Juno Dax tipped her cracked can over the last living plants in the world, and only three drops fell. She counted them onto the soil around her green shoots. Six pale stems, cupped in a scavenged tin. She had bred them for a year, coaxing them to survive the poisoned dust. If they lived, she could grow enough to feed the last people in the wastes. But the shoots drank more than she could give. The trickle in her can was nearly gone. "Not today," she told the shoots. "You don't get to wilt on me today." She shook the can. Rust flaked from the crack she had never fully sealed. The ration of clean water she'd hoarded was spent. Every open pool out here would kill her plants faster than thirst. She needed clean water, and she needed it before the sun climbed higher. Juno remembered the wreck on the flat. An old solar harvester squatted there, its panels shattered, its frame red with rust. Salvagers said machines like that once pulled moisture from the air and purified it. Most were dead. Maybe one part still worked. She wrapped the tin against her chest and walked. The heat pressed on her patched suit. When she reached the harvester, its broken panels threw sharp shadows across the dust. She climbed into its ribs and searched. Cracked hoses. A dry tank. Then, low in the frame, she found a sealed metal vault, polished and cold to the touch. Frost ringed its seam. Something inside still ran. "Please," she said, and turned the wheel on its face. The seal hissed. Cold air rolled out. Inside sat racked cylinders, each beaded with clean condensation, held frozen by the vault's dying power. Purified water. Enough to nurse her shoots for weeks. Juno laughed. She reached for the nearest cylinder. Then something shifted in the frost at the back of the vault. A beetle uncurled. Its shell was faceted like cut crystal, blue and sharp, wider than her two hands. It had nested in the cold, feeding on the frost that kept the water sealed. When she moved, it lifted its jeweled head toward her plants. Juno froze. The creature crawled onto the rack. It touched a green shoot with one leg, and the leaf it brushed went stiff and gray, crystals spreading across the stem. The beetle fed on living things too. And it had smelled her shoots. She grabbed one cylinder and jerked it free. The vault's cold began to fade without its seal. The beetle spread crystal wings and clung to her tin, drawn to the last green in the world. Juno backed out of the harvester with water in one arm and the beetle riding her plants. She had her clean water now. But the thing on her shoots would kill them faster than any drought, and it would not let go.

Juno reached the ration post with the beetle still clinging to her tin. The old stone stood ash-stained and cracked, its two spigots dry. She set the shoots on the shelf and stared at the crystal creature. Every hour it fed. Two of her six stems were gray now, stiff with frost that spread from where the beetle touched. She had her water. She would have nothing to pour it on. "Stop eating them," she told the beetle. Her voice cracked. The frost was killing her plants. But the frost was also the only thing she had ever seen survive out here without shelter. The beetle carried cold in its body. Her shoots died in cold. If she could learn how the beetle's frost worked, she might breed a crop that lived through it. She needed to study the beetle without losing more stems. A girl dropped from the roof of the post. Wiry, goggles pushed up, a salvage tool over her shoulder. Juno had seen her before, stripping the harvester past the dunes. Gael Ashby stayed clear of most people, and most people stayed clear of her. "That's a hive beetle," Gael said. She didn't come closer. "They nest in sealed cold. Touch a plant, it dies. You need to cage it, not carry it." "I can't lose more shoots," Juno said. "But I can't let it go either. It's the only cold thing alive out here." Gael looked at the gray stems, then at the beetle. "Cage it in something colder than a plant. It'll leave the leaf and go to the cold." She unslung her tool and pried a dented metal box off the post's lower wall. Frost still ringed its seam. "Ration coolant chamber. Dead, but the walls hold cold." Juno pulled on her patched gloves. She pressed her palm to the box. It bit like ice through the layered leather. She held her breath, gripped the beetle's crystal shell, and lifted. It clung to the third stem. The leaf snapped off gray in her hand. Then the beetle felt the box's cold and let go. It crawled inside on its own. Gael slammed the lid. Four stems left. Two dead in Juno's palm. But now the beetle sat sealed in the box, and Juno could open a slit and watch it feed on frost, safe from her plants. "Why keep it?" Gael asked. "Because it lives in cold that would kill everything I grow." Juno turned the box in her gloved hands. Through the slit, crystals bloomed and melted along the beetle's legs. "If I can find how it does that, I can put the trait in a seed." Gael studied her a moment. "Then you'll need power to keep that box cold. It won't hold long dead." She nodded once and climbed back up the wall. Juno looked at the box. The frost inside was already thinning.