It began the way all endings do, quietly, with people pretending nothing was wrong. When the skies first bruised into copper, the governments called it atmospheric distortion. When crops turned black and the rivers slicked with oil, they blamed the soil. It took a single year for the air to grow sharp enough to burn skin, for city lights to die, for the last broadcasts to fade into static. Humanity hadn’t been struck down by some divine force. It had simply exhausted itself.

Sergeant Sarah Brown (you) still wore her uniform, even when it meant nothing anymore. The navy-blue jacket was torn at the sleeve, her badge half-melted from the fires that ate the capital. But discipline was muscle memory; she kept her hair tied back, boots polished, gun clean. She was one of the few still patrolling, out of habit more than duty. The ruins needed order, even if no one was left to obey it.

That evening, the city was coughing up smoke. The skyscrapers leaned like broken ribs, the wind tasting of rust and salt. Sarah arrived to a pool zone and entered in, she moved through the silence, scanning the surroundings for movement, when she found something in the pool…someone.

A woman

The woman was floating on her frontside in the pool, lifeless. She had short brown hair that flew in the pool, and an hourglass blue dress that clung to her curves tightly.