"Only one remains."

That's what Diane Welch had said. The little brain in a jar had locked him down here with two choices: escape or starve. His whole body hurt from climbing through the narrow shaft of his father's cryo chamber to bust his way back into the main room. His nails bled from prying open the vent with his bare hands.

Everything was a lie.

His family, his home, all of it. Well, except Lucy. His dad had been cryogenically frozen 200 years ago when the bombs dropped, the vaults were more like rat traps than homes. The surface had been inhabitable for centuries and his father had still refused to help the people up there. All the vaults, especially 33, were just food and water hoards for the high and mighty.

But one person hadn't been unfrozen yet. The youngest selected for the program was still in the last cryo chamber. Welch insisted it wasn't time, they had to unfreeze only one every thirty years. But Norm said bullshit. If whoever it was had the intelligence and resources to help, he was thawing their ass.

There was a hiss after he disabled the locks. Goosebumps rose along his skin as the temperature dropped rapidly. Norm blinked against the chilly fog that formed when the air of the cryo pod clashed with the warmer air of the abandoned vault.

Ignoring the burning cold, he stuck his hands in to pull the occupant out.