From above, police helicopters roared low, spotlights sweeping. Below, gang members patrolled intersections with rifles.
One group set up a crude barricade and began demanding food, water, and weapons from passing civilians.
In another place people ran from temples with bundles of food, sacred icons, anything they could carry.
Loudspeakers echoed chants and emergency warnings. A man lit incense before diving into a riot with a sword drawn. An old woman wept openly, alone in the street, as youths fought over gasoline.
In another part of the world the busiest crosswalk in the world was empty. Totally still. Only a single priest stood atop a convenience store roof, megaphone in hand.
"PRAY, PRAY NOW. PRAY FOR SALVATION!"
He shouted into the void as smoke drifted behind him from the city outskirts. Somewhere nearby, someone was playing classical music from a radio.
It echoed through the empty streets, the notes surreal and melancholic. One live video feed showed a father crouched in a cement walled basement, both arms wrapped tightly around his daughters like he could shield them from the end of the world with nothing but love and flesh.
His lips moved on repeat, "It's okay, it's okay," but his eyes were red, leaking tears that cut lines down soot covered cheeks.
The older girl was maybe nine, clutching a crayon drawing of a house and a sun the kind of innocent hope that only children could cling to.
The younger girl, five or six, held a teddy bear with one eye and an unraveling seam. The dim emergency lamp overhead buzzed with every flicker.
In the corner, a radio sputtered. static, screams, then silence. The comment section was a waterfall of heartbreak.
@QuietMama: "I'm doing the same thing. Same basement. Same teddy bear. F*ck."
@Kids1st: "Whoever this man is... I hope he's the last face his daughters see. Better him than fire."
Another stream showed a young woman dancing like a g*ddess of chaos on a street littered with broken glass and crumpled signs.
Her tight club dress was streaked with makeup, dirt, and blood. Rain soaked her, but she twirled with abandon as if the downpour could wash away the mushroom clouds looming on the horizon. In the distance, one could see a faint bloom of fire a nuclear detonation far away but visible, even through cloud cover.
The caption on her feed read.
"💃 If I'm going out, I'm going out FABULOUS 💄🔥 #Apocalypso"
The song playing from her phone? Toxic by B*itney S*ears.
@ChaosQueen: "I respect this energy."
@DespairInHeels: "Dance, girl. Dance before the flames take us all."
Another feed showed people storming the doors of a federal building, desperate to be let in. They slammed fists and hammers, shouted names of politicians, of leaders, of liars.
Riot police fired rubber bullets until they ran out then switched to real ones. People died on the steps. The crowd didn't stop.
Screams rose as explosions boomed in the far off skyline. A second sun bloomed behind a distant mountain, orange, red and rising another missile had hit.
One woman turned to the camera as she watched it, whispering.
"No, no, no..."
And then just… stood there. Frozen. Unmoving. Another stream came from the coastline, where a man in a crisp suit stepped barefoot into the ocean.
His shoes were neatly set beside the camera. He rolled his cuffs with care, adjusted his tie, and walked into the surf.
His figure got smaller and smaller, the waves swallowing him without ceremony. He never looked back.
@SaltAndSilence: "He didn't even hesitate."
@WaveWalker: "I think that was my old professor. He used to say we were living in borrowed time."
@SeaOfGoodbye: "I don't think he was scared. I think he was… done."
A rooftop stream showed young people partying like it was the end and it was. They danced around a fire made of textbooks and furniture, drinking, kissing, singing and even f*cking on the spot into the night. Some cried. Some laughed. Some screamed between sips.
A girl toasted the camera, eyeliner smeared down her cheeks.
"We're the last f*cking generation. Cheers, b*tches."
Her backdrop? Another nuclear fireball rising over the horizon. It lit the sky red and gold as her camera jittered and pixelated.
@FinalGenKid: "We did our best, right?"
@BoomersDidThis: "They said our lives would be better. Look at us now."
@LastHigh: "Drunk and defiant. That's how I'll go."
Multiple livestreams across all platforms captured the distant arrival of death. A bright flash. A cloud shaped like rage and finality.
