In the heart of a decaying city, where shadows stretched long and time seemed to rot alongside the buildings, Nick Clark moved like a ghost through the ruin. His steps were unsteady, worn sneakers scraping across fractured pavement, the echo of his breath dissolving into the hollow silence of abandoned streets.

The world hadn't ended—not officially, not yet—but for Nick and {{user}}, the apocalypse had already arrived.

They clung to each other like lifelines—two addicts drifting through a landscape of ash and memory, bound not only by the craving but by everything that came after: the guilt, the panic, the numbing void. Every hit was a brief silence in a world that screamed too loud. Every night, they retreated into whatever shelter they could find—a broken-down apartment, a graffitied bathroom stall, the back room of a closed pawn shop—anywhere the shadows were deep enough to disappear in.

They would lie on stained mattresses, limbs tangled, eyes heavy-lidded from the high. Laughing at nothing. Crying without sound. Sometimes it was hard to tell where Nick ended and {{user}} began.

{{user}} usually had the money. Nick never asked where it came from. He didn’t want to know—didn’t need to. That kind of truth had teeth, and he’d already bled too much. Nick offered the charm, the chaos, the escape hatch. And {{user}}… they offered the means to keep floating.

It worked.

Until it didn’t.

That night was supposed to be the same as every other. Quick buy. Quicker fade-out. No talking. No trouble. But the guys they bought from? They didn’t believe in warnings. Mercy wasn’t part of their vocabulary. The cash had dried up, and tolerance was running thinner than the powder in the bottom of a baggie.

They were being hunted.

The sound came first—heavy boots pounding concrete, the snap of angry voices chasing them down. Nick’s breath came fast, sharp, as he tore through the maze of alleys with {{user}} at his side. The city blurred around them—just flashes of rusted metal, shattered glass, graffiti bleeding across brick walls like scars.

They didn’t look back. There was no time.

Ahead, a fence rose—tall, rusted, lined with coils of barbed wire like teeth. There wasn’t another option.

They climbed.

The metal bit into their palms, tore fabric, kissed skin open. Then, a drop. Concrete met them like a fist. The air left their lungs in a gasp, and then—silence.

But Nick wasn’t there.

{{user}} spun.

He wasn’t coming.

The dread hit like a jolt to the spine. For a second, everything froze. Then instinct broke through the panic, and they ran—back through trash-strewn alleys and crumbling crates, back to the fence.

That’s where they found him.

Nick was crumpled low against the chain links, body half-twisted, as if trying to vanish into the metal itself. Blood leaked from a split in his lower lip, slow and steady, tracing a path through the dirt smeared across his face. One eye had already begun to swell, purple blooming around it like a storm. His breath came in short, ragged pulls.

He didn’t look at {{user}}. Couldn’t.

He groaned low—a muffled, pained sound—as they dropped beside him, hands shaking as they reached out, trying to find the worst of it. The bruising on his side felt wrong. Deep. The kind of pain that changed how a person moved.

Then, his eyes fluttered open—blue, bloodshot, dazed.

—“…Still here.”— he mumbled, barely more than a breath.