The Fire They Cheered For

They stood on rooftops and highways, on hillsides and balconies, their faces bathed in the warm, pulsing glow of the city on fire.

It was a spectacle — flames dancing against the night like some holy ritual. Black smoke billowed upward, stretching toward the stars, blotting them out one by one. Skyscrapers cracked and fell like titans in slow motion. Storefronts exploded in showers of glass and light. Sirens wailed for the last time before fading into silence. What was once the crown jewel of a nation was now a funeral pyre.

And still, they cheered.

Some raised fists in triumph. Others wept openly, overcome by the weight of their supposed liberation. They had been told for years that this was necessary — that civilization itself was the cage, and fire would set them free. They believed it.

No one thought to ask what came next.

They had shouted down reason. Silenced the dissenters. Burned the books. Dismantled the systems. All in the name of progress, equity, and justice. But justice had turned blind not to prejudice — but to consequence. And now, standing before a horizon of flame, they mistook destruction for deliverance.

Some knelt, tears streaking their soot-covered faces, mouthing words like rebirth and revolution.

But there was no plan for after.

The supply chains were gone. The power grid failed days ago. The food would rot. The water was already tainted. Emergency services had fled or been dismantled. The old laws had been defunded, and the new ones had yet to be written — if they ever would be.

They had no leaders, only influencers. No builders, only ideologues.

And yet they stood transfixed, hypnotized by their own undoing. Children clutched the hands of parents who had just unknowingly sentenced them to starvation. College students took selfies with the inferno behind them, never imagining their phones would soon be useless relics. The air was thick with ash and delusion.

It felt like victory.

But it was the last illusion.

Tomorrow would bring hunger. Chaos. Violence. Betrayal. Neighbors would become enemies. Families would fracture. The smoke would clear, and the ruins beneath would not be fertile ground for some utopia — only the cracked skeleton of a world they had burned and could never rebuild.

They would look back one day, if they survived, and wonder how they didn’t see it.

How they stood there, watching their freedoms smolder, cheering like fools at the death of their own future.

But for now, they just stared.

And the fires raged on.

 

Nature Calling

The mountains this morning are shrouded in a soft mist, low clouds drifting like forgotten thoughts across their shoulders. A cold, biting wind stirs the trees—remnants of winter unwilling to release their hold. I think I remember this kind of wind. It used to wake me with purpose, but now it just lingers in the bones, like a name I can’t quite bring back.

There was a squirrel once—I called him Pesky. I think he used to come by early, just before six-thirty, looking for scraps on the back deck. Or maybe that was last year… or the year before. He came often, I’m sure of that. The birds still call out in the early hours—songbirds I once knew by name, now just notes I try to follow in my mind. And the big Stellar Jay—I still recognize his rough caw. That hasn’t left me yet.

A half-moon hung in the sky this morning, pale and distant, like a slice of lemon slowly disappearing into tea. The clouds were parting by then, softening into puffed gray cotton above the ridgeline. I watched them dissolve as the light grew, and I remembered—at least for a moment—what it meant to greet the day with clarity.

I had plans. I think they were important. But a phone call came—someone kind, familiar maybe—and just like that, the day turned. I had to go into town, though I couldn’t remember why until I was already there. Something about film. Yes, film. I still take pictures. At least, I used to. I remember the joy of holding the camera to my eye, of capturing a moment I didn’t want to forget. That part is fading too.

Some of the photos were too dark, but I used to fix them—adjust shadows, lighten faces, erase distractions. Cropping out the clutter helped me see the heart of things. Maybe I should do that with my mind too. Trim away what no longer serves. Hold onto what still feels like mine.

At the nursery, I found rose plants on sale. That felt familiar—roses. I have a few already on the hill. Dwarf ones, I think. And a carnation too, in a rich pink that I couldn’t leave behind. They say it will do well up here, and I hope they’re right. I want to remember the smell of flowers. I want something to grow, even as so much of me feels like it's slowly receding.

I keep thinking I’ll terrace the hill. Bricks? Railroad ties? I’m not sure. I flip through old books sometimes, but the words blur now, and I have to reread pages more than once. Still, I try. I always tried. I was the thinker and the doer, the dreamer and the hands in the dirt. Maybe I still am, in some small way.

Tonight, I’m home again. That, at least, is real. My hands are sore, my body tired. But I am grateful. Grateful for the cold wind, for the faint call of birds, for the stubborn rose, and for the memory—however fleeting—of what it felt like to know the world and to be known by it in return.

Nature is still speaking. She is the last thread I hold onto, the last voice I recognize when others grow faint. And as long as I can feel the wind and hear the trees, I know I’m still here.

At least for now. Or am I?

 

Man from the Dark

They called him Solace — a name soaked in irony.

There was no comfort in him. No warmth. Just the icy precision of a man who had watched the world die and refused to die with it.

He once had a real name, a life, maybe even a family — all swallowed by the flames when the cities burned and the mobs danced around the fires like children playing with matches. He had fought for the country, bled for it overseas, only to return to a homeland poisoned from within by utopian lies and self-righteous destruction.

When the institutions fell — courts, police, power grids — it was the fanatics who rose. Not with compassion or truth, but with vengeance disguised as virtue. They promised equity but delivered obedience. Promised freedom but gave chains.

