The floor of the 24th floor didn't just vibrate; it groaned.
Standing by the shattered window at the end of the hallway, Alex watched the impossible happen.
Across the street, the luxury hotel—a thirty-story structure of steel and reinforced concrete—was being peeled open like a rotten fruit. The Titan stood amidst the wreckage, its massive, debris-encrusted arm sweeping through the structural pillars.
CRASH.
Dust and pulverized drywall exploded into the street, instantly freezing into a grey, suspended mist. The Titan didn't roar. It didn't pause. It moved with the inevitable, grinding momentum of a glacier.
Through the gaps in the blizzard, the creature's true form emerged. Not a man, but a colossal, mutated biological tank, resembling a microscopic tardigrade scaled up to the size of a skyscraper. Its skin was a shifting tectonic plate of trapped cars, asphalt, and black ice.
A vertical thermal vent on its "face" pulsed rhythmically, scanning the horizon.
It ignored Alex completely.
To the Titan, Alex's -64°C body was just another piece of cold rubble. The monster wasn't hunting mice; it was hunting reactors. It wanted the high-grade industrial heat of the city's power grid or the burning core of the hotel he had ignited.
"I am an ant," Alex whispered, the realization hitting him with cold clarity.
The behemoth turned slowly, massive footfalls crushing a row of frozen city buses flat as it lumbered south, toward the industrial district.
The immediate death sentence had passed.
Exhaling a puff of invisible air, Alex turned his back on the god-monsters of the new world. He had smaller, messier problems to solve.
"Harvest time."
Approaching the remains of Captain Miller, the scene was a study in flash-frozen violence. The Frost-Line officer had been bisected by the Thermal Lance, his lower half cauterized instantly, upper half frozen in a final, desperate reach for his radio.
Crouching down, Alex inspected the loot. The cold had preserved everything. No rot. No smell, other than the lingering sharp scent of ozone.
The Thermal Lance lay in the frozen slush.
Designed for a powered exoskeleton's hydraulic grip, it was heavy, but Strength 3.0 made it manageable.
[Battery: 11%].
"Thirsty," Alex noted, clipping the heavy tool to his belt. "But powerful."
This wasn't just a weapon. It was a skeleton key. With this, walls were suggestions. Bank vaults were cardboard.
Next: The armor.
The white "Guardian" suit was wrecked, but the components were military-grade. Drawing his combat knife, Alex jammed the blade into the maintenance seams of the Captain's chest piece.
CRACK. POP.
Frozen rubber seals shattered like glass. Prying the plate back revealed a cylindrical, glowing canister.
Item: Micro-Fusion Cell (Class III)
Status: Active
Capacity: Infinite (Low Output) / 5 Years (High Output)
"Jackpot."
Civilian batteries died in the cold. Chemical reactions slowed down. But nuclear fusion didn't care about winter. This single cell could power the penthouse heater for a decade, or the Thermal Lance for a month of continuous cutting.
A quick pat-down of the belt revealed two more cells. Three infinite batteries.
Eyeing the rest of the suit, Alex calculated the value. Servomotors, hydraulic pistons, polymer plating. It was a wearable tank.
Gripping the Captain's remaining gauntlet, he attempted to slide his hand into the control glove.
BEEP. BEEP. BUZZ.
A red holographic lock projected from the wrist unit.
[ERROR: Unauthorized User.] [Biometric Mismatch.] [System Lockdown Active. Self-Destruct Sequence Armed.]
"Woah." Alex yanked his hand out instantly.
Click. The countdown stopped.
He stared at the armor. It was right there. Strength, protection, environmental control. But it was bricked. Frost-Line hardware was coded to the user's DNA and neural signature. Without a cracked OS, it was just 400 pounds of expensive scrap metal.
"Hardware secured," Alex muttered, kicking the frozen corpse in frustration. "Software denied."
He needed a hacker. Or better, a mechanic who knew how to bypass military-grade proprietary locks.
