It was the middle of July in the city of Volgrad-Prime, and outside, it was a boiling thirty-five degrees.
Deep underground in the Directorate's containment bunker, everyone was sweating right through their clothes.
Everyone except Nina Weber.
Nina was wearing a heavy winter parka, two thick scarves, and fuzzy fleece mittens.
She leaned on her mop outside the heavy metal doors of Vault 0. Her teeth chattered loudly, shaking the plastic name badge pinned to her chest.
'If I don't get a cup of boiling hot ginger tea in the next three minutes, my eyelashes are going to snap right off,' Nina thought miserably.
She rubbed her thick mittens together, trying to get just a little bit of warmth. It didn't work.
Nina had a broken body. She was born with an F-Rank [Sub-Zero] condition. That meant she didn't have any magic or fighting aura like the powerful Beast-kin. Instead, her body worked like a broken freezer.
Her core temperature always sat at a miserable twelve degrees. Her hands and feet felt like blocks of ice.
She was twenty-one years old, exhausted, and forced to wear three layers of winter clothes in the dead of summer just to keep her heart beating normally.
"Weber!" an angry voice yelled down the white hallway.
Nina jumped. She pulled her scarf up over her nose as Hospital Director Otto marched toward her. His face was bright red with anger.
"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Otto snapped, pointing a fat finger at her chest.
"Mopped the floor, sir?" Nina asked, her voice muffled by the thick wool.
"You ruined the Chief Healer's morning coffee!" Otto yelled. "You touched the tray with your bare hands, you broken freak! You froze three expensive lattes! They are solid ice!"
'They were cold anyway,' Nina thought, rolling her eyes behind her frosty eyelashes.
"I am sorry, Director," Nina said out loud, forcing a polite customer-service voice. "I took my mittens off to tie my shoes. It won't happen again."
"It sure won't," Otto spat. "Because I am taking half your pay for this week. Think of it as a fine for being useless."
Nina's freezing heart dropped into her boots.
Half her pay.
She quickly did the math in her head. Her late brother's hospital bills cost five hundred Silver Rubles, and the payment was due this Friday. If Otto took her money, she would barely have enough to buy cheap noodles, let alone the heating oil she needed so badly for her tiny apartment.
"Director, please," Nina stepped forward, her voice tight with panic. "You can't do that. I work eighty hours a week."
Before Otto could yell at her again, the hallway flashed with a bright, violent red light.
BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT!
The emergency alarms on the ceiling started screaming. The sound was deafening.
The floor under Nina's boots started to shake. The air in the hallway suddenly felt heavy and smelled like burning metal.
"What is going on...?" Otto stammered. All the color left his face as he backed away from the giant metal doors of Vault 0.
BOOM!
Something massive crashed against the inside of the vault doors. The thick metal actually bent outward, groaning under the crazy amount of force.
The heavy locks hissed and popped open. The giant doors violently swung wide.
A wave of burning, golden heat rolled out into the hallway like a hot blast from an oven.
Three people stumbled out of the smoke, coughing and screaming in pure terror. They were elite S-Rank Healers, but they looked like they had just been thrown into a bonfire.
Their expensive white clothes were burned black. Their hair was smoking, and their skin was covered in red burns.
Leading them was Lady Eva. She was the most arrogant, snobby healer in the whole building.
Right now, Eva was crying loudly. She was missing a shoe and holding her badly burned arm.
"Close the doors!" Lady Eva screamed in panic. "Close them right now! His core is melting!"
Director Otto practically tripped over his own feet. "Lady Eva! What happened to the Chief General?!"
"He hit forty-four degrees!" Eva cried, crawling backward as another loud, terrifying roar echoed from inside the smoky vault. "His fever is out of control! He shifted!"
Nina stood frozen against the wall, gripping her mop.
Everyone in the city knew about Chief General Aleksei "Lex" Volkov. He was the Supreme Commander of the White Tiger Division. He was a ruthless, scary war god who protected the whole Empire.
