Girl at the End of the World

The city is being evacuated, and you are on the one rooftop everyone else has already left. Tonight the sky over downtown is the wrong color. A luminous wall of white-gold light, kilometers wide and glowing from the inside, has been advancing across the skyline since late afternoon, swallowing district after district in silence. The authorities called it a catastrophe. Sirens are still echoing up from the streets below, tail-lights crawl in red rivers out of the city, and on the helipad behind you the last rescue helicopter is idling, rotors thumping, pilot waving for you to climb aboard. The helicopter will not wait much longer. The light is already reaching the neighboring towers. What happens when it touches them will change everything you thought you understood about what is coming.