Cora sat in the suffocating dark, the silence pressing against her like a weight she could no longer lift. The power had gone out again, but she had barely noticed. What was there to power? The refrigerator was empty, the heater long dead, the streetlights outside just useless metal husks. There was nothing left to illuminate, nothing worth seeing. Just the hollow remains of a city that had given up. She missed Alex.
The only light came from her phone, its dying screen casting sickly shadows across the cracked walls of her apartment. 10% battery. 9%. 8%. She should have turned it off, should have saved what little power she had, but it didn’t matter. There was nothing to wait for. No one was coming.
Her wrist buzzed. The dull green glow of her State Health Monitor pulsed against her skin. Still compliant. For now. Her heartbeat was steady, her location logged, her caloric intake registered from the last government-supplied meal—one of the gray, tasteless ration bars distributed to the obedient. The approved citizens. If she missed another check-in, the green would shift to yellow. After that… red.
She had seen what happened to people who turned red.
Her fingers shook as she scrolled through Unity, the only remaining social app, a feed of state-approved news, propaganda, and hollow victories. All lies. The same empty slogans repeated endlessly:
“Glory to the Chairman.”
“Strength through unity.”
“The economy has never been stronger.”
“The people have never been happier.”
She swiped through the posts without thinking, her finger moving in a dull, repetitive motion. The images blurred together—celebratory reports of military victories, staged photos of cheerful workers, a fabricated utopia that had never existed. Every post was the same. She wasn’t even reading them anymore. She just wanted… something. Anything trivial. A stupid meme, a pet video, some scrap of normalcy buried beneath the propaganda. But there was nothing. Nothing but the voices of the loyal, cheering on their own destruction.
She stared at a post showing a factory worker, smiling as he raised his fist in salute. Below it, a thousand identical comments, praise from faceless, nameless accounts. Words repeated so often they had lost all meaning.
Cora swiped again. More headlines. Another “economic milestone,” though the stores were empty. Another “victory on the northern front,” though the war had no end. Another arrest of “traitors,” though the only crime was speaking aloud.
Her thumb hovered over the blank comment box. What could she even say? She wasn’t brave anymore. There was no Alex beside her, no whispered reassurances that the world hadn’t always been like this. That there had once been choices, real news, real people. He was gone. Disappeared in the night like all the others.
Her phone screen flickered. 5% battery. The warning flashed in the corner, small and unobtrusive, as if this too was just another inconvenience, like a reminder to charge before a work meeting, before a night out. But there were no work meetings anymore. No nights out. Nothing left to plan for, no future to prepare for. Just the endless, empty present.
Cora stared at the warning, willing herself to care, but she felt nothing. She had long stopped feeling panic when the world took something else from her. Her job. Her home. Alex. Her own voice. Each loss had carved another piece of her away, and now, there was almost nothing left to take.
Once, she had fought. Once, she had screamed. She had argued with her parents, desperately trying to pull them back from the abyss as they slid deeper and deeper into the Circle’s grasp. She had begged them to see what was happening, to understand that they were being manipulated, that the promises of security and strength were nothing but a noose tightening around their necks.
She and Alex had done everything they could. They had warned them. They had pointed out the contradictions, the lies stacking higher and higher until they should have been impossible to ignore. They had shown them the footage of protests silenced with batons and tear gas, of activists disappearing overnight, of journalists found dead in mysterious accidents.
But the truth had never mattered.
Because they hadn’t wanted the truth. They had wanted comfort. They had wanted to believe that the world was still as they remembered it. That the enemy was always someone else, that the Circle was protecting them, that if they just obeyed, everything would be okay.
So they had stopped listening.
And then, one day, they had stopped answering.
Cora swallowed, the lump in her throat dry and bitter. She didn’t even know when it had happened. When their messages had stopped sending, when the calls had gone straight to silence. Maybe it had been gradual, like everything else. The distance growing wider, until one day, there was nothing but a yawning void between them.
She looked around her apartment, at the bare walls, the single chair, the mattress on the floor. Once, she had imagined a future beyond this. A way out. She had mapped out escape routes, researched old underground networks, whispered plans in the dark with Alex about where they could run, how they could disappear before it was too late.
But now…
The borders were closed.
Her ID was flagged.
Her bank account had been seized.
She had no way to leave. No money. No power. No allies.
She was trapped, not just in this apartment, but in this dying world. A forgotten soul drifting in a city where no one spoke, no one resisted, no one even dared to look up anymore.
She was just another ghost in the machine.
A number in the system.
A body waiting to be processed.
Outside, the wind howled through the abandoned streets, rattling the metal frames of old propaganda posters. The same empty promises. Prosperity. Strength. Victory. Hollow words printed across torn banners, fluttering weakly in the night.
Her phone dimmed. 1% battery.
She exhaled slowly, staring at the final message flickering across the screen. The government seal stamped in red, the Chairman’s ever-smirking face behind it.
The screen flickered again, then dimmed further, the last sliver of light draining from it. She should have plugged it in earlier. Not because she had anyone to call. Not because she had anything to do. But because she needed enough power for the Two Minutes of Unity.
Her stomach twisted at the thought.
Twice a day, like clockwork, every citizen was required to participate. It didn’t matter where you were. The broadcast would take over every device, every screen. The Chairman’s voice would fill every room, every city square. A sermon of strength. A call to arms. A reminder of enemies, real or imagined.
She had stood through them all, forced to scream with the crowd, to raise her fist at the flickering face of whatever “traitor” had been chosen for public execution that week. She had never hesitated, never faltered, because hesitation was noticed.
And now… now, she wasn’t sure her phone would last long enough to log her participation.
She should have cared more. Should have felt some desperate need to comply, to keep her green light glowing, to avoid the slow descent into yellow. Into red. But… what was left to fear?
She let her head fall back against the cold wall, staring up at the ceiling.
Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the day she would be flagged, that the silent knock would come at her door in the dead of night, that she would be taken where the others had gone. The ones who had simply vanished without a trace, their apartments reassigned, their names erased.
Maybe they’d even tell her she was being saved. That they were sending her somewhere better.
To their kingdom of heaven.
Her phone screen blinked one last time, then died completely.
The room went dark.
The silence swallowed her whole.
How had this happened?
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