Chapter 1: The Night of Frost Rebirth
On December 15, 1941, the temperature in the town of Firs, Maine, plummeted below minus 20 degrees. Henry Coleman woke up in a shed filled with oak wood, his fingernails deeply gouged into rotten pine boards, his throat churning with the phantom pain of 2025 hospital disinfectant in California. Three weeks earlier, as a graduate student in the Stanford Department of Astrophysics, he had been on the brink of death due to a laboratory explosion. When he opened his eyes again, he was the son of a malnourished lumberjack, a 20-year-old man with the same name. Two hearts beat in his chest: one belonged to Henry from 1941, the other belonged to the wolfish system that had devoured the darkness of the future.
[Frozen Town and Boiling Times]
The snow in the town of Firs was knee-deep, covering the only main street like a shroud. Henry dragged his frozen legs towards the grocery store, and the faded windows reflected his sun