The blackout came without warning.
One moment, the city pulsed with its usual false light — screens glowing, signs flashing promises — and the next, everything went dark.
No hum of machines. No glow from the towers.
Just silence.
For a few heartbeats, the stillness felt almost holy.
Then the screaming started.
In the darkness, panic spread faster than fire. People poured into the streets, clutching phones that no longer worked, shouting for help that wasn't coming. Drones fell from the sky like dying birds. Sirens wailed, then choked into silence as the grid failed. The city — built on control, on endless power — collapsed into chaos.
Mara and Eli watched from a rooftop as the horizon flickered with orange — not sunset, but flames. Fires had broken out across the districts. The sky was a bruise of smoke and light.
In the distance, gunfire echoed. Not random anymore. Organized.
The war they'd been told didn't exist was no longer hiding.
Newsfeeds on every screen — before they went black — had called it "isolated unrest," "temporary shortages," "foreign sabotage."
But now, with the power gone, the truth stood naked:
the world was tearing itself apart.
Mara gripped the railing, eyes wide. "It's happening. The collapse."
Eli nodded slowly. His face was lit by the glow of the fires below.
"I know."
"Then what do we do?" she asked. Her voice trembled — not with fear, but with the weight of inevitability. "Hide? Wait it out?"
He shook his head. "No. We face it."
"Face what, Eli? Look at it!" She pointed to the streets below — mobs breaking into stores, soldiers clashing with civilians, drones strafing rooftops. "This isn't something we can fight."
"It's not about fighting them," he said. "It's about standing for something. When the lies burn away, someone has to remember what's real."
She stared at him, disbelieving. "You still think that matters?"
"Yes," he said simply. "Because when the world forgets itself, truth is all that's left."
A low boom shook the air. Somewhere far off, a building crumbled. The skyline — once bright and proud — was scarred with smoke and flame. Sirens rose again, then cut off in static. The government broadcasts had stopped hours ago. There were no more slogans, no more promises. Just silence and fire.
Mara's chest tightened. "My parents believed in something, Eli. They believed until it killed them. I'm not making that mistake again."
He turned toward her, his eyes steady in the dark. "Your parents didn't die because they believed. They died because they trusted the wrong thing. They gave their faith to a system that lied. But believing in the truth isn't weakness, Mara. It's resistance."
"Resistance doesn't stop bullets."
"No," he admitted. "But it stops the world from forgetting why it's worth saving."
Down below, a crowd surged through the streets — desperate faces illuminated by burning storefronts. Some carried signs. Others weapons.
Across the city, the air shook with distant thunder — not weather, but bombs.
The collapse wasn't local anymore. Reports had whispered of riots in other cities, borders closing, global markets crashing. Now there were no whispers — just chaos.
Mara felt her pulse quicken. "Where will you go?"
"Wherever truth still lives," he said. "Even if it's only in me."
She wanted to tell him it was hopeless. That this was the end, not a beginning. But the words caught in her throat. Because even now, with the world burning around them, Eli's light didn't waver. It wasn't loud or heroic — it was quiet, stubborn, alive.
And something in her hated him for it.
The wind carried the smell of smoke and fear.
Sirens wailed again, closer this time.
The city was cracking open — its lies bleeding out into the streets.
Mara closed her eyes.
She had spent her whole life trying not to believe in anything.
Now, as the world crumbled, she wondered if disbelief was just another kind of prison.
When she opened them, Eli was already walking toward the stairwell.
"Eli," she called out.
He turned, silhouetted against the firelit sky.
"You'll die out there," she said.
"Maybe," he replied. "But at least it'll mean something."
Then he disappeared into the smoke.
Mara stayed on the rooftop, alone, watching as the city devoured itself — lights gone, voices rising, truth and lies burning together in the same flame.
And in that moment, for the first time, she wasn't sure which one she belonged to.