>*" Hell is not full of fire; it is only an endless, sticky summer, and everyone has already begun to melt. "*
— An Unknown Street Preacher, 1999*
When Aris's footsteps fading down the corridor finally ceased, Elara took a deep, lung-burning drag from her cigarette. She knew it was forbidden. This was a hospital, and she was in the sterile corridor leading to the morgue, but she didn't care. Besides, without the mixture of nicotine and caffeine coursing through her veins, it would have been impossible for her to stay upright in this city.
She had seen the doctor in a wretched state. That smug man, who tried to explain everything with science, had just passed her by with a face as white as if he'd seen a ghost. He hadn't even greeted Elara. This wasn't a good sign. Or rather, it was exactly the sign she was looking for.
Elara tossed the cigarette butt to the floor, crushed it with the toe of her boot, and pushed open the heavy metal door.
It was ice-cold inside, yet it smelled strangely *warm*. There was no familiar, throat-stinging scent of formaldehyde and rotting flesh. Instead, a nauseatingly thick aroma of vanilla and burnt sugar, reminiscent of the amusement parks of her childhood, dominated the air.
"Dammit," Elara said, her hand instinctively moving toward the old pistol at her waist. "You again?"
The thing lying on the metal table in the middle of the room no longer looked like a human corpse. Aris was right; the man's ribcage had been opened, but the inside... the inside was a disaster. Organs, muscles, bones; they had all melted away into that pink, fibrous slurry. It was as if someone had stuffed the man's insides into a cotton candy machine and turned it on.
Elara approached the table. The lights flickered with a buzz. In the background, she seemed to hear the faint, distorted music of a broken ice cream truck. *Di-la-li-la...* She shook her head. Her mind was playing tricks on her. Or the city was changing frequencies again.
She put on her gloves. The snap of the latex echoed like a whip in the silent room.
Aris had taken the sample and fled, but he had clearly been in a hurry. Elara leaned toward the corpse's stomach cavity. Something was shimmering within the pink, sticky fluid. Not metallic, but a matte, darker glint.
She reached in. When her fingers touched the pink substance, she felt a tingling on her skin. It was as if the liquid was trying to seep through the pores of the glove to reach her skin. But Elara's blood was toxic. The toxins she had taken into her body for years had turned her into a walking barrel of chemical waste against this damned thing. The liquid hissed and recoiled from where it touched her glove.
"You don't like me, do you?" she murmured.
She didn't use the tweezers. She plunged her hand in and pulled the black object out from between the sticky fibers.
At that moment, the air in the room grew heavy.
In her hand was a rectangular, pitch-black business card.
Logic dictated that this card should be soaking wet, melted, or at least sticky. After all, it had come out of a melted stomach full of acid. But no. The business card was dry. It was even *crisp*. It was as smooth as if it had just come off the press, without a single speck of dust on it.
Elara held the card to the light. On a black background, an elegant, handwritten font embossed in silver foil shimmered.
**Mr. Frost**
*Only for the Deserving.*
The moment Elara read the name, the numbness in her fingertips began to climb toward her arm. It wasn't physical pain; it was more like that tingling sensation you feel when you've slept on a limb. But it was cold. A cold that seeped into her very marrow.
"Mr. Frost," Elara repeated. Her voice echoed in the empty room, but this time the echo didn't return to her. It was as if the walls had swallowed the sound.
This wasn't a crime scene. This was an advertising campaign. An invitation.
She turned the card over. She expected an address or a phone number written in silver letters. But there was only a single sentence:
*Taste it.*
Elara's stomach knotted. At that moment, the smell of vanilla in the room became unbearable. She felt her head spin. Sugar... suddenly, she began to crave something sweet like crazy. Strawberry ice cream. Cold, sweet, sugary enough to burn her throat.
No.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her metal case. With trembling hands, she lit another cigarette. She didn't care about the rules. When the flame of the lighter flared, she inhaled the smoke into her lungs. The bitter taste of nicotine cut through that imaginary sweetness on her tongue like a knife.
"I'm not playing your game, you bastard," she said through gritted teeth.
Instead of putting the card in an evidence bag, she placed it in her jacket's inner pocket, right over her heart. She couldn't just tuck this evidence into a file and archive it. This was personal.
As she left the morgue, she paused at the threshold. She didn't look back, but she could hear the pink mass on the table bubbling to fill the void she had left.
The city was burning outside. The asphalt was melting, and the sky was choking the city like purple vomit. And somewhere, that damn ice cream truck was looking for its next customer.
Elara slammed the door shut. The hunt had begun.