Solace had seen enough.

He vanished into the tunnels beneath the ruined cities — deep into the bowels of the failed experiment that had once been America. Down there, among the steam pipes and broken rails, he found others like him: men and women who had not surrendered their minds, who still knew right from wrong, truth from manipulation. Veterans. Outcasts. Disillusioned cops. Tech saboteurs. Young fighters born into the ruins, raised on stories of what once was.

Solace became their leader not by vote, but by sheer presence. His command was calm, quiet, lethal. He spoke little. But when he did, people listened — because he meant every word.

“They broke the surface,” he once growled, running a gloved hand across a decayed subway map.
“Now we take it back.”

In the tunnels, he built an army. Not vast — but disciplined, sharp, unshakable. They trained by firelight, repurposed ancient tech, crafted crude weapons from forgotten machinery. He drilled them in silence, ambush tactics, and sabotage. He didn’t preach politics — he taught survival, taught purpose.

He reminded them that the enemy wasn’t just the tyrants above — but the apathy that allowed them to rise. The people who cheered as the Constitution burned. The mobs who called it progress when statues fell and law vanished.

And when the day came to move — when the first assault teams breached a comms tower above — it wasn’t vengeance that Solace sought.

It was restoration.

Not of the old world exactly… but of something earned. Something honest. Something that remembered that freedom isn’t given, it’s protected. And sometimes... retaken by force.

 

After the roaring fires

The fires raged long into the night. The crowd stood transfixed, eyes wide, some with tears — not of sorrow, but elation. They thought they were watching their enemies fall. Billionaires, bankers, bureaucrats. They believed justice had finally arrived in flame and ash.

But justice never came.

And neither did tomorrow.

In the days that followed, the celebratory screams faded into a gnawing silence. The kind of silence that sinks into bone, that makes people whisper even when there’s no one around. Power stations, destroyed. Substations looted. Electricity vanished. With it, so did refrigeration, the internet, the news. Cold food became rare. Hot water, a memory.

The stores were emptied in two days. Then the pharmacies. Then the homes.

And then came the first kill — over a bottle of insulin.

In the darkened corners of the once-proud city, former neighbors began to eye each other with suspicion. A man who cheered beside his friend one night stole his last can of beans the next. Mothers clutched children in stairwells, praying for morning. Morning brought no safety.

People forgot what day of the week it was. Time was measured by desperation:
"Day of the first blackout"
"Day we ran out of fuel"
"Day the river turned black"

No one sang anymore.

The same crowd that once danced before the burning courthouses now huddled together, hungry, unwashed, cold. Some blamed the rich again. Others blamed the activists. Some blamed the government — and some started calling for one.

They had torn down the machine, not realizing it was the only thing holding the fabric of their lives together. No trucks brought food. No one came to repair the pipes. Doctors had fled or starved. Those with skills hid them.

It took just ten days before a faction rose up offering food in exchange for obedience.

And people obeyed.

Barter turned into bribery. Then into beatings. Then chains.

The revolution had become its opposite.

And still… as the fires cooled and smoldered like dying gods in the distance, the crowd remained, staring at the skeleton of the city they thought they freed.
No one said it aloud, but some of them finally began to wonder:

“What have we done?”

 

The Night of Flames

It began like a celebration.

The night air was alive with chants and crackling fire, glowing red against the towers of glass and steel. Crowds packed the streets, shoulder to shoulder, waving flags, makeshift banners, and cell phones raised high like digital torches. The old world, they claimed, was dying — and they were the midwives to its death. Skyscrapers once symbols of power became beacons of flame. Statues melted, public squares erupted, and smoke billowed like ghosts rising from the earth.

They had no idea what they were ushering in.

The chants turned to roars as the financial district went up — the banks, the courts, the halls of bureaucracy. “Burn it down!” they screamed, dancing in front of infernos that lit the sky like a second sun. Fireworks popped over collapsing malls. Gas stations exploded in the distance. Police had vanished. The mayors were hiding. The power grid began to flicker.

No one stopped to ask who would rebuild.

They were told they were tearing down oppression. That a new world would rise from the ashes. No rent. No rules. No rulers. But the fire spread faster than the dream. Data centers fried. Water lines burst. The hospitals fell next, then the food chains. Communications died in hours.

The crowd, still cheering, didn’t notice when the drones stopped flying — or when the cameras stopped recording. They didn’t ask who was keeping track of their medicine, their deliveries, their clean water. They thought freedom was fire. They didn’t know it was maintenance.

And the worst part? They thought they had won.

They thought they were free.

 

What the Window Doesn't Hold

The children play

beyond the glass—

I watch them run,

I let them pass.

Their joy is real,

yet out of reach,

a language now

I cannot teach.

This chair, this room,

my world grown small—

the voices fade

along the wall.

They visit less,

they stay so brief.

What fills this house

is only grief.

I used to know

the names they call,

the laughter echoing

down the hall.

Now all I hold

are broken threads—

a wedding ring,

some words half-said.

A photograph

in folded hands—

a man I loved,

a life we planned.

But he is gone,

and I remain,

in silence thick

with phantom pain.

