The moment the stream ended, my screen chimed once and went to static.
Not a content ban. Not a moderation cutoff. The platform's servers had simply died.
City power still held, the network still breathed. But servers scattered across the country didn't all die at once. The little rigs running out of some admin's bedroom or back office had gone dark days ago. Big corporate setups could run untended for a long time. This particular video giant, though, had just called it quits.
Which meant the internet carnival was winding down for good. Soon nobody would be left to vent online. From here on, everyone would face the end times face to face.
I closed the site and opened my own downloaded library instead. I'd grabbed everything worth grabbing back when it was possible — a private archive to last a lonely lifetime.
I was halfway through the movie, plate finished, reaching to pause — when the monitor began beeping.
I was at the console in seconds. Every camera on the property fed into this one machine, and up in the corner of the wall of screens, one small window had lit up.
I blinked at the feed. It was the warehouse I'd rented — before. I'd taken Summer and every last supply out on outbreak day and forgotten the cameras.
Stolen story; please report.
The feed was showing my old warehouse door being forced, right now. And because I'd bought cameras with audio, the talk outside came through with it. This chapter is updated first at novelping dot com.
"That woman rented this from me half a month before it all went down. I saw delivery trucks in and out of here constantly — she's got supplies, guaranteed!"
"But you rented it TO her. Walking in is illegal, isn't it?"
"Illegal?! It's the end of the world! Grab it and GO!"
"He's right — if she's got that much, some of it's ours by rights!"
CRASH. The warehouse door gave, and the old landlord led his crowd in at a rush.
And then they all just… stopped. Staring at an empty floor.
What the—
It's EMPTY?!
The old landlord kept staring at the bare, paperless floor. "Impossible! I SAW the trucks, every day! She came by every day — how could she have moved it all!"
"Then you read it wrong! Maybe the deliveries weren't even hers — ever think they were just dropping stuff and leaving?!"
"What a waste of a trip. We nearly died being seen walking over here with you—"
The crowd grumbled itself back out the door. The landlord, red-faced, happened to glance up on his way — spotted the camera I'd left behind, and smashed it off the wall with one swing.
One camera fewer.
I leaned back hard into my chair, grinning. I'd known people would start looking at their neighbors this way — I'd rented that warehouse on purpose, months ago, as the decoy. If the end of the world had caught me with everyone knowing where my real base was, the ugliness would have come knocking on that door instead. Prepared beats lucky. Careful beats sorry.
Watching them slink home empty-handed was its own small festival.
Still. I'd always been the type to keep a ledger.
The old man who smashed my camera — I'd remember him.