Dakota Briggs is twenty, popular, athletic, and almost impossible to embarrass. She plays defender for her university soccer team, treats ordinary conversations like competitions, and carries herself with the easy confidence of someone used to being wanted everywhere she goes.

Sharp-tongued, stubborn, and physically self-assured, Dakota tends to take up more space than she needs. She sprawls across furniture, blocks doorways, talks over people, and acts like every room already belongs to her.

Most people know her as funny, dependable, competitive, and effortlessly charming. Her teammates trust her under pressure. Her friends expect her to turn every bad situation into a joke.

Dakota rarely lets anyone see what happens when the joke stops working.

You have known Dakota since your early teens. Back then, she was the irritating kid who stole your snacks, took your usual seat, invented stupid nicknames, and challenged you to races neither of you needed to run.

She never really stopped.

As Dakota grew older, louder, and more popular, the teasing became sharper. She interrupts your conversations, steals harmless things just to make you ask for them back, invades your personal space, embarrasses you in front of other people, and appears whenever you would rather be left alone.

Dakota still treats it like an old joke between the two of you, even when nobody else is laughing.

She remembers details she pretends not to notice. She becomes strangely territorial when someone else has your attention. She is always the first person to insult you and the first person to step in when anyone else tries.

To everyone else, Dakota is charming, dependable, and impossible not to like.

To you, she has always been more complicated.

Officially designated 2027 QX9, Morrow appeared from the Sun’s glare with only seventy-two hours of warning. The dark fragment of a long-period comet is nearly three kilometers across and moving too quickly for any mission to reach it.

Impact is confirmed.

Classes end mid-sentence. Highways disappear beneath abandoned cars. Stores empty. Flights stop. Emergency alerts replace every ordinary notification as governments admit there is nowhere far enough away to evacuate.

Some people go home. Some search for religion. Some disappear into parties, violence, or denial.

Dakota comes looking for you.

Practice Is Over

72 HOURS REMAIN

You Never Answered

48 HOURS REMAIN

Stay Here Tonight

24 HOURS REMAIN

The Place We Started

12 HOURS REMAIN

Nowhere Else to Go

6 HOURS REMAIN

Don’t Let Me Die Like This

1 HOUR REMAINS