They all shot to their feet and rushed into the living room, jumping on the huge sofa as if the floor was liquid lava. Logan grabbed the remote like it was a lifeline and turned on the television, their only open window with a view to the outside world.

He zapped through the channels in a hurry, his fingers fumbling over the buttons of the remote.

"Wait. Go back." Carter gestured with his hand, a truly nerve-racking move.

Logan obeyed, and the same robotic-like voice Maddy had listened to on the news the previous morning filled the living room. "There seem to be many rebellious teenagers around the world who refuse to get vaccinated..."

"Turn the volume up, Logs," ordered Mia, biting her manicured nails.

"... Harper Max to speak with us." A slim, gorgeous woman with golden brown hair appeared on the screen, wearing an elegant costume.

"That's..." the words wouldn't come out of Maddy's mouth.

"... the assistant director of FROST. The woman who wants to speak to our parents," Carter completed her sentence.

"Listen, they're interviewing her." Sia leaned closer to the TV.

"Investigation is still ongoing, as I said," said the woman, Harper Max. "We haven't stopped conducting researches and examining the symptoms of the virus. You must already know that the symptoms of the new disease are generally mild during the first stage of infection. A sore throat, a blocked or runny nose, a raised temperature, headaches, coughs, sneezing... That's why it is so hard to distinguish between a simple cold and the virus, and that's why we've said before that it is an extremely sneaky virus. But the second stage of infection is a different story. In the second stage, the real symptoms start showing. The host's limbs begin to numb from the sudden drop in their body temperature, their skin breaks out in a rash, there's frostbites and burns on their complexion similar to those caused by ice cubes for example, they start spitting blood and so on. The third stage is fatal. It's the stage when the host's blood starts freezing. We're carrying out various experiments in search of a cure, but for now we'll have to settle down for the vaccine."

"Yeah, anything new? They're literally repeating the same things over and over again for months now," groaned Mia, looking frustrated.

It was true. Ever since the outbreak of the virus, there had been little progress made regarding the collected data about the new disease.

And that left people repeating the same things over and over again.

Maddy remembered the first days after the escape of the virus from the laboratory in London. Those days seemed so distant now, yet also so near, like it was just yesterday. Those days were days of darkness, days of mourning, days dressed in funeral black.

Those days were days of fear.

It was madness back then, pure chaos and panic, all hells breaking loose. So many people had perished in the first wave, it was a massacre. Maddy had been scared. The city where she was born and raised, the city of rain, London, was now known as "the city zero" -kind of like "patient zero".

As weeks passed, FROST was set up. The name of the association seemed to match the virus perfectly, and the scientists working for FROST soon revealed their gathered data on the possible treatments, diagnoses, symptoms, and risks or likely ways of contagion.

Apparently, the virus could be passed from one person to another only through bites or scratches caused by a host.

I mean, who the hell would just lunge at you and bite you on the street? had thought Maddy back then. And so had everyone, pretty much.

But no. Of course not.

Because, as it turned out, those who survived the first and second stage of infection, lost their minds in the third. Their blood started freezing, and they went mad in the process.

It was terrible. Their body was full of blisters, rashes, burns, pus coming out of their cracked skin... It was scary, coming straight out of a horror movie. Being in the third stage meant entering the road to hell, lungs making a rattling sound, like the rusty engine of an old car that can't function anymore.

And then the host's brain got diseased. Fully and completely diseased. The host started seeing things, having hallucinations, feeling their skin getting slowly and torturously ripped off of their bones. Sometimes they'd do it themselves, just to make it faster, quicker.

And, by the way, they did lunge at people in the street and bite them out of the blue. Their brain was half-eaten by the virus, they were basically crazy in every way possible.

It was like a zombie apocalypse.

Maddy had been taught that war was scary, but this was worse, scarier. War tore families apart when they were fighting tooth and nail to stay together, but this was different. This made parents willfully kick their own children out of their home, too afraid that they would eat them alive in their sleep once they reached the third stage of infection.

Hospitals didn't accept third stage hosts. But the dark narrow alleys and passages did. The diseased were lurking in every corner of the streets, like bloodthirsty vampires waiting on their next prey.

No strict measures of a quarantine were announced; it was needless. People were too afraid to go out anyways.

Including Maddy's mother, who looked pale as a ghost whenever her daughter went out, even if it was just to the supermarket nearby.

One day, Maddy got an email, the notification ringing across her empty room. It was a late summer night, but the rain was pouring outside, knocking on her window.

Back then, it didn't strike her as unusual -it was always raining in London. The mornings and middays were still warm, so nobody had really noticed the drop in temperature. The afternoons were a bit chillier though, but who on earth would complain about a little coolness in the middle of summer? And then the nights... the nights were stone-cold. It was like living in a desert: as the day went on to its end and the night settled, the thermometer gradually hit bottom.

With the revelation that the change in the weather conditions was caused by the virus came questions. How was that even possible? But those questions remained unanswered, an unsolvable mystery.

When Maddy's eyes got fixed on the screen of her laptop back then, she had blinked twice, rubbed her eyes and looked again at the email she had just received, not quite believing it.

In the midst of it all, she had won a scholarship? It seemed too surreal at the time, being accepted to study in her new private high school, as if the world wasn't falling apart.

Wait. Schools will open? the thought had struck her so suddenly she had broken into cold sweat.

And they did. Schools opened in September just as planned, despite the protests and the disagreement stemming from the teachers, parents and students.

Maddy could never forget that one day a student collapsed in the middle of the corridor, right in front of her. The boy fell on his knees, one hand pressed against the wall, the other on his chest as he breathed abnormally. He was coughing blood.