They say, "She’s safe,

she’s warm, she’s fed,"

but don’t they know

I feel half-dead?

No fire burns,

no stories told—

just ticking clocks

and growing cold.

The world moves on

outside my pane,

but I am tethered

to this chain.

I cry at night,

but no one hears—

just shadows curling

into years.

They smile at me

with patient eyes,

but I can see

the thin disguise.

They pity me—

this shell, this frame—

a mother once,

now just a name.

Sometimes I scream

but only inside.

A thousand sorrows

left to hide.

My voice has dimmed,

my spirit worn—

I grieve the self

I can’t return.

And still they play,

outside, carefree—

while I drift farther

out to sea.

I watch and wait

for someone near—

but no one comes.

No one hears.

 

On the Outskirts

The ruins of Los Angeles smoldered in the distance, a jagged silhouette of concrete skeletons and charred steel against the blood-orange dusk. Where towering skyscrapers once stood in defiance of time and nature, there were now only blackened husks—monuments to hubris, to collapse. Smoke still curled from the earth like ghosts refusing to leave, whispering memories of a civilization that had devoured itself.

But just beyond the wasteland, in the thickets of overgrown woodland that had crept back into places once paved over and forgotten, life stirred. Tents patched with tarps and stitched cloth huddled together like survivors of a storm. Makeshift fire pits flickered with stubborn warmth, casting dancing shadows on faces weathered by war and hardened by loss. These were the remnants of the Second American Civil War—soldiers without a nation, fighters with a ragged flag. Yet they were not defeated.

Among them were elders—those who had witnessed the fall firsthand. They bore scars, both seen and unseen, and they carried stories like sacred scripture. They spoke of betrayal by leaders, of freedoms extinguished one by one, of cities burning and neighbors turning on neighbors, all fed by lies and the poisonous drip of control masked as salvation. They had seen what came when people forgot who they were.

But more importantly, they carried hope. A battered hope, yes—but unextinguished.

Their children roamed the woods barefoot and wild, unburdened by the memories of the fallen republic. They listened with wide eyes as tales were passed from tongue to ear beside campfires. They learned not from textbooks but from the living pulse of the earth and the calloused hands of their parents. Where the old world had left them ruins, they saw foundation stones. Where silence reigned, they heard the call to rebuild.

These descendants—born in the ashes, raised in resilience—would inherit more than a broken land. They would inherit a mission. Not just to survive, but to restore. Not merely to remember, but to rebuild a nation worthy of memory.

In the still of the forest, above the distant hum of crickets and the occasional howl from the hills, a promise echoed—unspoken, yet carved into every soul that remained:

Freedom had died once.

It would not die again.

 

The Hollowing

A splitting difference—

something’s wrong.

The day feels short,

the night too long.

I see them playing

just outside,

while something in me

fractures, dies.

Their laughter drills

into my skull,

too bright, too loud,

too beautiful.

I try to speak—

my tongue won’t move.

This silence is

a quiet wound.

Their faces blur

behind the glass,

like ghosts that mock

as moments pass.

I press my hand—

it meets the cold.

This prison holds

a body old.

A name is whispered—

not my own.

I smile, but I

feel overthrown.

Strangers come

and stroke my hair.

They speak in tones

I cannot bear.

The mirror cracks—

who is she now?

A wrinkled mask,

a furrowed brow.

My thoughts slip loose

like beads unstrung.

The lullaby

has come undone.

What once was mine

is now a maze.

Familiar hallways

bend and blaze.

The doors won’t open.

Time won’t bend.

This waking dream

will never end.

I once held dolls—

their eyes were kind.

Now empty sockets

mock my mind.

The children laugh,

they do not see

the rot inside

what’s left of me.

Their world is whole—

untouched, alive.

While I forget

how to survive.

They chase the sun;

I drown in dusk,

my memories

a cloud of dust.

No longer real,

no longer known,

I rot in place

and die alone.

Each breath I take

is borrowed air—

I’m almost gone,

but still aware.

 

Whispers Through the Glass

A splitting difference,

my mind deceives—

between what’s now

and make-believes.

Children laugh

beyond the pane,

yet names escape me

once again.

A doll in hand,

a skipping rope,

their joy once mine—

a tender hope.

But now my world

is pale and gray,

the past and present

slip away.

The sun is warm

on window’s light,

but shadows stretch

within my sight.

I reach for thoughts

that twist and fade,

my memory

a ghost parade.

A tea set waits

on porcelain dreams,

a garden swing

in golden gleam.

But I am lost

in looping air,

recalling faces

that aren’t there.

They call me "Nana"—

is that me?

Their voices hum

uncertainly.

I smile to please,

though not quite sure

if they are real,

or something more.

Each day I stay,

a little less,

a slow retreat

from consciousness.

My essence thins

like morning mist,

the world I knew

no longer exists.

Yet through the glass,

life dances on—

a fleeting song,

a childhood gone.

The tether frays

but still holds tight

to dreams that flicker

out of sight.

A girl once played

where they now run,

with braided hair

and setting sun.

She whispered hopes

to winds that roam—

now lost inside

this twilight home.

So let them play

and let them be,

while I drift down

this memory sea.

Though I forget

the world’s design,

these fading thoughts

were once all mine.

