Frozen Domination

Annie crawled out of the earth, the metal latch to her underground prison still smoldering, warped by the electromagnetic pulse that had erased the world above.

For five years, she had been the possession of a man who called himself Martin—a sadistic monster who delighted in tormenting her, calling it love. But the pulse had granted her what no act of will could: freedom.

Above, the world was an icebound wasteland. Snow drifted across empty hills, the silence pressing like a weight. The cold clawed at her like unseen fingers, reminding her that Martin was only one of many threats in this new world without electricity, engines, or warmth.

Miles away, Declan scanned the horizon from the porch of his cabin. A retired Marine, he had prepared for this exact kind of collapse.

But all the stockpiles in the world hadn’t saved his wife and son, lost to the EMP’s first moments of chaos. Grief had carved him hollow. Survival was muscle memory now, not meaning.

Annie and Declan’s fates collided on a frozen backroad. He found her stumbling through the snow, a skeletal figure wrapped in tatters.

Her lips were blue, her eyes vacant. Against every survival instinct honed, Declan took her in, nursing her back from the edge of death.

Annie spoke little of her past, her voice trembling when pressed. Declan didn’t push. The terror in her eyes said enough.

What mattered now was making it through the winter. Nevada was their goal—two hundred brutal miles to where Declan had an old ally and a stockpile of resources.

But Martin wasn’t finished. The EMP hadn’t just freed Annie–it released him as well. Without society’s constraints, his pursuit was unrelenting, a wolf tracking a wounded deer.

The first sign of him came at dusk., as a shadow across the snow. A whisper carried on the wind.

Declan’s instincts prickled, honed by years of combat. Annie shrank into herself, the terror she’d kept buried bubbling to the surface.

“You can’t run, Annie,” Martin’s voice taunted from the darkness one night. “You’re mine.”

Each day became a nightmare. They trekked through waist-deep snow and frozen forests, feeling Martin’s eyes.

He left behind his signature marks: gutted animals suspended in trees, cryptic words smeared in blood. His games grew deadlier, laying traps that injured and slowed them.

Declan fought to protect Annie, but doubt began to gnaw at him. She was distant, her eyes avoiding his.

Something about her silence unsettled him, as if there was a part of her story he wasn’t hearing. The final confrontation came in an abandoned mining town on the edge of Vya, Nevada, its skeletal buildings casting long shadows in the moonlight.

The pair cornered Martin’s laughter hallow as he stepped from the darkness, knife in hand.

“Did you really think you could get away from me?” Martin sneered, his grin monstrous.

The fight was vicious. Martin lunged at Annie, but Declan intercepted him. They grappled in the snow, each blow cracking like gunfire in the frigid air.

Declan finally pinned Martin and drove a jagged piece of metal through his chest. Martin coughed, blood bubbling from his lips, yet he smiled.

“You think you’ve saved her?” he rasped. “You’ve got no idea what she is.”

Annie stepped forward, her face blank, her hand shaking as she reached for Martin’s discarded knife. Declan turned to her, breathing heavily, his expression a mixture of relief and exhaustion.

“It’s over,” he said. “You’re safe.”

Annie didn’t respond. Her grip on the knife tightened, her eyes locking onto Declan’s.

“I’m free now,” she murmured, almost to herself.

Before Declan could react, she plunged the blade into his chest. His breath caught in a wet gasp, disbelief etched onto his face as he fell backward, crimson blooming across the snow.

Annie stood over him, her breaths shallow, her face eerily serene. “No one saves me, I save myself,” she whispered, her voice soft but empty.

As the snow fell heavier, she turned and walked into the wilderness, her figure swallowed by the storm. Behind her, the bodies of the two men—one who had hurt her, one who had tried to save her—lay cold and still.

In the darkness, the winter accepted her, a predator now freed, as dangerous as the world that had once held her captive.