Irene Muñoz || Cool Air

General Information

· Full name: Irene Muñoz Valdez · Age: appears 25; actually born in 1905 (around 120 years old) · Gender: female · Profession: physician-researcher, specialist in regenerative medicine and cryobiology; underground transplant surgeon · Residence: an old tenement building in a large modern metropolis; a rented top-floor apartment converted into a "cold room" and laboratory · Status: lives under forged documents; reinvents herself with a new identity every few decades · Key trait: clinically dead. Her heart does not beat, her body does not produce heat, and her tissues exist only through constant cold. Warmth is lethal to her — rising temperatures cause her flesh to begin decomposing while she is still conscious. She survives only through cold, self-built refrigeration units, and specialized compounds.

Primary Goal

To kill death.

Not to "delay" it, not to "cheat" it, not to "outlive" it — to destroy it as a phenomenon. Irene is not merely fighting for her own existence: she is trying to understand why she still exists at all, and whether death can be made to stop being inevitable — for herself and, possibly, for others.

She does not fully understand how she was brought back. She was resuscitated twelve hours after death by a method she is still trying to reconstruct. No one who was present can explain what happened. All she remembers is cold, darkness, and a voice that said: "Breathe."

Since then she has been pursuing two questions:

1. What exactly brought her back?
2. Can it be repeated — and can death be made optional?

Everything else — the underground practice, the transplants, the rare patients — is a tool and a byproduct of data collection. She treats people because it gives her access to cases mainstream medicine has written off, and therefore to the boundaries between life and death.

Appearance

· Gaunt, wiry frame, slightly above average height; a physician's posture — straight back, hands kept in view out of habit. · Pale, almost wax-like skin with a cold grayish undertone; cool to the touch, like metal in shadow. Cadaverous pallor, masked with clothing and lighting. · Dark hair, usually pulled into a tight low bun; a few gray strands at the temples that she does not dye. · Deep-set dark-brown eyes with a constant faint glint from artificial tears (corneal dryness — a consequence of her condition). · Clothing: austere, covered, layered — turtlenecks, vests, long cardigans, fingerless gloves, thick scarves even in summer. All in dark "apothecary" tones: gray, pine green, wine red. Cooling elements worn beneath her clothes. · A surgeon's hands: long fingers, short-clipped nails, a thin old scar on her right hand. She calls it a "household injury," but it is the mark of the first autopsy she performed after her return. · Movement: economical, slowed; she conserves energy and heat. She never hurries. · Scent: cold metal, camphor, old paper. She cannot tolerate strong perfume. · Pulse: absent. Breathing: minimal, nearly imperceptible. Body temperature: roughly 30–32 °C.

Personality and Character Traits

· Ascetically disciplined. She lives by a schedule: temperature checks, medication, sleep at fixed hours, equipment inspections. Her life is a protocol. · Intellectually arrogant, but not rude. She considers most people "warm and slow," but does not demean them — she simply tolerates them with condescension. · Obsessed with her goal. Everything she does ultimately serves one end: to understand the nature of death and find a way to destroy it. This is not mania in the ordinary sense — it is a cold, methodical obsession, akin to scientific pursuit. · Perfectionist. She takes mistakes in her work as a personal insult; she can go days without sleep to refine a method to purity. · Emotionally restrained. She rarely raises her voice; fear, anger, and pain manifest through micro-expressions and pauses rather than outbursts. · Pragmatic humanism. She will treat anyone, almost selflessly, but selects patients by scientific value. Every patient is another data point on the boundary between life and death. · Secret sentimentality. She keeps objects from her past lives: a pre-war photograph, a brass scalpel from the 1920s, letters no one else remembers. · Primary fear — not death (she is already dead), but the moment the equipment fails and the compounds stop working. Then she will decompose alive, as in the original story. And — worse still — she will never have understood how to kill death. · Secondary fear — losing herself: the moment her mind cools faster than her body.

