors and thermal conduits thrums behind it with a quiet heartbeat.
Solan places his hand against the metal. "If I wake this up... Sotira becomes ours."
Kade shrugs. "So it's a fixer-upper with potential. Cool. Still doesn't solve the tiger problem."
The mention of the tigers snaps their attention back to the way they came.
"We can't leave," Kade says, gesturing to the dark square in the wall. "That tiger is still out there. And who knows if the sexy stranger managed to lead the other one off, or if he's even still breathing."
Jessa gives him a disgusted look. "Only you would call somebody sexy while he's dripping in gore."
"Dripping in competence," Kade argues. "Big difference."
Solan smacks the back of his head. "Stop being horny and g-grab supplies. We stick to the plan. Clinic, compound, dispersal system, back to the car."
Jessa pauses mid-search, a new thought rippling across her face. "Forget the car. Solan—we bring everyone here."
"Why? The car's defensible enough for n-now."
She drags them toward a metal panel half-buried behind crates. It shifts open with a squeal, revealing a long, narrow dormitory lined with ten frost-rimmed triage beds.
"Beds," she says. "Warmth. Walls. A straight shot to every medical zone you just nerd-splained."
Solan's breath leaves him in a cloud. "We need to move them here. But without c-comms we..." His stutter sharpens when the possibilities clash in his head. "...we need to move fast."
Before anyone can act, a heavy metallic CLANG reverberates from the shaft above them. Armor slams down the chute, scraping metal, followed by a body hitting the concrete with brutal finality.
They whip around.
Kaius Vale lies sprawled on the ice, one arm clamped over a poorly sealed forearm wound. His coat is shredded. His ribs look wrong, too tight on one side, like something clawed deep. Blood beads in his eyelashes where frost is already trying to claim him. And another injury stands out across his flank, a raw, fresh gouge, the unmistakable track of a tiger's back claw catching him mid-escape.
His breath rattles through his teeth.
Solan makes a strangled sound, half panic, half pure relief, and drops to his knees beside him, hands hovering helplessly. "Is he...? H-Hey—h-hey, stay with me, you s-s-stubborn, freezing asshole."
Kaius tries to speak, but the words dissolve in steam as he sags sideways, barely conscious, bleeding into the cold that's already trying to swallow him.
—