Callan
The roof comprised a mess of angles and levels.
Nothing about it was flat or simple. The building appeared elegant from the outside—sweeping curves of glass and steel, the kind of architecture that won awards and looked beautiful in brochures—but up here, it was haphazard: sloped maintenance platforms, ventilation units ticking in their housings, narrow metal walkways with railings slick from last night’s rain.
And glass.
So. Much. Glass.
I stepped out first, my boots scraping against the metal grating, and scanned the immediate area. Empty. Quiet. Nothing was moving except the wind.
Sloane emerged from the hatch, hesitant, pulling herself up and through with movements slower than usual. Her eyes swept the rooftop before the rest of her body had evencleared the opening, scanning every angle, every shadow.
She looked smaller up here, in the open, with nothing but sky above her and the wind pulling at her hair and clothes.
I stayed close.
We didn’t speak as we crossed the walkway toward the edge.
The wind, steady and cold, pushed against us in gusts that smelled like salt and burnt wood.
To our right, the Atlantic stretched out toward the horizon.
Calm. Blue. Unchanged.
The water moved the way it always moved—slow, steady swells rolling in from the deep, waves breaking white and gentle along the shoreline. Rhythmic. Patient. As if nothing had happened, like the world wasn’t tearing itself apart a few hundred yards inland.
It looked like any other morning.
But when we turned toward the city—
Everything fell apart.
Smoke. For miles.
Thick black columns rising from dozens of points across the skyline, merging into a dark, spreading haze that smeared across the sky and blotted out the sun in patches. Entire buildings burned, flames visible even from this distance, orange and yellow clawing through shattered windows, consuming floors, consuming rooftops, consuming everything inside with no one left to put it out.
Sirens wailed faintly somewhere in the
distance, but fewer than before—definitelyfewer than should be in this type of situation.
And the roads.
Jesus Christ.
The roads.
Cars littered everywhere, stopped at odd angles, doors hanging open, some smashed into each other, some driven up onto sidewalks and into storefronts. A city bus sat jackknifed across an intersection three blocks away, its windshield shattered inward.
And between the cars—on the pavement, on the sidewalks, in the gutters, on the median strips—
Bodies.
Everywhere.
Some lay completely still, sprawled face down on the asphalt, crumpled against curbs, hanging half out of car doors as if they’d been trying to run and hadn’t made it. A man in a white shirt lay on his back in the middle of the street with his arms out to his sides, his torso dark and wet with something I couldn’t see from up here.
Others moved.