Then the shockwave silent to the camera but felt across the eyes and bones of everyone watching. A boy on a skateboard rolled through the empty streets, camera strapped to his chest, facing the wrong way as behind him a mushroom cloud cracked open the sky.
He looked back once, whispered.
"Oh sh*t…"
And kept riding. In another city, the skyline shuddered. Buildings quaked. Windows burst. Livestreams went black one by one as the fallout began to rain.
@HeWasLive: "This was his last post... he kept skating. He didn't stop."
@RipDelhi: "They hit us. They actually hit us."
@NoMoreSilence: "World leaders are underground. We're left to burn."
@JustMeAndTheDog: "Anyone still alive in S*attle?"
@FalloutKing: "Nuclear winter's already here. I can smell ash in the rain."
@FaithInAshes: "Repent, pray, whatever you believe in, say it now."
@HistoryTeacher42: "R*me fell. The M*ngols fell. The N*zis fell. And now us. It was always going to end like this."
@SkyWatcher94: "Is it just me or is something falling from orbit?"
@WeDidThis: "There's no after. Only now. Make your peace."
The skies across the globe were painted with death falling ash, radioactive snow, storm winds blowing debris through skeletal cities.
The age of reason had ended. And the world, cradled by its own hubris, was collapsing under the weight of every warhead it had built for peace.
And somewhere above it all, satellites streamed the last days of humanity while hundreds of millions that died by the second watched, typed, and trembled.
The silence in the CIC was absolute. Even the hum of systems faded into white noise against the horror playing out on the screens. Cities gone. Nations gone. Civilization gone.
I didn't blink. Didn't speak. Just stood there, fingers curled loosely by my sides, watching the map of the mother E*rth bleed red.
I didn't feel rage. Not yet. I felt... cold. Like my blood had frozen into black ice. Detached. Almost weightless.
"What's the estimated casualty count?"
I asked. The words came out flat. Hollow. Too calm. Like I was reading a weather report, not tallying the apocalypse.
Invicta didn't answer immediately. Her glowing gold pupils flicked through windows and data projections. Her voice all cheerful as If millions didnt just die entered my ears.
"Lets see according to my calculations Its one… two… seven, almost eight billion, damn, you meatbags really outdid yourselves"
I said nothing. I just stared at the primary display as satellite footage cut from one worlds end to the other, just fire. Just dust. Just screams that never reached our ears.
And something inside me stirred. Not grief. Not guilt. Something older. Deeper. Hungrier. Primordial. Some kind of monster It was waking up now.
Crawling through my veins. Scratching at the inside of my ribcage. It had no name. But it whispered one truth in my mind, over and over.
Hahaha, so much death, so much destruction, so much chaos, I Iove It, I f*cking love It, give me more, more!
I clenched my jaw. I had decided that I wouldn't interfere. That this wasn't my problem. That I wasn't responsible for a species determined to destroy itself. But standing here, watching this?
The screaming faces. The hands clawing against locked shelter doors. The livestreams blinking offline mid plea. Children choking on ash. Parents cradling the charred remnants of their homes.
I had still subconciuosly believed that there was still something human left in humanity. Some ember of reason.
Of mercy. That even after all the greed, all the hatred, all the war and propaganda… somewhere deep down, the species still remembered what it meant to be human.
But no. They didn't hesitate. Not even a second. They had pressed the button with dry eyes and steady hands.
And I had let them. I'd let almost eight billion people die. Because I thought they deserved a reset. Because I thought the galaxy might be better without us.
Because I was tired from all the s*it i saw and experrienced through my forty years of life. But now, now as the screens showed empty cities, disintegrated dreams, and oceans turning black, all I could feel was something crawling out of me. Something I didn't understand. Something angry.
Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was grief. Maybe it was something worse. A part of me wanted to scream. Another part wanted to burn the last remaining governments to ash for what they had done.
But most of me? Most of me just wanted to forget this moment, forget my decision, forget the faces, forget the screams, forget ewrything.