Chapter 4

He raised his head and looked at me blankly. But this time, deep in his eyes, I saw something stirring. There was a kind of instinctive focus, as though something inside him had been awakened.

We didn't waste any time. The basement was warmer than the outdoors, but the temperature had already dropped below freezing. Every extra minute we spent there was dangerous.

According to the notebook, the key materials were in the old study in the attic.

It contained many of Uncle Xavier's personal belongings and experimental equipment from before the accident. The family considered the place unlucky, so almost no one had gone up there since.

I gathered every piece of equipment I could find: the half-bottle of water, the remaining ration bars, the alcohol, the first-aid kit, a fire axe, and Uncle Xavier's notebook.

Using some old curtains and rope, I managed to fashion crude cold-weather face coverings and gloves for both of us.

When I opened the basement door leading to the ground floor, a wave of even more bitter cold rushed toward us.

The villa was just as cold and lifeless inside. Frost covered the luxurious furnishings, and thick ice and snow blocked most of the windows. The little light that remained was dim and gloomy.

We carefully made our way across the frozen floors toward the attic. The entrance was blocked by a pile of old furniture.

I struggled to clear a path with the fire axe while Uncle Xavier looked up at the attic door. His expression was complicated, with something almost imperceptible in his eyes. It was difficult to tell whether it was fear or nostalgia.

The attic was packed with junk and covered in a thick layer of dust.

Following the diagrams in the notebook, we searched through abandoned desks, bookshelves, and cardboard boxes.

"CPU heatsink... copper tubing... hard drive..." I muttered, my fingers stiff with cold.

Uncle Xavier headed straight for a corner where several large wooden crates sat beneath the dust.

He opened them with practiced ease.

Inside were all kinds of electronic components and tools. There was even a small lathe and a bench vise. They were old, but had been kept in excellent condition.

It was as though he had returned to his own kingdom.

His eyes sharpened as he quickly and precisely selected the parts he needed: a copper-base heatsink, several powerful neodymium magnets, enameled copper wire in various gauges, several discarded glass jars, and a length of thin-walled copper tubing.

Just then, a sickening creak sounded above our heads!

The attic roof, weakened by years of neglect, seemed unable to bear the weight of the accumulated snow.

"Uncle Xavier, watch out!"

I lunged forward and shoved him out of the way.

Boom!

A massive section of snow mixed with broken wooden boards and roof debris crashed down where we'd been standing moments earlier. Shattered ice and dust filled the air.

Before I could recover from the shock, Uncle Xavier was already struggling to his feet. Ignoring everything else, he frantically dug through the rubble.

He pulled out a battered educational engine model. It was the small Stirling engine mentioned in his notebook. Although it was only a teaching model, its core mechanism was still intact!

He clutched the model and the other components tightly, then looked at me. His face was covered in dust, and he was breathing hard. But his eyes were shining with an extraordinary excitement, like someone who had just discovered buried treasure.

However, the icy wind pouring through the collapsed section was causing the attic temperature to plummet. We had to leave immediately.

Back in the relatively sealed basement, we took stock of our haul: the essential copper heatsink, magnets, enameled copper wire, the Stirling engine model, and a small jar of low-temperature sealant that, luckily, hadn't completely hardened.

Uncle Xavier immediately got to work.

Sitting on the cold floor, he used the bench vise and whatever simple tools we had, beginning to dismantle, assemble, and wind components with his one remaining hand.