Arctic Protocol

# The Last Thaw You're standing on a platform that shouldn't exist, watching it die. The ice beneath your boots—real ice, not the synthetic stuff they sell in the south—groans like something in pain. It's been groaning for three days. You've stopped counting the hours because hours feel like a luxury you can't afford anymore. Litany's beside you, breath fogging in the sodium-orange glow of the emergency lights, their fingers working the same nervous pattern they always do: thumb against forefinger, click click click, like they're trying to dial a number that doesn't exist. "How long?" they ask. You don't answer right away. Your photographic memory isn't useful for predicting the future—it's only good for remembering what's already broken. You pull out the structural report you memorized seventeen minutes ago in the server room, scroll through it in your mind's eye like you're actually holding something. The permafrost collapse vectors. The rate of platform subsidence. The margin of error, which is basically nonexistent. "Six hours," you say. "Maybe seven if we're lucky. If the thermal cascade doesn't accelerate." Litany nods. They're not the type to fall apart. You appreciate that. It's one of the reasons you keep them around—well, that and the fact that they're the only person who's ever made you feel less like a walking hard drive and more like something that bleeds. Click click click. Their fingers won't stop. Behind you, the data centre hums. It's massive, built into the ice like a parasite, all those servers converting heat into power and power into control. The weather algorithms are in there. The real ones, not the corporate fiction they feed the climate boards. You've seen them—your photographic memory burned them into your brain the way it burns everything, perfect and awful. They've been deliberately skewing precipitation patterns over the North American interior. Accelerating drought. Triggering floods. Displacing the researchers who might have noticed. Killing the witnesses. Your memories. The encrypted ones. They stole them too, or they tried to. You felt the intrusion like fingers in your skull. "Poline." Litany's voice is small. "What do we do?" What you do is pick at your cuticles until they bleed. You do it now, standing on this dying platform above the dying permafrost, and you watch a tiny drop of red fall onto the ice. It looks like it belongs there somehow. Here's the thing nobody tells you about impossible choices: they're not actually that complicated. The complication is in the aftermath. The complication is in accepting that you're going to break something either way. Option one: Sabotage the weather algorithms. Shut down the system before it triggers the cascade that will devastate the interior. You know how—your photographic memory gave you the architecture, gave you the kill switch buried in the code like a tumor waiting to be removed. You could do it in forty minutes. Maybe less. Option two: Preserve the evidence. Get into the secure archives, pull the crime logs, the financial records, the memos where they literally discuss using climate manipulation as a tool of displacement and control. Get it all out before the platforms collapse into the thaw. That takes longer. That takes everything. You can't do both. The failing systems, the ice, the proximity of collapse—it's all designed this way. You've thought about whether that's intentional. Whether they wanted this choice forced on you. It doesn't matter anymore. The wanting is done. "I need to tell you something," you say, and your voice sounds like it's coming from somewhere else. Somewhere further away. Litany turns. Their hand finds yours. It's warmer than it should be. It's the warmest thing in this place. "Before I went into the server room," you say, "I accessed my own files. The encrypted ones. I wanted to know what they were after." "Your memories." "Not just any memories. Specific ones. From the site in Svalbard, eight years ago. The original research facility they wanted to suppress." You're talking fast now, the way you do when your brain is racing ahead of your mouth. "There's something in there. Something I'd forgotten. Or something I'd made myself forget." Litany's fingers tighten. "The person who built the first weather algorithm," you say. "The one they based all of this on. It wasn't the corporation. It wasn't some external threat. It was—" "Poline." "—one of the researchers. Someone on the original team. Someone who believed they could engineer a better climate, that they could control it, that control was the same thing as safety." You're picking at your cuticles again, harder now, really working it. "Someone who was brilliant and broken and desperate enough to think that maybe if you just manipulated things enough, just adjusted the parameters correctly, you could prevent suffering." Litany doesn't say anything. They're looking at the data centre, then back at you. Then at the ice, which groans again. "It was me," you say. "I built it. I was part of the team. I built the thing they're using to displace entire regions. I built the algorithm they're using to hurt people. And when it went wrong, when I realized what it could be used for, I had myself erased. Or I tried to. But the corporation found the code in my memories anyway. They found what I'd built and they perfected it and they weaponized it." The confession sits between you like something physical. Like a body. "Fuck," Litany says quietly. "Yeah." "So when you sabotage it—" "I'm destroying my own work. Again." You look at your bleeding cuticles. "And if I preserve the evidence—" "You're preserving proof of what you did." You nod. The ice groans. Somewhere in the distance, one of the platform supports fractures. It's a sound like the world breaking, which is, you suppose, exactly what it is. "Here's what I'm thinking," Litany says, and their voice is steady in a way that makes you want to hold them very still and never let go. "What if the evidence we preserve isn't just the corporation's crimes? What if it's everything? Including what you did. Including who you were." "That's—" "Not your choice alone?" Litany's fingers drum against your palm. Click click click. "No. It's not. Because I'm going to help you carry it. And because the people who need to know about this, they need to know all of it. They need to know what it looks like when someone brilliant breaks and builds a prison, and then someone tries to use that prison to break other people. That's the real story. That's what stops this from happening again." You want to tell them that's not how it works. That the narrative doesn't get to be that neat. That there's no redemptive arc here, just the slow recognition of damage done and the choice to do a different kind of damage in response. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the story isn't about redemption. Maybe it's just about looking at what you've built and deciding whether you're brave enough to burn it down in front of witnesses. "Okay," you say. "Okay?" "I'll sabotage the algorithm," you say. "You get the evidence. All of it. My files, my history, everything. You get out before the platforms collapse." "And you?" "I make sure there's enough time for you to leave." Your fingers stop picking. They reach for Litany's face instead, find the soft place just below their cheekbone. "I make sure the kill switch actually works." "Poline, no—" "It's the only way we both get what we need. It's the only way the story makes sense." Litany's eyes are wet. They're looking at you like they're trying to memorize your face, which is funny because you're the one with the photographic memory. You're the one who will carry this moment perfectly preserved forever. But maybe that's not fair. Maybe everyone should get to remember the people they love with their whole heart, not just their perfect recall. You kiss them. It tastes like cold air and salt and the metallic hint of blood from where you've been biting your own cheek. It tastes like goodbye, which you both already knew. "Go," you say. "Poline—" "Go." They go. You watch them move toward the archive entrance, watch them disappear into the sodium-orange emergency lighting. Then you turn back toward the data centre, toward the servers that hum with stolen weather, with displaced lives, with the ghost of who you used to be. Your fingers start moving again as you walk. Pick pick pick at cuticles that are already raw. Click click click, like dialling a number that finally connects. The kill switch is in subsection 7 of the core architecture. You see it clearly, perfect and terrible, exactly as it was burned into your mind. You reach for the terminal. Your fingers hover. You think about the person you were eight years ago, brilliant and broken and desperate. You think about the choices that person made. You think about the people they hurt. You think about Litany, carrying the evidence into the frozen dark. Then you bring your hands down onto the keyboard and you burn it all down. The ice doesn't groan this time. It screams.