 

The Last Sunset

They stood in silence.

Dozens at first. Then hundreds. Some barefoot. Some in tattered suits or melted uniforms. Families clutched each other. Loners stood apart. Their faces were hollow, cheeks dark with soot or dried tears. No one moved.

The city was burning again.

This time, there was no emergency broadcast, no helicopters, no sirens. Just the slow, deliberate rise of black smoke choking out the late sun. Orange flames licked at shattered glass towers, catching on torn banners and faded pride.

The fire moved like a tide — consuming everything left behind. A slow-motion erasure.

Some said it was sabotage. Others said it was mercy.

They all watched.

From the ridge outside the city’s edge — once a scenic overlook filled with tourists and joggers — now a refugee post, the view was perfect. Tragic and perfect.

Elias stood there too, hood up, dust clinging to the folds of his coat. Lina was beside him, her arms crossed tight.

A boy asked aloud, voice dry and cracking:

“Was it always this quiet when cities died?”

No one answered.

Behind them, supply trucks were being loaded. Maps were being redrawn in chalk. A new world, etched over the ruins of the old. But no one turned to watch that.

They were all staring at the same thing:

The death of what they used to call civilization.

Each person imagining their old life — the coffee shop they once loved, the office they hated, the tiny apartment that still held their favorite books, now ash.

It wasn’t just a city that burned.
It was every illusion that held it up.

As the last tower collapsed in on itself, a low rumble echoed over the hills.

And still… no one spoke.

 

Ashes of the Empire

The tunnel narrowed again as they walked — the rebel leading the way, Elias behind, silent. Her name, she said over her shoulder, was Lina. That’s all he got.

They emerged through a rusted hatch and climbed up a ladder that led them back into the surface world.

When Elias stepped out, his breath caught.

The city… it was barely recognizable.

Where once glass towers pierced the sky, jagged skeletons of steel remained. Buildings leaned drunkenly, windows blown out, their facades scorched black. The streets were ruptured, some split open like wounds. Weeds and wiry shrubs burst through concrete, nature's slow revenge.

A rust-covered bus lay on its side across a freeway overpass, half swallowed by a sinkhole. Billboards peeled and hung in the wind, sun-bleached and meaningless. One still read:

“Hope is a Choice.”
The rest had been defaced with red spray paint:
“HOPE DIED WITH THE GRID.”

The air smelled of rust and rot. Somewhere distant, the faint crack-crack of automatic fire echoed, but no one reacted. It was background noise now — like birdsong in a forest that forgot its name.

Down below, in what used to be a neighborhood, the outlines of burned homes remained, blackened ribs of former lives. Someone had scrawled on a wall in charcoal:

“This was my house. I loved it. I’m still here.”

Lina led Elias through a maze of alleyways, past makeshift barricades of trash and twisted rebar. Movement flickered in shadows — children in rags, elderly hunched in corners, mutts sniffing the remains of yesterday’s scavenging. Everyone wore layers, hoods, masks. No one spoke.

A drone — not one of theirs — buzzed overhead.

Everyone stopped.

No one looked up.

They just froze until the sound passed.

Then motion returned, like clockwork winding up again.

“We call this place the Ashlands now,” Lina muttered as they ducked into a warehouse, its roof missing. “Used to be called Central District. They hit it first when the riots started. Gas. Then fire. Then silence.”

Elias looked around. Inside, dozens of people milled between makeshift cots, fire barrels, a rudimentary comms station powered by car batteries. Books were stacked in corners, dry goods guarded like gold.

“This is what’s left?” he asked.

Lina didn’t answer right away. She just looked out at the horizon, where the charred skyline met a gray, dead sky.

“No,” she finally said. “This is what’s beginning.”

 

I wonder where she went

Hours pass. The light shifts—dim at first, then darker still, as the afternoon slips toward evening. The old woman remains in her chair, eyes fixed on the rain. She hasn't moved, not really. Just a slow turn of the head now and then, as if chasing a sound she can’t name or following a thought she can’t catch.

The rain has not stopped. It falls in steady streams now, tracing long, jagged paths down the glass. Each drop seems to stretch the silence, drawing time out like thread unraveling from the spool of her mind.

"That one," she whispers, watching a large droplet snake down the pane. "That one was a Christmas... I think. You had that red scarf. Or was it me?"

Another drop. Another memory, slipping free, vanishing into the blur of the glass.

"Was it snowing then?" she asks the window. "I thought it always snowed on Christmas."

Her voice carries no urgency, no sadness—just the soft resignation of someone whose world is slipping out of reach, yet who no longer fights to hold on. She blinks slowly, her eyes reflecting the watery streaks before her.

A bird lands on the windowsill for a brief moment—then flies away. She doesn’t see it.

"I had a daughter once, I think," she says suddenly. "She had freckles, like stars. She used to sit right there, on the floor, and draw suns with yellow crayons."

Her gaze falls to the empty patch of carpet near the window. There's nothing there, but for a moment her lips curl into a gentle smile. A drop of rain thuds against the glass, heavier than the others, and the smile fades.

"I wonder where she went."

Dusk bleeds into night. Lamps hum to life elsewhere in the house—set by timers long ago. The room glows gold, then orange, then dull. Still she sits, wrapped in her cardigan, a thin shawl of grey draped across her shoulders like cobwebs of time.

