The Cold Equation

By hour twenty-four, the temperature began to drop.

Dante was playing with the environmental controls. The room was freezing. Frost began to form on the steel shackles.

Luca sat shivering, watching Camilla. She hadn't moved for hours.

He tried to focus on the lock mechanism. It was a biometric mag-lock of his own design. He knew the source code. If he could get to the keypad by the door... but the chains were too short.

He looked at the floor rivets. If he could create a lever...

"Stop thinking," Dante’s voice interrupted his thoughts. "You can't engineer your way out of this, Architect. I changed the encryption. I welded the rivets."

"What do you want, Dante?" Luca groaned. "A confession? Fine. I hurt you. I enjoyed it. Is that what you want to hear?"

"I want balance," Dante said. "I want you to feel what it’s like to be powerless."

A pneumatic hiss echoed through the room.

In the center of the floor, a small hatch opened. A tray slid up.

On the tray sat a single revolver.

"The Midpoint Test," Dante announced. "We are going to play a game. There is one bullet in the chamber. The door is sound-activated. It will open when it registers a gunshot. One of you dies. The other walks free."

Luca stared at the gun. It was a heavy, chrome-plated magnum.

"I won't do it," Luca said instantly. "I won't shoot her."

"Then you both freeze," Dante said. "Or starve. Your choice."

Luca looked at Camilla. She was staring at the gun.

"Cami," Luca said softly. "I’m going to figure this out. I promise."

Camilla stood up. Her movements were stiff from the cold. She walked to the center of the room, the chains allowing her just enough slack to reach the tray.

She picked up the gun.

"Camilla?" Luca frowned. "Put it down. It’s a trap."

She turned. She raised the gun.

She wasn't aiming at the door. She wasn't aiming at herself.

She was aiming at Luca.

Her hands weren't shaking. Her expression wasn't one of fear anymore. It was cold. It was hateful.

"Camilla?" Luca whispered.

"You took everything from me," she said. Her voice was steady, stripping away the facade of the fragile wife.

"What are you talking about?"

"Marco," she said.

The name hit Luca harder than a bullet. Marco Rossi. Camilla’s older brother. He had disappeared three years ago, right before Luca and Camilla married. The official story was that he ran off to Brazil.

"You killed him," Camilla said. "I know you did."

"Cami, listen to me—"

"I don't want to listen!" she screamed. "I spent three years playing the loving wife. Three years letting a monster touch me. Three years waiting for a chance to put you in the ground."

Luca stared at her, the realization dawning on him like a slow suffocation.

"You weren't kidnapped," Luca breathed.

Camilla smiled. It was a sharp, jagged thing. "No, Luca. I wasn't. I gave Dante the security codes to the penthouse. I put the sedative in your wine. I delivered you."

The betrayal was absolute. The woman he had built his life around, the one pure thing he had tried to protect, was the architect of his downfall.

"I wanted to watch you die," Camilla said. "I thought Dante would let me watch from the control room. But he threw me in here too."

"He double-crossed you," Luca said dully.

"It doesn't matter," Camilla cocked the hammer. "As long as you die first."