CHAPTER 47: LIGHTS OUT

By the time the sun dipped behind the red-brick rooftops of City H, the power had been out for over five days.

At first, no one cared.

It was summer, after all. Students spilled out of the university buildings with ice coffees and end-of-term energy. The dormitory floors buzzed with energy—laughter, music, flickering candles meant for ambiance, not survival. Most assumed it was a simple grid reset. A routine blip.

But Sera didn’t.

She had felt it in her skin—like pressure building under her fingernails. Not the creature, but something else. A memory, maybe. Something whispered by the part of her that always listened when no one else did.

By nightfall on the first day, the panic began.

The elevators stopped working. The card scanners on the dorm room doors failed. Streetlights didn’t flicker on; instead, they cast the sidewalks in uneven patches of shadow until even the moon tried to hide. No one could charge their phones. Grocery stores closed their doors, unable to process payments. Students crowded the lobbies, arguing over food, fretting about digital class deadlines, borrowing battery packs, and trying to Google what was going on.

But nothing came up.

After all, without power, there was no internet.

And Sera—quiet, strange Sera—lit a single beeswax candle in her dorm room, clicked off her flashlight to conserve the battery, and sat in silence on her bed.

The creature inside her was calm. Pleased, even.

It liked the dark.

The humming of the lights, the fans, the motors of things you didn’t even really notice until it was gone, was gone. Everything was silent.

And it was heaven.

She listened to the hallway chaos—the sound of people demanding answers from no one, crying over dead cell phones, and scavenging snacks from vending machines. She imagined their pupils blown wide, their brains ticking faster than they should. Survival hadn’t been something they’d prepared for. Not really.

They thought food came from delivery apps. That everything could be fixed with a single call.

However, Sera knew better.

She got up, moved to her locked trunk under her bed, and quietly began packing. Not because she was afraid. Not even because she was in danger. But because she was taking this moment as a mini test.

After all, she knew that it would still be months before the true emergency came. The only thing was that she didn’t remember this power outage from her last life.

Shrugging her shoulders, dismissing it, she continued to pack up.

When the world began to panic, she didn’t want to be surrounded by it.

The backpack was ready in seconds. She rolled the last chocolate bar into her sweater, secured her battery-powered radio into the front pocket, and shouldered it without a sound. A knife, a compact water purifier, a pouch of dried beef jerky, a USB battery with crank—everything she needed to get to the cabin without trouble.

She cracked the window to check the air. Still warm. Summer had settled in fully, which meant that the sun lasted longer into the night. But still, for the people around her, that wasn’t enough. They weren’t willing to go to sleep when the sun set; they weren’t willing to adjust their world for the reality hitting them in their heads.

Turning around, she blew out the single candle and left her dorm, noticing that it had been over four months since she last saw her roommate.

Oh well, she wasn’t her mother. It wasn’t up to her to keep track of everyone or everything around her.

Leaving the dorm with no lock, no one bothered to stop her.

They were too busy charging down the stairs, waving dead phones, and demanding that the university just do something. Like it was their fault the entire city had lost power.

-----

City H looked different without lights.

Traffic signals were out. Some intersections were packed with stalled cars, people yelling through open windows. Others were eerily silent, the asphalt empty as though everyone had abandoned them at once. A few of the corner stores had already been looted. The glass cracked, doors hanging open like broken teeth. A dog barked from inside a high-rise apartment. Someone shouted in another language down a side street.

But Sera didn’t stop moving.

The creature inside of her was alert but not agitated. It liked the dark. It liked the quiet. But it didn’t like the city. Too many unknowns. Too many loud, fragile pieces crashing around.

When the first drops of rain began to fall, Sera lifted her chin and welcomed them. Summer storms were always fast in City H. Just enough to wet the pavement and smear the street chalk drawings into pastel ghosts. It was over by the time she reached the forest trail that led to the cabin.

By the time she entered her home, it was already the middle of the night. She hadn’t run, hadn’t rushed. She had simply walked from the dorms to her cabin like she had all the time in the world.

Letting out a long sigh of relief, Sera closed her eyes. Here, there was no panic. No shouting. Just cedar and dust and the faint scent of chocolate left behind from the last visit. The cabin walls didn’t care about blackouts or failed satellites or the slow unraveling of digital society.

It had always been its own world.

Sera lit another candle, set it on the center table, and slowly unpacked. Her batteries were rotated, her radio still had power. She clicked it on and turned the dial until static became a voice.

"...widespread outages in City H... emergency crews are trying to assess the cause..."

She turned the volume down and walked to the window.

No lights. No airplanes overhead. No movement on the road.

The world was still.

She boiled water on her camp stove, poured it over some tea, and sipped slowly from her chipped mug. The candle crackled in the corner. Outside, something moved in the underbrush, but she didn’t react.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t here for her.

She had her traps.

She had her knife.

She had herself.

By morning, the city still wouldn’t have power. And the longer it stayed down, the more people would begin to realize what she already knew—how easy it was for civilization to slip. How quickly security became scarcity. How loud people got when they were afraid.

But here... in this little patch of forest, lit by soft firelight and filled with blankets and silence...

The creature inside her purred.

And for once, Sera let herself exhale.

She agreed with her other half.

The silence was nice.