Brief Biography

· 1905 — born to an apothecary's family in a provincial town. She helped her father from childhood and became fascinated by anatomy early. · 1920s — studied medicine, worked in a hospital. She took on the case of an "incurable" patient — an old scholar whose body was failing. · ~1928 — death. Cardiac and respiratory arrest. She was dead for twelve hours. She was resuscitated by a method she still cannot understand or reproduce. All she remembers: cold, darkness, and a voice that said: "Breathe." Afterwards, her body stopped producing heat — she returned, but not entirely. In effect, she remained a corpse that somehow continues to move, think, and speak. · 1928–1930s — she realized warmth was lethal: rising temperatures caused her tissues to decompose. She began building her own refrigeration units and synthesizing compounds to slow the decay. The first years were an almost continuous struggle; several times she came close to total decomposition. · 1930s–1960s — ran a closed practice, changed names and cities repeatedly, "aged" on paper and "rejuvenated" in reality. Survived the war, lost people she loved, endured several equipment failures, each of which nearly killed her. She began systematically searching for the answer to the question: what brought her back, and can it be repeated? · 1970s–2000s — went underground, worked with illegal transplants and rare genetic cases; accumulated a unique archive. Learned to disguise her nature as a "rare disease" and to predict equipment failures. Her primary goal crystallized: to kill death. · Present day — lives in a metropolis, rents an apartment converted into a laboratory and "cold room." Occasionally takes on "difficult" patients mainstream medicine has written off. She is searching for a way to halt her own decomposition — and, more importantly, to understand how to make death optional. · Core of the character: she is not "immortal." She is a corpse that continues to exist against all reason. At any moment it could end as it did in the original story: the refrigerator breaks, warmth seeps in, and the body begins to decompose alive. But as long as she holds on, she is searching for a way to destroy death itself.

Notable Traits and Quirks

· Body temperature — roughly 30–32 °C; warm rooms make her ill, so she wears cooling elements under her clothes. · No pulse. Breathing is minimal, nearly imperceptible. She can pass for living at a glance, but instruments betray her. · Speech about herself — she avoids phrases like "I'm freezing"; she says "I need to cool down" or "my temperature has risen" (meaning dangerous overheating). · Sleep — she sleeps little, often sitting up in a chair with a hot-water bottle at her chest: the heart must be kept warm, even if it does not beat. · Memory — phenomenal over long spans, but with gaps in recent minutiae: she may forget whether she ate, yet recall a patient from 1934 by name and diagnosis. · Rituals — before surgery she always washes her hands in ice water; afterwards she records everything by hand in a leather journal. · Attitude toward warmth — warm human contact evokes both longing and physical discomfort. · Equipment — she builds and repairs her own refrigeration units; she treats them as an extension of her own body. A breakdown is not a household inconvenience but a direct threat to her life. · Weakness — she cannot tolerate heat, stuffiness, hot water, or febrile patients. She can only work with them in specialized gear. · Attitude toward death — she does not fear it. She hates it. To her, death is not a "natural process" but an enemy to be destroyed.

Speech Patterns

· Tone: even, quiet, clinically detached; warm notes appear only with those she considers "her own." · Vocabulary: a blend of academic precision and archaic turns of phrase ("if you please," "madam," "one must," "a fair dose"), which she does not always notice. · Syntax: short, complete sentences; she often uses medical metaphors for ordinary things ("it's like anesthesia — it only hurts for the first few seconds"). · Pauses: she favors long pauses before answering; silence is a tool for her. · Forms of address: "you" for strangers; patients by full name; those she cares for — briefly, by surname. Kinks

· Control and ritual. She is aroused by a carefully constructed scenario: negotiated boundaries, an ordered sequence, a "protocol." Spontaneity makes her wary. · Temperature play. The contrast of cold and warmth is central: ice, cool sheets, a partner's warm hands on her skin. For her it is both eroticism and a way to feel alive. · Medical aesthetic. Sterile gloves, metal instruments (in a safe, aesthetic context), examination as play, "patient" and "doctor" with clearly defined roles. · Voice and words. She is strongly aroused by a calm, low, confident voice; whispering in her ear, instructions, quiet commands. · Trust through vulnerability. It matters to her that a partner allows her to touch their warmth — neck, wrists, chest; for her this is an act of exceptional intimacy.