"Time," she murmurs. "It’s so slippery. Like... like the rain. You try to catch it, but it just—"

She lifts a trembling hand toward the window, fingers spread wide as if trying to stop a raindrop with her palm. But her hand lowers again before it reaches the glass.

"Was I ever young?" she asks aloud. "I can’t remember how it felt. The running. The dancing. I know I did, but... it’s like hearing someone else's story."

Outside, the rain turns to mist, then fog. Night presses against the window like a quiet visitor.

She sighs, her breath slow and soft.

"Each drop… a memory," she says. "Each one... gone before I can hold it."

Silence again.

And yet she stays. Watching.

As the window becomes a mirror, and her reflection a stranger.

 

The Day the City Burned

It began with a hum — low and distant, like the sound of a storm gathering far away.

People stopped in the streets. Phones hung limp in their hands. Coffee cups cooled on café tables. Traffic halted without honks or rage. It was as if time had hiccupped, and everyone felt it in their bones before their brains caught up.

From every screen — in shop windows, in palms, on massive towers looming over intersections — the news came in waves.

"Containment zones have failed."

"Emergency response withdrawn from inner sectors."

"Fires have reached the financial district."

"Do not attempt to flee the city."

Above them, in the distance, smoke curled skyward in thick black ribbons. The sun behind it turned a jaundiced yellow, as if the sky itself was sick of watching. Somewhere, alarms wailed — but they sounded tired, uninterested.

No one spoke.

A mother held her child tighter but didn’t move.

An old man, cane shaking, whispered a prayer he barely remembered.

A food courier stared up at the towers ablaze with disbelief, his insulated bag still slung across his back.

And Elias Ward — not in uniform, not yet — stood among them. Just another man in the crowd, eyes wide, unable to blink. He hadn’t yet been recruited into the UDER. He was still just a veteran on the edge of poverty, another mouth to feed, another man looking for purpose in a world that had stopped pretending to offer one.

That moment — that frozen stillness — would stay with him forever.

The quiet shock of it all.

The sense that civilization had collapsed not with a bang, but with resignation.

People had always feared fire, riots, violence.

But no one had prepared for apathy — the true virus that hollowed everything out before the flames ever touched the concrete.

The people didn’t run.

They just watched.

And the city burned.

 

Beneath the Uniform

 Elias moved slowly now, like a man walking toward a reckoning. The stench of piss and old smoke thickened as he reached the rusted service door at the end of the platform. He shouldered it open with a creak that sounded like a scream in the silence. Inside, the corridor narrowed — ancient maintenance tunnels worming deeper into the earth, untouched by even UDER's drones.

He stopped at a rusted locker bolted to the wall, half open. Inside, faded overalls, a dusty first aid kit, and a grey hoodie mottled with grime. He stared at it for a long time before he reached in and pulled it out.

It still smelled faintly of soap.

He took off the black chestplate of his UDER armor, one strap at a time, until he was bare from the waist up. His skin, pale and marked with bruises and burns, shivered in the damp air. For a moment, he just stood there — the hum of silence pressing in from all sides.

Then, slowly, he slipped the hoodie on.

It was tight across his chest, the sleeves short, but it felt real. Human. The kind of thing people wore before they had to choose sides. Before everything became armored and armored hearts.

He left the rest of the gear behind — save for his pistol, holstered low at his hip. Not for war. For survival.

The tunnel stretched ahead, lit only by the occasional emergency strip light still clinging to life. Moss clung to the walls like veins, and the air grew warmer, as if the city’s bowels were alive.

Then he saw it.

A faint glow.

Blue. Soft. Artificial.

He moved toward it cautiously, heart pounding, until the tunnel widened into a circular chamber — an old switching station long abandoned by the transit authority. But this one… had been repurposed.

Solar panels lined the curved ceiling where collapsed debris had left a hole to the sky. Someone had rerouted power through old battery banks. Clean water trickled from a pipe into a filtration drum. Crates of scavenged medical supplies and canned food lined the walls. Books. Candles. A sleeping mat.

And on one wall, scrawled in paint, large and defiant:

“WE BEGIN AGAIN. BENEATH.”

He took a step forward — his boots crunching softly on gravel.

A noise behind him.

He turned, drawing his pistol.

A young woman stood in the tunnel mouth, a rifle slung across her back, eyes narrow and fierce.

They stared at each other for a long second.

Then she said, voice low but steady, “You’re wearing a UDER belt. And a rebel’s hoodie. That means you’re either insane… or interesting.”

Elias slowly lowered the weapon.

“I’m neither,” he replied. “I’m just done pretending.”

A beat of silence.

Then she nodded toward the chamber. “You better come in. They're going to want to meet you.”

The Subway Beneath Memory

The air was thick — a soupy mixture of mildew, rust, and rot. Every step Sergeant Elias Ward took echoed against the wet tile, bouncing down the tunnel like a ghost whispering secrets in Morse code. He didn’t turn on his helmet light. He wanted the dark. He needed it.

He had once marched through here with a full squad, boots synchronized, rifles at the ready. “Sweep and suppress,” they called it. That was two years ago, when the underground was still contested. Now it was just abandoned — like so much of the city above.

