My Safe Haven in a Frozen World

Neo Murphy dies in the frozen era at the hands of the two people he trusted most. He drags supplies back to Hudson and Zoe—food, medicine, even a bottle of whiskey Zoe said she missed. Hudson calls him a good hound, always running around getting whatever he wants. Then Zoe tells him she doesn't want to be with him, that being trapped with him would be worse than death. Hudson and Zoe have been together behind his back for years. Neo was their puppet, out scavenging while they waited to take everything he built. Zoe tells Hudson to throw him out into the snow. Hudson has a different plan—he looks at Neo's body and sees meat for a couple of decent meals. He carves him up and says farewell. Moments later, Neo jerks awake slumped over his desk, gasping. A full week remains before the apocalyptic snowstorm that will bury civilization. His grandfather's Cold War nuclear bunker sits beneath the house, two hundred feet deep with nearly a dozen levels stacked like a buried skyscraper. It can keep him alive for decades. He just needs money to renovate it into a fortress. Neo walks into Samuel Scott's bank, takes a five-million-dollar loan from a man he knows is secretly running a loan-sharking operation, and tells him the repayment is due in one month. The snow hits in six days. There will be no one left to collect.

With the loan secured, Neo dumps every dollar into gold and crypto while global tensions send prices soaring. His assets double. Then the shopping begins—generators, fridges, fuel, food, medical supplies. He clears entire store inventories across North America, paying extra for three-day delivery. When a clerk asks if some disaster is coming, Neo tells her the truth: a snowstorm that will not stop. She laughs him off as an end-of-the-world nut. Zoe spots him spending a fortune and immediately turns on the old charm, pretending to be single, angling for gifts. Neo hands her a bag of coal and walks away. Her face twists in fury, but he is already scanning the crowd for someone else. Ella. In his past life, she was the doctor who died saving him. Now he finds her shivering in the sudden cold, wraps his coat around her shoulders, and warns her to stay inside. She is the only person who believes him.

The day before the freeze, Neo's AI-controlled safehouse comes online. Every system is locked, stocked, and waiting. He has food, water, fuel, and backup power to outlast anything the frozen era can throw at him. Outside, the temperature is already dropping fast. Hudson and Zoe are still laughing at him, still scheming, still convinced the idiot they used as their personal supply hound will come crawling back. They do not know what is coming. Neo does. And when the snow buries the old world, every debt from his past life will be collected in the cold.