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"Emergency response withdrawn from inner sectors."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.
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