He was also an SS-Rank shifter with a deadly curse. His body ran so hot that it was slowly burning his mind away.
"The Primordial White Tiger is awake," Eva sobbed, completely losing her rich-girl attitude. "If he gets out of that room, he will burn the whole hospital down! Where is the medicine box?!"
Eva looked around wildly, her eyes wide with fear, before she suddenly froze.
"The sleep darts," Eva gasped, looking sick. "I dropped the case. It's inside the vault."
The hallway was getting hotter by the second. The paint on the walls was starting to bubble and peel. Otto was sweating heavily.
Eva's crazy eyes snapped right to Nina. She stared at the freezing, unimportant janitor hiding in a winter coat.
A mean, desperate look flashed in the noblewoman's eyes.
"You," Eva ordered, pointing a shaking, burned finger at Nina. "Get in there and get the case."
Nina blinked. "'Excuse me? I'm a janitor. I don't fight monsters."
"That is an order from an S-Rank Noble!" Eva yelled, jumping forward.
Before Nina could do anything, Eva grabbed the collar of Nina's heavy coat and shoved her hard.
Nina tripped over her big boots and fell right into the boiling, smoky air of Vault 0.
Behind her, the heavy metal doors slammed shut with a loud thud. The locks clicked back into place.
Eva had trapped her inside.
Nina coughed, waving the golden smoke away from her face.
For a normal person, the heat inside the room would have killed them in minutes. The air felt like the inside of a volcano.
But for Nina, whose body sat at a freezing twelve degrees?
The terrible, painful cold in her bones finally started to melt away. Her violent shaking stopped. For the first time in years, her joints didn't ache from the cold.
A glowing blue screen popped up right in front of her eyes.
[HOST: NINA WEBER — CONSTITUTION: DEFECTIVE CRYO-VESSEL]Current Body Temp: 11.8°C (Mild Hypothermia / Miserable)[PROXIMITY ALERT: SS-RANK THERMAL SOURCE DETECTED (44.2°C)]Compatibility Match: 99.99% (Complementary Yin-Yang Resonance).
Nina ignored the floating words. She was staring straight at the middle of the room.
Crouched on top of a smashed metal bed was a monster straight out of a horror movie.
He was huge—at least three meters long. His fur was pure white and crackled with bright, golden lightning. You could see thick, dangerous muscles moving under his coat.
The Primordial White Tiger.
The giant beast let out a low, scary growl. His massive head snapped toward her. Two glowing golden eyes locked onto her tiny, bundled-up body.
Waves of boiling, forty-five-degree heat poured off the tiger, making the air ripple around him.
The tiger was in serious pain. His own heat was burning him alive, making him crazy and angry. He showed teeth the size of huge hunting knives, getting ready to jump and tear her apart.
Nina didn't scream. She didn't run away.
Her broken, freezing body only cared about one thing when she looked at this terrifying war god.
'He's a giant, fluffy, 45-degree space heater.'
"A rampaging apex predator that vaporizes anyone who touches his fur?" Nina muttered out loud, her voice ringing in the hot room. "Do you have any idea how much the city gas company charges for that kind of BTUs?"
The crazy White Tiger roared. The sound shook the floor. Then, he jumped.
He moved like a fast blur of white and gold, aiming right for her.
Nina dropped her mop.
She used her teeth to pull off her thick fuzzy mittens and spit them onto the floor.
As the giant jaws snapped toward her, Nina threw her arms wide open. She dove headfirst right into the thick, fluffy, burning fur around the tiger's neck.
She crashed into a wall of hard muscle and soft fur. She wrapped her freezing cold arms and legs around the giant tiger's neck and let out a long, happy sigh.
"Oh, sweet mother of central heating," Nina whispered, burying her freezing face into his burning fur as the tiger froze in total shock. "Don't you dare move, kitty."