All over her shoes.

An ambulance had transferred him to the hospital, and Maddy never saw him again. When she had gone to the bathroom to wash up her bloodstained shoes, she had ended up throwing up in the toilet.

Incidents like that happened often in her school, but no student who had reached the third stage of infection ever showed up in class. The appearance of the heavily diseased made it too obvious for the guards of the school to ever let an infected student in.

The only students who might have been hosts of the virus but were allowed inside the school building were those in the first stage, or the beginning of the second. It was the type of stage where no one could really tell whether you were infected or not, and it was the type of stage during which the host wasn't dangerous, their mind was still intact, sane.

"Right," nodded the lady interviewer on the enormous screen of the television, pulling Maddy back from her flashbacks from the past. "The vaccine was discovered about a month ago, and is now mandatory in schools. Why did you decide to vaccinate the young first?"

"The young are the future, and the future is our priority. Humanity is being threatened every day, since patient zero up to now, when there are over millions of people infected globally. We have to make sure that the young are healthy because only they can save the human kind."

Maddy snorted. How dramatic, she thought. That woman was so good with words, wasn't she? She was talking articulately, like a skillful leader or an inspirational speaker, but in reality she was nothing more than the limb of a worldwide organisation, their puppet.

Or was she the actual puppeteer?

"And can you guarantee the safety of the vaccine? There have been cases of students ending up in the hospital after getting vaccinated. What do you have to say about that?"

"I can assure you the side effects of our vaccine are absolutely harmless. The reported cases of students ending up in intensive care had nothing to do with their vaccination, as the tests have shown. Remember that everything that happens is for the best."

"Is she fucking serious?" Logan looked so done when he spoke, and so did the rest of them.

"That bitch... They're covering everything up," noticed Mia, gnashing her teeth.

"The people have dubbed the virus 'The Glacier'," continued the interviewer. "What do you think about this new name that has been given to the disease?"

Maddy frowned. It was her first time hearing this.

"I'd say it's a pretty accurate name to call the virus, since it turns the blood into a river of ice, a miniature of a glacier, you could say. However, glaciers are slowly moving masses of ice, while this is definitely not a slowly moving disease."

"Very well spoken. Now, tell us a bit about the origines of this virus. It's a man-made virus that escaped a laboratory in London about six months ago. There are recent rumours of this laboratory belonging to FROST from the very beginning. Can you confirm those rumours?"

What the...? Maddy's lips separated in shock. She never really turned on her TV back in London, too tired of listening to the same people saying the same things again and again, but now she regretted it, now that her ears witnessed such conspiracies being revealed.

"It's true," admitted Harper Max, her tone confident and unworried. Sia covered her mouth with both hands. Maddy cringed back. Everybody drew a sharp breath. "The laboratory belonged and still belongs to FROST. The virus was elaborated in detail for years as a plan to fight Global Warming. As you must have noticed, the virus is more than just a disease, a threat to the human kind; it has the ability to alternate the weather conditions through a rapid drop in temperature. When we were working on this plan, our goal wasn't to create a virus, but rather a formula in the form of a powder that would be released into the atmosphere and decrease the temperature."

"What the...?" breathed Logan.

"And you're telling us now?" shouted Mia, throwing her hands in the air.

"That was a huge revelation, Mrs. Max..." Even the colourless voice of the lady interviewer had attained a hint of shock in it. "Why are you revealing this piece of information only now, after an entire year?"

"That's an absolutely understandable and expected question. The information related to this project against Global Warming was highly classified, legally confidential, and a leak of this information could lead to conflict and debate among the people, eco-activists for example. As you understand, the situation would have just become worse, and the people were already panicking enough, so we decided to keep it top secret. But with everything going on, we have come to believe that honesty is the best policy and the only road to unity. There has to be trust between the people and our medical community."

So. Damn. Hypocritical.

"Absolutely, thank you for sharing this information with us. Let's move on to the next question. You must have heard of the fact many students all around the world are refusing to get vaccinated, and some of them are even missing, perhaps running in hiding. What measures are you going to take in reference to this?"

Maddy held her breath.

Here goes nothing.

The woman's features tightened in a stern expression. "Everyone is going to get vaccinated," she stated. There was no question mark in her steel-made voice. "It's a necessary precaution against the virus and it is for the greater good. We will not tolerate any teenager rebels getting in the way of the world's safety."

Maddy felt injustice eating her up. Who was that woman to decide for her life and for what substances she would have injected in her body? It wasn't her fault she saw one her classmates nearly dying.

Or actually dying.

"I personally have talked to many parents in London whose children refused to get vaccinated," continued Harper Max, her voice a bit more mellow this time. Maddy chewed on her bottom lip anxiously. "Of course there are other colleagues all around the world who do the same as well. We are trying to educate these people on the positive impact their children could have on society's future through getting vaccinated. Most parents have the maturity of an adult to understand the urgency of the situation and have granted us permission to vaccinate their children as soon as we can."

Maddy's mind ran back to her house in London, where her mum must have been crying in her bedroom for her. A lump rose in her throat. She cowered back, starting to doubt her own self, her own decisions. That woman, Harper Max, had a logical explanation for everything. What if she was just exaggerating when there was nothing to be afraid of? Was she being paranoid? Was she being selfish and overreacting?

"As for those students who are in hiding, as you mentioned, we will find them, sooner or later, and vaccinate them."

Why did that sound like a threat?

"After all," added the woman with a smile that made Maddy cringe, "-their parents seem to be very eager to help us track them."

Then the first window broke, and, like a poorly edited movie, there was no sound of breaking glass.

Just a raining down of fragments sharp enough to cut on contact.