"Were you involved in the shooting?" "No."

"Did you receive instructions from anyone?" "No."

"Who do you work for?" "No one. I'm fifteen."

"Why did you do it?" "I didn't."

"Your accomplice already confessed. Why haven't you?" "I don't have an accomplice."

"Why did you Inherit the Chill?" "Accident. I wouldn't have chosen to."

It was all true, but they must have known it felt like lies, and refused to believe it. The only reason I didn't lie was because there was so much on the line, but lying was my normal modus operandi. I felt naked and alone without a veneer of falsity. I was too scared, far more scared than before, simply because the pain was making me delirious. Everything felt so much more real now that I had been damaged. But what could I do? I couldn't lie. Lying would make the situation more complicated. Far too delicate. And if I was caught contradicting myself, I didn't know what would happen. I didn't know what I could tell them besides the truth which they didn't accept. But they didn't beat me or torture me, maybe in fear of killing me or reactivating my Inheritance, (now weakened in Inheritor's Valley), so eventually I just stopped talking.

"Were you involved in the shooting?" "..."

I spent hours in rooms with nurses and threatening men in suits. The nurses would read beeping machines next to me, the men in suits would glare at me intently, waiting for me to say something. There wasn't a lot they could do, though. They couldn't kill me or the Chill would be out of their hands. They couldn't hurt me, or the Chill might be powerful enough to break through the confines of Inheritor's Valley. They couldn't get a satisfactory answer out of me, and for once, I didn't lie to give them any satisfactory answer. It took every muscle in body, but I didn't lie. Being silent felt much nicer than telling the truth.

They didn't keep me in the hospital forever. The threat of my existence was effectively neutralized. So I was let go, to my apartment, the place I could call my own. The place South East said she would visit me at. But now she was dead. And I was in no condition to go visiting anyone, since my legs barely moved anymore. They didn't provide me a wheelchair or a mental framework with which to grapple with my new reality, so I ignored it, and laid in the bed of my apartment, staring at the ceiling.

Calling it an apartment is actually somewhat liberal; it's essentially a bed, a mini fridge, a microwave, a table, a bookshelf, and a chair, with about ten square feet of space. The close proximity of everything was useful though, since I wasn't doing a great deal of walking. I could reach the microwave and mini fridge while lying down in bed, since they were situated under the bed for some reason, and consume the microwave alfredo they gave me to be my recovery meal. They didn't provide plates or forks or anything, so I ate it out of the tin with my hands, burning myself in the process every time. But the burn was welcomed. At least it wasn't more of the Chill. Besides, with the Chill, the small quantities of it I could exert in Inheritor's Valley, the burns were easily reversible. My Inheritance seemed to automatically protect me. Whenever I was in some sort of danger - burned fingertips, for instance - it would react reflexively, immersing me in cold. Why it hadn't done this before, and instead gone crazy nearly killing me, was anyone's guess. Maybe I hadn't been in enough life-threatening danger.

An orderly remarked that I was healing unusually fast. She said this as she changed my sheets, as I had inadvertently gotten alfredo sauce over the last ones, despite my best efforts to lick it all of my fingers before I touched anything else.

"Because of the Chill?" I asked. I know I shouldn't have been so brazen as to advertise my power over her, but she didn't seem to mind. Besides, I was lying down on the ground. She was stripping the bed, so I couldn't be on it. And it wasn't like I wanted to sit up for extended periods of time.

She shrugged. "I don't know. It just lowers temperatures, yeah? Cold normally lengthens the recovery process, because it constricts the blood vessels." She folded the sheets. "It's strange, though. It must have something to do with your Inheritance, because I couldn't explain it otherwise."

I couldn't leave it at that. "Inexplicable?" I prompted.

"Mhm. Normally, forstbite of that degree - it was completely necrotic tissue, in your, um, down there -" I rolled my eyes- "it's impossible to recover. We would have to amputate. And amputating right there, it would kill you. Without an excretory system, you'd be unable to expel waste, and eventually..."

"Die."

"Yes. You would die."

There was a silence then.

"But I didn't."

"You didn't." She agreed.

"And you don't know why?"

"No." She shook her head.

More silence then, as she finished her task. She didn't bother setting me back up in the bed. She had been explicitly ordered not to touch me, just in case I was contagious or gave her frostbite or something. As she opened the door, she said "I'll wash these for you."

"Thank you." I said, and then before she could go, I added: "Do you think I'll recover completely?"

She didn't answer for a long time, and then slowly closed the door. "Good luck, Margo." She said.