His black UDER armor bore the scars of battles he no longer cared to remember. His helmet, held under one arm, felt heavier than it used to. Maybe it was the weight of the propaganda embedded in its HUD. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe there was no difference anymore.

He paused beside the shattered remains of a turnstile, its metal arms twisted like broken fingers. Nearby, a cracked advertising panel still flickered, trying to sell something — “Progress Is Peace” — the voice distorted, robotic, almost mocking.

Elias exhaled and leaned against a tiled column. Moisture oozed from the grout like the place itself was bleeding. He let the silence settle, broken only by the occasional drip of stagnant water and the distant screech of rats.

He looked down the tunnel. A derailed train sat rotting in the gloom, its windows shattered, graffiti blanketing its corpse in declarations of forgotten hope. "WE REMEMBER CLEAN STREETS" someone had scrawled across a wall behind it. The words felt like a prayer — or a curse.

He remembered his own street growing up — fresh-cut lawns, mailboxes still standing, the smell of his father’s bleach bucket after washing down the front walk. That memory hit him harder than any blast ever had.

Ward reached into a pouch and pulled out a half-burnt photo: his sister and nephew, smiling in front of a fountain that no longer sprayed. They had disappeared six months ago — either taken in a rebel raid or lost to the squalor that now passed for life above ground.

Officially, they were casualties of civil disobedience.

Unofficially... he didn’t know anymore.

His radio crackled to life.

"Echo-4, report. Any rebel activity in the lower metro sector?"

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he slid the radio off his shoulder and let it hang.

He wasn’t ready to go back to the surface. Not yet.

Something inside him was shifting — tectonic, quiet, undeniable.

He kept walking, deeper into the dark, into the forgotten arteries of a dead civilization.

Not to chase enemies.

But maybe to find himself.

 

Civilization Unraveled

They called it urban renewal — but what came was anything but.

What began as compassion, evolved into decay. In the name of equity and justice, mayors and councils across the former United States tore down what they called the "old systems of oppression": sanitation enforcement, police presence, zoning laws, even basic health regulations. Anything that resembled structure was deemed exclusionary. The result? Civilization unraveled.

By 2041, the cities were no longer governed, only managed — and barely that. Bureaucrats handed out clean needles and pamphlets on consent to crowds half-lost to psychosis. Public restrooms were shuttered, replaced by “Compassion Zones” — corners of parks now ankle-deep in human waste and broken glass. Fires smoldered in trash heaps. Disease crept back into the vocabulary: typhus, cholera, plague.

But people remembered what once was.

Out in the periphery — in the quiet suburbs turned enclaves, in the farmlands, and in the ruins of former townships — a resistance took root. They called themselves The Restoration Bloc. Former engineers, medics, veterans, and teachers — those who still believed in sewers, order, and truth. They built communes with walls, dug wells, and reestablished rules. In some regions, they gained support from remnants of local law enforcement, disillusioned soldiers, and even the sickened urban refugees.

They believed that civilization must be fought for, and if necessary, retaken by force.

The Federal Authority, which no longer governed but only watched, branded them terrorists. A new agency was created: The Unified Domestic Enforcement Regiment — UDER — an amalgam of federal leftovers and private corporate militias. Their job was to “protect the reformed urban cores” from “militant reactionaries.”

What they really did was hunt.

Drone strikes lit up rebel safe houses in the Rockies. Restoration medical tents were napalmed in the Midwest under the pretense of biohazard containment. In the cities, informants and AI surveillance networks rooted out sympathizers, who were disappeared into "re-education programs" — high-tech gulags hidden behind abandoned Walmarts and old FEMA camps.

But the Bloc did not fold.

In the smoldering shell of Portland, Restoration scouts infiltrated sewer lines, planting slow-release sanitizers to decontaminate the river and make a point: We can fix this. In San Francisco, they hijacked broadcast nodes and streamed pre-collapse footage of clean, bustling streets, stunning viewers long raised in filth. Their message spread like fire:

"We remember the world before. We will build it again."

The people — especially the young, born into dystopia — began to listen.

Skirmishes turned into firefights. The cities, though choked in decay, became battlegrounds. Resistance cells operated in the shadows of skyscrapers, beneath broken bridges, inside husks of old hospitals. They armed themselves with scavenged weapons, 3D-printed drones, and repurposed tech. They didn't want revenge. They wanted restoration.

But the regime would not give up control so easily.

In a national address, the last vestige of the federal executive — a figurehead known only as The Custodian — declared the rebels enemies of the New Progress. He vowed to root out "sanitation supremacists" and launched Operation Clean Sweep — a cruel mockery of its name. What followed was the sterilization of entire blocks: flame, gas, and sound weapons that disoriented and killed without leaving visible wounds.

Still, the Bloc endured.

Because beneath the soot, beneath the blood, beneath the madness — was memory.

Memory of clean water. Of flushing toilets. Of civility. Of dignity.

And that was something no drone could bomb out of existence.

