Cold is not just the absence of heat. It is the absence of movement. It is physics saying "stop."

  We descended three levels into the deck of the cruiser The Last Breath.

  The temperature dropped drastically with each metal step. The ship's air conditioning wasn't just on; it was set to arctic conditions. The steam of my breath froze in the air before dissipating.

  "Valéria," I whispered, teeth chattering. "Ambient temperature?"

  "Minus twenty degrees Celsius," she replied, rubbing her arms in her oil-stained overalls. "And dropping. Arthur, this ship's engines... they don't vibrate. They make no noise. It's antimatter propulsion contained by magnetic fields. If that containment fails, Rio de Janeiro turns into a crater the size of the Moon."

  "Great. One more time bomb for my collection."

  Admiral Sterling walked ahead of us. The crystal side of his face glowed with a pale blue light in the corridor's gloom. He didn't shiver. He didn't seem to notice the cold.

  The crew members we passed—soldiers in white armor with expressionless faces—didn't react either. They marched in perfect unison.

  "Do you find the silence uncomfortable, Doctor?" asked Sterling, without looking back.

  "I find silence suspicious, Admiral. On a ship with five thousand people, there should be noise. Crying, laughter, fighting. Where are the voices?"

  "Voice is a waste of thermal energy." He stopped before a massive steel door, sealed with digital locks and biohazard symbols. "We learned to economize."

  He placed his crystal hand on the panel. The door hissed open.

  We entered the Heart of Ice.

  The room was a giant computer server. Processing towers lined the walls, blinking cold lights.

  In the center, suspended in a glass tube filled with liquid nitrogen, was The Piper.

  He didn't look like a monster. He looked like a twelve-year-old boy.

  Pale, thin, floating in a fetal position.

  But he had no skin.

  His body was made of fiber optic wires woven into the shape of muscles and bones. Only the brain and central nervous system seemed organic, floating inside the synthetic carcass.

  Thick cables protruded from the base of his neck, connecting him to the entire ship.

  "Arthur Veras." The voice didn't come from the boy's mouth (which was sewn shut). It came from all the room's speakers at once. It was a polyphonic, digital, emotionless voice. "The son of biological failure."

  I took a step forward, activating my analytical vision.

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  The Parasite in my liver was panicking. The extreme cold made it slow, lethargic.

  [TARGET: HUMAN-MACHINE HYBRID.]

  [THREAT LEVEL: LOGICAL.]

  [DIAGNOSIS: THIS IS NOT LIFE. IT IS A RANDOM ALGORITHM IN MEAT.]

  "You said you knew my father," I said, trying to keep my voice steady despite the cold. "Hélio Veras worked with biology, not robotics."

  "Hélio was a purist." The Piper opened his eyes. They were blue LED screens. "We worked on the same original project: The Genesis Initiative. He believed humanity should evolve through symbiosis with the monsters (the Parasites)."

  "I believed flesh was the problem. Flesh feels pain. Flesh freezes. Flesh feels fear."

  "So you created the Crystal Plague?" Valéria asked, fascinated and horrified.

  "It is not a plague. It is the Upload." The boy spun in the tank. "When the Rifts opened in Europe and the nuclear winter arrived, we couldn't fight. So, we digitized ourselves. Black Crystal doesn't kill. It converts biomass into data storage."

  "Admiral Sterling is not a cyborg. He is a walking hard drive."

  I looked at Sterling. The crystal on his face pulsed. He wasn't the leader. He was a peripheral.

  The real Admiral had been dead for years; what remained was a body executing The Piper's orders.

  "You aren't refugees," I realized, retreating my hand to the scalpel (which was too cold to be useful). "You are an invasion. You came for resources."

  "Resources?" The Piper laughed, a sound of static. "We came for Hardware."

  "Europe is finished. The cold froze the servers. We need warm bodies to process the collective consciousness. We need thermal biomass."

  "And your Leviathan... that giant, warm corpse outside... is the perfect server."

  "You want to turn my city into a zombie computer?" Gristle snarled, breath forming clouds of steam. "Over my frozen dead body."

  "That can be arranged."

  The room lights changed from blue to red.

  Admiral Sterling drew an antimatter pistol. The guards at the door blocked the exit.

  "Arthur Veras," The Piper continued. "Your father tried to create gods of flesh. I created angels of silicon. Let's see which operating system is superior."

  "Assimilation Protocol: Initiate."

  Sterling aimed the gun at Valéria.

  "Valéria, down!" I shouted.

  I pushed Valéria behind a server tower.

  The antimatter shot fired. It made no noise. Just a black beam that hit the metal wall and deleted it. A perfect hole appeared in the ship's hull.

  The cold sea air rushed in, mixing with the artificial cold.

  "Gristle!" I yelled. "Use the extinguisher!"

  Gristle ripped a fire extinguisher off the wall. But instead of spraying foam, she used her Orc strength to hurl the heavy metal cylinder directly at The Piper's glass tank.

  CRACK!

  The tempered glass fractured. Liquid nitrogen leaked out.

  The Piper screamed digitally.

  "Damage in Central Sector! Interrupt!"

  "Now!" I pulled Valéria and Gristle toward the hole in the wall the shot created.

  "We're twenty meters up!" Valéria shouted, looking at the icy sea below.

  "Better hypothermia than becoming a flash drive!" Gristle pushed us.

  We jumped.

  The fall was fast. We hit the water of Guanabara Bay.

  The water was cold, but compared to the ship's interior, it felt like warm soup.

  The Parasite woke up with the thermal shock.

  [THREAT DETECTED. INITIATING SURVIVAL MODE.]

  It covered my body with a waterproof membrane. I swam to the surface, pulling Valéria. Gristle bobbed alongside, swearing in three languages.

  We looked up.

  On the deck of The Last Breath, Admiral Sterling watched us through the hole in the hull. He didn't shoot again. He just touched the crystal on his face.

  The ship began to change.

  The black ice on the hull expanded. Connections formed with the other ships in the fleet.

  They were no longer asking permission to dock. They were merging, creating a crystal bridge toward our island.

  "They're attacking," Valéria spat saltwater. "And they have weapons that erase matter."

  "Luna..." I activated the waterproof communicator. "Luna, sound the general alarm."

  "Diplomacy is over. It's the Cold War. Literally."

  I swam toward the Leviathania city dock.

  I had performed an autopsy on silence. And silence had teeth.

  My father had created monsters to fight monsters. I would have to do the same. But against a digital collective mind... I would need something more than scalpels.

  I would need a virus.