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Chapter One

Xeniya Morozova

Age 25

Ten years Ago

The world was sterile, cold, and haunting.

I drew in a sharp breath of icy, burning air that scraped every inch of my throat as it traveled into my lungs. It was awful. So fucking awful. The breath was like a runaway train hurtling through a tunnel with no light in sight.

I coughed, choking.

My eyes snapped open, and I was met with darkness. Not a single sliver of light existed here. Just sheer, utter darkness. Somewhere in the distance, muffled sounds drifted toward me. A whimper escaped my lips, and my hands shot out in front of me, striking a hard, freezing surface.

It wasn’t wood, chains, or concrete. It was metal. Smooth, freezing metal.

Fuck.

What new torture did they have in store for me now? Another sob escaped my lips before I could stop it.

This was bad. The Order was going to freeze me to death… again? Wasn’t that how I’d already died? I rubbed my head. I thought so.

In a bath?

The world blurred. I heard a fragile scream and the awful sound of fingernails scraping against metal, all of it grating against my ears. And it took me far too long to realize the sound was me.

My skin burned, every nerve alive with a strange, prickling heat that spread deeper every time I moved, making me sluggish and stiff until everything felt wrong. But then everything had been wrong for the last three years.

I was betrayed by the man I loved, kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered.

When was enough, enough? I didn’t know.

But the one thing I knew for sure: I was a fighter.

But to fight, I needed to calm the fuck down.

Calm the fuck down.

I sucked in a slow, awful breath and pinched my eyes shut. I counted to ten, trying to ground myself, then began moving my hands across every surface, seeking any clue that would bring me answers.

A thin plastic sheet covered my body. Smooth stainless steel surrounded me on all sides, and a metal tray rested on rails beneath my back.

I rubbed my temples as realization slowly dawned on me, because I knew where I had to be. A mortuary refrigerator cabinet. No other logical explanation fit. I was confined, and there were rails underneath me, and it was freezing.

And I had died.

But if I were in a morgue freezer, then I could get out. I read in a book once that they were designed to be opened from the inside.

You know, in case a corpse decided to rise from the dead and walk out.

Like me, and I would really like to walk out right now.

I kicked at the metal door, but my feet hit nothing. They passed straight through as if the metal wasn’t even there, except it was.

My feet went through it!

What the hell?