The Nitrogen Grave

​The world turned into a chaotic blur of fire and ice.

​As Liam dropped into the dining room, the man in the gas mask didn't hesitate. He dropped the lighter. The concentrated sedative gas—highly flammable—ignited with a muffled whoosh, a wave of blue flame rolling across the ceiling of the dining room.

​"Now, Nora!" Liam’s roar was drowned out by the hiss of the automated systems.

​I didn't wait. I dropped from the vent like a shadow, hitting the floor hard. The heat was blistering, singeing the stray hairs on my neck. I saw the golden vial on the table, shimmering through the blue haze of the fire.

​Liam lunged for the man in the mask, tackling him with a feral desperation, keeping him away from the table.

​I scrambled across the mahogany surface, my fingers closing around the cold glass of the vial. Got it.

​Suddenly, the house’s secondary alarm screamed—a high-pitched, piercing whistle.

​"FIRE SUPPRESSION ACTIVATED. LIQUID NITROGEN RELEASE IN T-MINUS 3 SECONDS."

​"The pantry, Nora! Go!" Liam shouted. He was pinned against the floor, the mercenary clawing at his wounded shoulder, trying to reach for the vial in my hand.

​I looked at the pantry—the reinforced steel door was only ten feet away. Then I looked at Liam. He was exhausted, his strength spent, his white shirt now almost entirely red. If I ran for the pantry now, the nitrogen would hit the room and turn him into a statue of ice before he could even crawl toward the door.

​"I'm not leaving you!" I screamed.

​I didn't run for the pantry. I ran for the dining table.

​With a strength fueled by pure adrenaline, I grabbed the edge of the heavy mahogany table—the solid wood that had hosted Eleanor’s cold dinners—and flipped it. It was a massive, unwieldy thing, but as it crashed down, it created a small, angled lean-to against the wall, right over Liam and his attacker.

​I dove under the table, shielding the vial with my body, and grabbed Liam’s belt, hauling him deeper into the cramped space.

​Then, the world went white.

​The liquid nitrogen hissed out of the ceiling vents like a thousand angry vipers. The temperature in the room plummeted from a hundred degrees to minus two hundred in a heartbeat. The blue flames didn't just go out; they shattered.

​The sound was terrifying—the sound of the air itself freezing solid. I felt the back of my dress stiffen. My breath turned to ice crystals in front of my face. Liam was shaking violently, his teeth chattering so hard I thought they would break.

​Under the table, the mercenary let out one final, choked gasp before he went silent.

​We lay there, huddled together in the darkness beneath the wood, the only two living things in a room of frozen death. My fingers were numb, but I clutched the golden vial to my chest, using my body heat to keep the antidote from denaturing.

​"Liam?" I whispered, my voice a puff of frost. "Stay with me. Stay awake."

​"C-cold..." he managed to stutter.

​"I know. Just a little longer."

​Minutes passed. The automated system finally sensed the fire was dead and began the "De-Icing" cycle, pumping warm air back into the room to prevent the structure from cracking.

​I pushed against the table. It didn't budge. The nitrogen had fused the wood to the floor.

​"Liam, help me!"

​Together, we shoved. With a sickening crack of ice, the table moved. We crawled out into a nightmare. The dining room was covered in a thick layer of white frost. The mercenary was slumped against the wall, a literal statue of ice, his eyes wide and clouded.

​But we didn't have time to mourn or marvel. I looked at my watch.

​08:12.

​"Eight minutes," I gasped, pulling Liam to his feet. He was shivering so hard he could barely walk, but we stumbled toward the stairs.

​We reached the nursery just as the door’s electronic lock hissed open. I burst inside.

​Leo was pale blue now, his breathing almost non-existent. Mia was huddled over him, her face white with terror.

​"Mommy!" she sobbed.

​I didn't say a word. I broke the seal on the vial, drew the liquid into a syringe from the medical kit, and injected it straight into Leo’s thigh.

​We held our breath.

​One minute passed. Two.

​Slowly, the blue rash began to recede. Leo’s chest gave a sudden, jagged heave, and then his breathing smoothed out. The color returned to his cheeks.

​He opened his eyes, blinking at us. "Mommy? Why is it... so cold?"

​I collapsed against the bed, the vial falling from my nerveless fingers. Liam sank down beside me, pulling both children and me into his arms. We were a heap of bruised, frozen, and broken people, but we were alive.

​But the victory was short-lived.

​Liam’s phone, lying on the floor where he’d dropped it earlier, began to vibrate. It was a video call.

​I picked it up.

​Eleanor Sterling’s face appeared on the screen. She wasn't in a jet. She was in a dimly lit room, sitting in a high-backed chair. Behind her, a large window looked out over a landscape I didn't recognize—mountains, capped with snow.

​"Well done, Nora," she said, her voice devoid of any emotion. "You saved the boy. You proved your worth as a Sterling mother. But did you really think the 'Sirens' Kiss' was the only poison in that house?"

​My heart plummeted. "What did you do?"

​"The antidote you just gave him... it cures the rash. But it activates a secondary compound already in his system. A dormant one." Eleanor smiled, and it was the smile of a demon. "In exactly twenty-four hours, the 'Project Gemini' protocol will reach its final phase. Unless you deliver Liam to me, in person, at the coordinates I’m sending now."

​"You're insane!" I screamed.

​"I am a visionary, Nora. And Liam is the only one who has the biometric key to the Sterling Global 'Black Ledger'—the digital one that controls the offshore accounts. Bring me my son, and the boy lives. Keep him, and you can watch them both die together."

​The screen went black.

​Liam looked at me, his eyes filled with a weary, heartbreaking resolve. He knew what he had to do. And I knew that I was going to have to do something even more dangerous to stop him from giving up.

​Eleanor has set a second, dormant trap within the antidote itself. To save his son, Liam must surrender himself to a mother who has already tried to kill him once. But Nora has the Majority Shareholder power—and she’s about to realize that the "Black Ledger" Liam holds is the only thing Eleanor fears more than death.