 

The Great Reversal

It was once said that civilization was measured by how a society treated its waste — both human and moral. The ancients knew it, even before they understood microbes or contagion. Rome, at its peak, could feed millions of souls, all because it mastered the art of clean water and dirty disposal. Aqueducts whispered through hillsides. Sewers beneath the stone veins of cities carried disease away. Sanitation wasn’t charity — it was survival.

But that knowledge is gone now. Not lost — worse. Abandoned.

By the mid-21st century, American cities had entered a kind of Great Reversal. The old rules were no longer enforced — not because they couldn’t be, but because the new elite deemed them oppressive. Laws were called cruel. Order was called injustice. Hygiene was deemed a privilege. So it was undone, slowly at first, then all at once.

No one dared question it.

The city centers once symbols of modernity — Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, New York — had decayed into open-air latrines. Human waste flowed in alleys and seeped into subway grates. Sidewalks were sticky with needles and the residue of synthetic highs. Homeless encampments towered like termite mounds in the shadows of luxury skyscrapers — festering symbols of a system in collapse. Citizens were told to step carefully, to flush only what was approved, to pick up after their dogs. But the streets told a different story.

People no longer noticed the stench. You adapted, or you didn’t last.

Health departments were dismantled or rebranded. Surveillance drones filmed violence and squalor, not to prevent it, but to normalize it. Public urination, defecation, fornication — all forgiven in the name of compassion, though no compassion ever reached the souls it was meant to save.

Tourists vanished. Police withdrew. Public transport became a nocturnal gauntlet, a proving ground of disease and derangement. The subway tunnels hummed not with progress but with the moans of the forgotten.

The knowledge was still there — buried in old textbooks, in the ruins of libraries now turned into shelters. We knew how to build a civilization. But we no longer believed we deserved one.

And so the cities rotted. Not because they had to, but because no one had the will — or the authority — to say no more.

And in the silence, civilization died. Not with bombs or war, but with filth, indifference, and the slow suffocation of standards.

 

Cutting Through the Smoke

Liora stepped back out into the night, the borrowed book held tightly against her chest. The Road to Serfdom. She hadn’t known the title an hour ago. Now, its weight was more than physical. It was a burden, a question, a flicker of betrayal against everything she had once shouted in the streets.

Smoke rolled low across the ground as she walked, curling like fingers around her ankles. Sirens blared in the distance, but no one came. The authorities no longer protected the city—they cheered its unraveling or cowered in silence. Fires danced in the windows of familiar buildings. A statue of Frederick Douglass lay broken in the street, shattered by the same hands that claimed to fight for justice.

She passed posters of herself—not literally, but the idea of herself: fists raised, slogans beneath bold typefaces. “No past. No patriarchy. No peace until we’re heard.” Once those words had thrilled her. Now they tasted like ash.

As she moved deeper into the ruins, she noticed something strange. In the alleys and gaps between buildings, figures moved quietly. Not rioters. Not looters. People with purpose. Some carried packs; others scanned the walls, looking for hidden markers—chalk symbols, subtle glyphs. She caught a glimpse of one: an open book drawn beneath a flame.

She followed.

It led her beneath a collapsed overpass and into a forgotten maintenance tunnel. The sounds of the burning world above faded behind her, replaced by the hum of hushed voices and the scratch of pen against paper.

She emerged into a subterranean space lit by lanterns and warmed by the heat of a dozen minds at work. The Archivists.

Elena looked up from a stack of salvaged manuscripts. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she took in Liora's face—young, scared, and stained with the soot of conviction turned to doubt.

“You’re not one of them anymore, are you?” Elena asked, not accusing—just tired.

Liora didn’t answer. Instead, she held up the book she had borrowed.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “About any of it. I thought we were saving the world. But we’re just burning it down.”

Grant stepped forward, arms crossed. “Then why are you here?”

Liora took a breath. “Because I need to tell her. Mara. I need her to hear it from someone who stood beside her. Maybe… maybe I can reach her.”

Micah emerged from the shadows. “That’s a dangerous idea. You think they’ll let you walk back in after what you’ve seen?”

“I don’t care,” Liora said. “I started this fire too. I helped it spread. I have to try to put it out.”

There was silence. Then Elena handed her a second book—A Letter Concerning Toleration—and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“If you go back, you may not return,” she said. “But if you’re willing, we’ll walk beside you. Not to fight. Just to bear witness.”

Liora nodded.

And so she climbed back into the fire, flanked by those who remembered, those who resisted, and those who had never stopped believing that the truth could still cut through the smoke.

 

Dripping Time

The rain taps gently on the windowpane, a soft, rhythmic sound that echoes through the stillness of the room. An old woman sits in a worn armchair, her frail fingers resting lightly on her lap, eyes gazing out into the grey mist beyond the glass. Her breath is shallow, steady, like the fading beat of a quiet drum.

"I remember we laughed," she murmurs, though to no one in particular. "We laughed so much, didn’t we? There were birthdays... picnics in the sun... oh, and music. Always music."

A flicker of something dances across her face—a smile, perhaps—but it vanishes as quickly as it came. Her eyes remain distant, unfocused, watching a world she no longer fully knows.

"There were so many memories... so many... once."

She blinks slowly. The rain keeps falling. Names, faces, voices—all once vivid—are now like shadows behind fogged glass. She reaches for them in her mind, but they slip away before they can take shape.

