The exit was worse than Elias expected.
The reinforced steel doors, designed to withstand catastrophic failures, had melted. The once-smooth metal was warped inward, twisted like wax beneath a blowtorch. Whatever had done this hadn't just broken in—it had rewritten the rules of physics to do it.
Beside the ruined doors, a control panel sparked weakly, its screen frozen on an ancient emergency warning:
GLOBAL ALERT: NUCLEAR EVENT DETECTED
CONTAINMENT BREACH IMMINENT
ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY
Elias let out a dry laugh. "Yeah. Great timing."
He exhaled sharply and pressed a hand against the metal. Cold. Lifeless. There was no getting through this way. If the doors had fused shut, there was only one option left.
The scenic route.
He turned down an adjacent hallway, wincing as his boots crunched over shattered glass and debris. Every step felt heavier. It wasn't just the exhaustion—it was the uncertainty.
What if there's nothing left?
That question had been gnawing at the back of his mind since he woke up. Now, with every flickering emergency light and every overturned chair, it grew louder.
A stairwell loomed ahead, leading to the surface. The rusted railing groaned under his grip as he started climbing. His legs ached, lungs burning with every step. Floor after floor, past shattered workstations and flickering signs warning of containment failures.
Halfway up, he stopped. A thought struck him like ice water down his spine.
What if I open this door… and there's nothing?
No sky. No earth. Just—gone?
The idea lodged itself in his chest, irrational but suffocating.
He swallowed hard. One way to find out.
At the top of the stairwell, a door waited.
Elias pressed his fingers against the handle, feeling the weight of the unknown beyond it. He drew in a slow breath, bracing himself—then shoved it open.
Blinding light.
His eyes burned as he staggered back, blinking rapidly. His brain scrambled to adjust, to process.
And then he saw it.
The world was still here.
But it was broken beyond recognition.
The sky above was a sickly shade of orange, clouds swirling in slow, unnatural spirals as if lost in their own confusion. The city beyond the facility was nothing but a jagged skeleton—collapsing skyscrapers, twisted metal, streets swallowed by dust and decay.
Fires still smoldered in the distance, sending black plumes into the dead sky. The air was thick with the sharp, metallic tang of radiation and scorched earth. The wind howled through the ruins, but it carried no voices. No traffic. No distant hum of civilization.
Just emptiness.
Elias took a slow step forward, his boot kicking up a cloud of ash. His heart pounded, his breaths shallow.
This wasn't just destruction. This was erasure.
Something in him buckled. A feeling too big to name, too vast to hold. Dread? Grief? It settled deep in his gut, cold and unshakable.
And then—because his brain had no clue how else to handle this—he muttered:
"Well. On the bright side… parking's gonna be a breeze."
A weak, humorless chuckle left him, barely more than breath. It wasn't even funny.
But if he stopped cracking jokes, if he really let himself process what he was looking at…
He might not be able to move at all.
Elias clenched his fists. Standing here wouldn't change anything. The world had already ended. But he was still breathing.
And if he was the last man on Earth…
Then he sure as hell wasn't going to die standing still.
He took his first real step into the wasteland.