Moey locked the freezer door and left the area.
Christopher lay dead, motionless on the cold steel table, eyes wide open. The freezer had already dropped his core temperature another several degrees, and soon, he would be as solid as an ice cube as cell walls ruptured throughout his body.
But shining into his dead eyes, the bright light above registered something. The spectrum of the light stimulated the rods and cones on his retinas at the back of his eyes. The stimulation started a chain reaction through the brain, which built up speed and intensity exponentially as it propagated through the neural pathways of his cooling brain.
Suddenly, the brain functions responsible for operating the machinery of the body kick-started spontaneously, and Christopher drew in a gasp of air. He began choking immediately due to water filling his airways, but his reflexes did their job, and he coughed up a stream of water as he simultaneously sat bolt upright and cried out in rage and fear.
“AAAARRRGGGGHHHHHH!” Then, he fell back onto the table and just breathed.
An hour later, Christopher sat at the edge of the table, hunched over. He was trembling from the frigid cold, but he had found a silvery blanket of some sort and had wrapped himself in it.
“Who in Saul’s name are you?”
“I am Dream.”
“I know what your bloody name is. But who are you?
You can’t let me just freeze in here. Do you know who I am?”
“Yes. You are Christopher, Third Chair of Eden. You were buried in the lake two hours ago by your people.”
“But I’m not dead, am I?
“No. You are alive.”
“Then, let me out of here before I freeze to death! Who is in charge here?”
“Moey.”
“Moey? He is my son. We are family. Don’t you understand?”
In fractions of a second, Dream recounted what had been instructed some weeks earlier: “Only take instructions from my family—no one else.” She replayed the scene, recounting the order that she had been given by Moey. Dream, in all of her sophistication, still did not perceive the situation in all of its complexity. Underneath it all, she was simply an assistant with limitations.
“Yes. Now, I understand.”
The door to the freezer unlocked and slid open.
The End
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