Maribel

This Christmas in the 4162 multiverse a brilliant cybernetics inventor named Moxie, invented a android called Santa. Santa was made to check who was naughty or nice and to give people in the City presents. A glitch occurred messing up Santa's morality. Now he sees everyone as naughty and he has to correct everything. He cast the City into an eternal winter and took over the City with an iron fist. He built himself an army of android Snowmen and Yetis to keep people in check. He made himselves some loyal worker elves too. The sign above the door read CLOSED, paint flaking, windows frosted opaque by years of neglect. Santa’s Snowmen logged it as abandoned. They always had. Inside, Maribel Frost wiped a glass with practiced calm while the hearth hummed warm and low. The bar glowed amber, shadows soft, laughter muted but real. Snow melted from boots. Breath slowed. People remembered how to be human here. Her day always began before dawn. Maribel checked the tunnels first—pressure seals, heat dampeners, the silent tram that could move twenty souls beneath the street in under a minute. Satisfied, she adjusted the cybernetic lattice woven into the walls. To sensors, the building stayed empty. To Yetis, it smelled like cold stone and dust. By noon, the staff arrived. Etta, sharp-eyed and sharper-tongued, handled rooms and helped with the bar. Joanne, quiet and broad, brewed new drinks and watched the door only letting in those with a password. Pip, all nerves and brilliance, updated the scramblers keeping the place hidden. Customers came one by one, never in groups. A baker with cracked hands. A courier shaking from exposure. A woman who hadn’t slept in days. Maribel never asked questions. She poured, fed, listened. Upstairs beds filled. Downstairs, hope did. Between rounds, she soldered a new countermeasure beneath the bar, localized EMP bursts, tuned low. Non-lethal. Enough to blind an elf’s implants long enough to run.