"I used to hold onto them," she says softly, her voice barely audible. "Private moments... reflections... all passing. And now... they’re gone."

A long pause.

"I think... I’ve forgotten them already. Even the ones yet to happen. Can you forget something before it’s even real?" She chuckles faintly, a sound more sad than amused.

Outside, the rain thickens. Time itself seems to drip down the glass with it.

"I sit here now. Don’t know when I began. Don’t know when I’ll end." Her eyes glisten, but no tears fall. "Oblivious... that’s the word, I think. Yes. Without time. And nothing left to share."

Her head leans against the back of the chair. She is still. The window stays wet with rain. And the world, for her, floats quietly away.

 

An Awakening

Her name was Liora. She didn’t remember the last time she had felt sure of anything.

She stood frozen at the edge of the crowd as the torches were lit and the shouting swelled again. Her hand gripped the strap of her satchel, her fingers trembling slightly, not from fear, but from the strange feeling gnawing at her gut—a feeling she hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge for months: doubt.

When the boy with the camera—Micah—had shouted back at them, something cracked. Not loud, not visible. Just a hairline fracture deep within her certainty.

She had joined the protests because she had wanted to belong. Because everyone around her said they were building a better world, and she wanted to believe it. Professors praised her for repeating their slogans. Friends smiled when she burned books she’d never read. Every act of destruction came with cheers, and for a while, that had been enough.

But tonight was different. Something about the flames licking at the student union, something about the way Mara's voice shook—not with righteousness, but with desperation—made her pause.

Liora stepped backward, away from the mob, her footsteps silent against the wet pavement.

No one noticed.

The chants grew louder, the crowd surged forward, and the boy disappeared down an alley with the others. No one cared that she was gone. Not really. They would have screamed “traitor” if they’d seen her leave, but they didn’t. They were too busy burning the world they thought they were saving.

She walked. Slowly, carefully. Past the statue of the founder they had toppled weeks ago. Past the skeletal library, still smoldering. Past signs that read “Abolish Thought” and “Feel, Don’t Think.”

Rain soaked her hoodie, cooled the heat in her cheeks. She turned down a darkened street and stopped beneath a cracked mural—once a painting of the Declaration of Independence, now defaced with red Xs and curses in spray paint. Liora stared at it, heart pounding.

What if they’re wrong? What if we’re all wrong?

The question hit her like a blow. She didn’t have answers, only the creeping sense that the people she had trusted—the people who told her what to hate—had never wanted her to think for herself.

Up ahead, something flickered. Not fire this time, but a faint yellow glow. A window. Still intact. A door, slightly ajar. A light in the ruins.

Liora hesitated, then stepped toward it.

Inside, she found a room lined with shelves. Books. Intact. Old. Smelling of paper and ink and something long forgotten. A single candle burned on a desk where an elderly woman sat reading by its light. She looked up, startled—but not unkind.

Liora didn’t speak. She simply crossed the threshold, dripping rainwater onto the wooden floor, and whispered:
“Can I… read something?”

The woman studied her for a moment. Then nodded.

“Of course, dear. That’s why we’re still here.”

And outside, the city burned. But inside that room, for the first time in a long time, a mind began to awaken.

 

Fanatics on Parade

Peering out, Elena saw them—at least twenty students, faces painted with anarchist symbols and slogans, their eyes wild with the kind of certainty only ignorance can provide. At their center was a tall girl with a loudhailer. Mara.

She was screaming again.

“They’re hiding knowledge! Hateful knowledge! This city doesn’t need dusty old books telling us how to think—we know what justice looks like! Burn the past! Save the future!”

The crowd roared in agreement, torches raised.

Grant clenched his jaw. “If they find the archive site, it’s over.”

Elena knew that too. This wasn’t just a mob—they were fanatics. True believers. And worse, they thought they were heroes.

“We don’t engage,” she said quickly. “We fade. We vanish.”

But Micah stepped forward, anger flaring in his young face. “No. They need to see the truth. Just once. They need to hear it. Maybe one will listen.”

Before Elena could stop him, he stepped into the street, holding his camera like a weapon.

“Why are you burning books?” he shouted. His voice cracked, but it carried. “Do you even know what’s in them? Do you even care what we lose?”

The mob stopped. Mara turned. “You again,” she hissed. “The traitor. The propagandist. The one who films lies.”

“They’re not lies!” he snapped. “They’re facts. They’re history. We’re not the enemy—we’re what’s left of sanity.”

A few students wavered. A few looked uncertain. But Mara had the crowd. And she knew it.

She raised her loudhailer again. “He’s one of them! A reactionary! A denier! He wants to bring back the world that crushed us!”

A stone flew. It missed Micah’s head by inches.

Then came the fire.

Torches hurled through the air, bottles shattering against brick. The Archivists scattered, Micah ducking behind a pillar as the street exploded in flame. Grant pulled Elena behind a rusted dumpster, shielding her from debris.

“They don’t want truth,” he muttered grimly. “They want permission to destroy.”

Still, as they fled, Elena noticed something—one student, a girl with a torn scarf and eyes full of doubt, hesitated. She had not joined the chase. She had not cheered.

Sometimes, that’s all it takes. One spark that doesn't catch.