Every night, when I closed my eyes, his image would be branded to the backs of my eyelids. That same smile, so gorgeous yet so deadly. Those deep blue eyes, like the treacherous oceans you find, the ones which sometimes have those desolate lighthous...
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Literally.
A gust of freezing cold air enveloped them and made their skin erupt in goosebumps. The temperature of the room they were in was dropping rapidly, but Grace barely noticed as she stared on into the next room.
'Room' seemed like an inaccurate word. She would have called it —
"A ... freezer?" Simon's teeth chattered.
"A walk-in freezer," Xander added. Lorelei glanced at him and saw that he had paled.
They all shared a look with each other, but this time there wasn't any terror in their expressions. Only an almost glum dissociation, as if their brains were finished processing any information and had just accepted that they weren't walking back out.
The four broke their numb, despairing eye contact and shuffled in, arms wrapped around themselves. As soon as they had entered, the door automatically shut behind them with a loud clank, and they were left there, temperatures rapidly decreasing.
"What is this?" Grace trembled. It was a rhetorical question; Grace knew what it was, but the question was more directed at the next nightmare to come.
Xander observed their metal surroundings in anxiousness, looking for any additional way out. He knew he would find none, but he had to do something before his body went numb from the cold — or worse. They all had a limited amount of time, and for all they knew, half an hour would be enough to kill them.
"Cover any exposed skin," Lorelei ordered, shivering.
"With what?" Grace asked fearfully.
"I think I'm gonna freeze!" Simon yelled.
"Guys, look," Xander said. They all looked at him and followed his line of sight. There, on the wall, was a thermostat telling them the temperature of the freezer.
-17° Celsius. 0° Fahrenheit.
"Oh no," Simon whispered.
"How long till we get frostbite?" Xander asked, his eyes finding Lorelei's. She saw raw, unconcealed fear in his eyes, and for a moment her mind jumped back to when she was shot. She suspected that expression would always haunt her mind.
"I don't know," she replied, but her voice came out as a whisper. Her hands were already numb, although she'd tucked them into her armpits to stay warm.
"We also have to worry about hypothermia," Xander rattled, his whole body shivering. "Mild hypothermia when our core body temperatures drop from thirty-seven degrees to like thirty-five degrees. Or was it thirty-four? I don't know, I can't remember exactly —"
"Damn," Lorelei interrupted (more to stop Xander's word-vomit spiral than anything, because she knew it would just make him more anxious), her teeth chattering, then adding on, "Jack and Rose need to take notes."