Pocketing the fusion cells, he turned back toward his barricaded door.
"System," Alex said, scanning the wreckage. "I have the raw materials. Now I need a craftsman."
"System," Alex commanded, retreating into the freezing living room. "I need eyes."
Brute force had hit a wall. Strength 3.0 could crush a skull, but it couldn't rewrite an encrypted bio-kernel. He didn't need muscle anymore; he needed a brain.
Walking to the equipment rack, Alex snatched the Sky-Eye Drone. It was a civilian model, flimsy plastic compared to the military hardware outside, but modified with the Cold-Resistance Mod.
Popping the battery hatch, he ignored the standard lithium slot. Instead, he leveled the Micro-Fusion Cell looted from the Captain.
It didn't fit.
"Improvise."
Copper wire snapped like dry twigs in the sub-zero air. Fingers moving with mechanical precision despite the numbness, Alex stripped the insulation. He jammed the soldering iron's power dial to maximum, the tip hissing as it fought the ambient cold to melt the lead.
Bypassing the voltage regulator, he hard-wired the nuclear battery directly into the drone's power intake.
ZZZT.
The drone screamed. Plastic housing groaned under the thermal stress as the motors spun up to a pitch that threatened to shatter the rotors. The status light didn't just turn green; it burned a blinding, over-saturated white.
[System Alert: Power Overload (400%).] [Drone Range: Extended to 5km.] [Sensor Sensitivity: Maximum.]
"Go."
Thrown out the shattered window, the machine didn't just fly; it punched a hole through the wind. WHIRRRRR. The fusion-powered rotors defied the -65°C gale, stabilizing instantly against the turbulence.
Alex slid the VR headset over his eyes. The world dissolved into a stream of raw data.
Descending the side of the building, he scanned Riverside Gardens floor by floor. Thermal vision was useless here—everyone left alive was a faint orange smudge huddled around a trash fire. He was hunting for power.
Floor 23: Empty. Concrete tomb. Floor 22: Faint biological signatures. A family under a pile of rugs. Hypothermia critical. Dead by tomorrow. Floor 20: Three men fighting over a can of beans. Irrelevant.
The drone dropped lower. Wind shear buffeted the chassis, but the fusion battery compensated, torque spiking to correct the drift.
Floor 18.
PING.
A spike tore across the frequency graph. Not thermal. Electromagnetic.
"Stop," Alex whispered. "Hover."
Stabilizing the drone outside the window of Unit 1804, he zoomed in.
Heavy blackout curtains sealed the glass. But the sensor picked up the leak—a rhythmic, oscillating energy signature bleeding through the walls.
Hum... Hum... Hum...
This wasn't the chaotic, dirty interference of a scavenged generator. It was clean. Precise. Shielded.
"That's not a heater," Alex analyzed, narrowing his eyes behind the goggles. "That's a server rack. Or a fabrication bench."
Memory clicked. Unit 1804.
In the previous timeline, a quiet, mousy woman lived there. She was invisible. The neighbors called her "Mouse." She reportedly died in the first week, frozen in her bed.
"Lies."
Frozen corpses don't emit encrypted Wi-Fi signals. Dead women don't shield their apartments against EMP pulses.
She hadn't died. She had hidden.
If she could hide a high-tech workshop in a civilian apartment without anyone noticing for three years... she was exactly the kind of ghost he needed.
"Unit 1804," Alex noted, locking the coordinates on his tactical map. "Target acquired."
Recalling the drone, he checked the battery. 99.9%.
Standing up, the [Thermal Void] rendering him invisible to the biting cold of the hallway, Alex looked at the pile of useless Frost-Line armor.
"I have the tank," Alex grinned, a cold, predatory expression reflecting off the dark visor of the helmet on the floor. "And now, I've found the driver."
He checked the MK12. Magazine full.
"Knock, knock, Unit 1804."