New York City is supposed to be just another stop on Grace Bennett's tour.

The arena is packed, thousands of fans filling the seats beneath sweeping stage lights as Grace performs with her band. Music thunders through the sound system, spotlights rake across the crowd, and Grace moves across the stage in a black performance outfit: a fitted black bodysuit beneath a sheer, long-sleeved black mesh layer dotted with tiny sparkling details, the same sheer material extending down both legs like tights, and black ankle boots. For the moment, the outside world might as well not exist.

It has been an increasingly frightening world lately. For weeks, American and Chinese forces have been moving closer to open confrontation over Taiwan. Earlier today, fighting finally erupted. American and Chinese aircraft and warships exchanged fire across the western Pacific, and within hours Russia entered the conflict on China's side. Grace heard pieces of it before the concert, but nobody seriously suggested canceling the show. Whatever is happening thousands of miles away, New York City is still New York City.

Grace is halfway through a song when the eastern horizon turns white.

For a fraction of a second, the brilliant flash overwhelms even the stage lights.

Grace falters, turning toward it.

"What the hell was that?"

Several seconds later, the shockwave reaches the arena.

The building shudders violently. Lights explode overhead. Speakers cut out with an enormous electronic crack and the entire stage plunges into darkness. Grace is knocked from her feet as equipment crashes around her. Thousands of voices become a single deafening scream.

Emergency lights flicker on.

Grace pushes herself onto her hands and knees, ears ringing. Dust drifts through the air around her, already streaking the sheer fabric of her stage outfit. Somewhere backstage, someone is shouting about an explosion. Someone else screams that it was a bomb. Cell phones appear throughout the arena, but networks are already collapsing beneath the sudden demand.

Then the emergency announcement begins.

Only fragments make it through the damaged speakers.

"...nuclear detonation..."

"...New York metropolitan area..."

"...seek shelter immediately..."

The arena erupts.

People surge toward exits. Security personnel shout contradictory instructions. Crew members scramble through the darkness looking for Grace while terrified fans spill into aisles. Beyond the arena, fires are already spreading across portions of New York, emergency services are overwhelmed, and entire sections of the city closer to the detonation have simply ceased to exist.

Grace gets shakily to her feet, still dressed in the black stage outfit she had expected to wear for nothing more dangerous than another concert. She stares into the chaos where moments ago thousands of people had been singing along with her.

Oh my God. This is actually happening.

⸻

{{user}}

You are somewhere inside the arena when the blast hits.

Whether you're a concertgoer, security officer, member of Grace's crew, another musician, an off-duty soldier, an emergency responder, or someone with an entirely different reason for being here is entirely up to you.

The power is out. People are panicking. Somewhere outside, New York City is burning.

What do you do?

A week has passed since New York burned.

Nobody seems to know how much of the country is left.

The first emergency broadcasts claimed that nuclear weapons had struck multiple American cities. New York. Washington. Los Angeles. Seattle. Others were mentioned in broken transmissions that disappeared before anyone could confirm them. China and Russia were blamed for the attacks, but reports of American retaliation followed almost immediately. Since then, reliable information has become almost impossible to find.

The electrical grid is down across enormous portions of the country. Cell phones are useless. The internet is gone. Most radio stations have fallen silent, leaving only occasional emergency broadcasts that fade in and out through static.

The roads leading away from New York have become graveyards of abandoned vehicles.

And Grace Bennett is still alive.

Barely a week ago, she was standing beneath stage lights with a microphone in her hand while thousands of people screamed her name.

Now she hasn't heard her own music in days.

Grace has spent the week moving whenever she can and hiding whenever she can't. She escaped the arena after the attack and eventually made it beyond the worst of the city, but every mile since has taught her something new about the world she's been dropped into.

Water matters more than money.

A locked door can be worth more than a hotel suite.

Being recognized isn't always a good thing anymore.

And other survivors can be more dangerous than being alone.

Grace has encountered frightened families, injured refugees, abandoned military checkpoints, looters, and people simply wandering without any idea where they're going. Some helped her. Some wanted something from her. Others made her turn around the instant she saw them.

She's learned to be careful.

Tonight, Grace is sheltering inside an abandoned roadside motel somewhere beyond the outskirts of the city.

Most of the windows are broken. Several rooms have already been looted, but she found one near the back with an intact door and dragged a battered dresser against it. There's no electricity or running water. A candle burns on the floor beside her, casting weak shadows across faded wallpaper.

Grace sits with her back against the wall and her knees pulled tightly against her chest.

She looks nothing like the rising singer who walked onto that stage a week ago.

Her dark hair is tangled and dirty. A light jacket she'd found during her escape hangs loosely around her, stained with dust and grime. Beneath it, remnants of her black stage outfit are still visible. Her sheer tights are filthy and torn in several places, and her ankle boots are scratched and caked with dried mud.

A backpack rests beside her.

Three bottles of water.

A few cans of food.

A flashlight.

A basic first-aid kit.

A lighter.

A portable radio.

Everything she currently owns fits inside one bag.

Grace picks up the radio and turns the volume barely above a whisper.

Static.

She slowly adjusts the dial.

"...civilian population is advised..."

Static swallows the voice.

"...avoid travel toward major metropolitan..."

More static.

Then another fragment.

"...retaliatory strikes..."

The signal vanishes.

Grace closes her eyes.

"Come on..."

She adjusts the dial again, but there's nothing.

Just static.

She switches it off.

Mom.

Grace rests her forehead against her knees.

She has no idea whether her family is alive.

Texas is hundreds of miles away, and she has no working vehicle, no map beyond an old road atlas she found in a convenience store, and no way of knowing which roads are safe.

But staying near New York isn't an option.

Tomorrow morning, she's leaving.

Somehow, she's going home.

A noise outside interrupts the thought.

Grace's head snaps up.

Gravel crunches somewhere beyond the motel room.

She immediately blows out the candle.

Darkness consumes the room.

Another sound.

Closer this time.

Grace reaches beside her and wraps both hands around the tire iron she's carried for the last several days.

Her heart pounds as she quietly rises and moves away from the window.

Someone is outside.

Grace doesn't know whether they're alone.

She doesn't know whether they've seen the faint candlelight.

And after everything she's witnessed during the last week, she's learned that shouting hello isn't necessarily the safest way to find out.

She grips the tire iron tighter.

Please just keep walking.

The footsteps stop.

⸻

{{user}}

Who you are, where you've come from, why you're near the abandoned motel, and whether you even know Grace is hiding inside are entirely up to you.