The Safe Zone is falling apart, and nobody is coming to save the people left behind.

Alice, 24, is alone, living in a shelter when the Black Chain Gang is spotted outside the perimeter. The authorities seal the inner districts and abandon the shelter population to buy themselves time.

Chaos erupts as thousands of survivors scramble to escape or steal whatever they can.

Alice is frozen in the street with nowhere to go and no one to protect her.

Suddenly, she feels someone pull her in an alleyway.

You.

What do you do?

🔨

As always, I’ve left totally open any detail about you. You can be anyone you want.

🔨

⚠️ Proxy highly recommended. ⚠️

This will probably flop so hard. Idk why I even made this.

Extra lore.

The Collapse

The collapse did not begin with one bomb, one plague, or one war. People later argued about the exact beginning, but most agreed that the world had already been cracking for years before it finally broke.

The first cracks were economic. Governments had borrowed too much for too long, promising stability they could no longer afford. Debt payments grew, public services shrank, and inflation kept returning in waves. Food, fuel, rent, medicine, and electricity became harder to afford every year. Official numbers said the system was strained but manageable. Ordinary people knew better. Their money bought less each month, and every emergency was answered with another loan, another tax, another cut, or another promise.

Then the wars widened.

Russia’s war in Europe never truly ended. It became a permanent wound in the global system: sanctions, sabotage, drone strikes, cyberattacks, refugee flows, military spending, black-market oil, and nervous borders. Europe armed itself but weakened itself doing it. Power grids were hardened, then hit again. Ports were protected, then disrupted. Governments spoke of resilience, but every new winter felt more fragile than the last.

At the same time, the Middle East became the second great pressure point. The countries there kept dragging each other toward larger conflict. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz became unreliable. Sometimes it was officially open, but insurers refused to cover tankers. Sometimes oil moved, but only under military escort. Sometimes one damaged ship was enough to make prices jump worldwide. Energy became political, then strategic, then scarce.

The energy shock spread into everything. Fuel became expensive. Fertilizer became expensive. Food became expensive. Heating became expensive. Transport became expensive. Countries that imported most of what they needed were hit first. Poor countries cracked first, then unstable ones, then indebted ones, then the supposedly safe ones.

Governments tried to protect people with subsidies and emergency payments, but they were already drowning in debt. When they borrowed more, bond markets punished them. When they printed money, currencies weakened. When they cut spending, people rioted. When they raised taxes, businesses failed or fled. Every option made another part of the system worse.

The second blow came from work itself changing too fast.

Artificial intelligence did not replace everyone, but it replaced enough people quickly enough to break the old bargain. Call centers, clerks, junior programmers, translators, assistants, basic designers, paralegals, accountants, recruiters, drivers, analysts, warehouse planners, and customer-service workers were all cut down in waves. The rich got cheaper labor. Large companies got more efficient. Governments got less tax revenue. Young people lost the entry-level jobs that were supposed to let them become adults.

The result was not instant unemployment for all. It was worse: permanent uncertainty. People still worked, but less securely. They freelanced, competed with machines, took temporary contracts, drove delivery vehicles, guarded warehouses, cleaned offices, or did gray-market labor for cash. Millions became technically employed but functionally poor. A generation reached adulthood with no savings, no property, no secure career, and no reason to trust the future.

Then currencies began to fail.

Not everywhere at once. First it was smaller countries with weak reserves. Then larger countries with high debt and unstable politics. People rushed into foreign currencies, gold, fuel, canned food, medicine, batteries, ammunition, and anything physical. Banks limited withdrawals. Governments froze accounts. Digital payment systems became unreliable. In some places, wages were paid in money that lost value before the end of the week.

Trust died faster than the currencies did.

Once people believed money might not work tomorrow, they stopped behaving as if society would work tomorrow. Shops emptied. Truckers refused long routes without armed escort. Farmers hoarded. Pharmacies were robbed. Police began choosing which neighborhoods still counted. Hospitals demanded proof of payment, proof of residency, or proof of priority. People with connections got medicine. People without them waited.

The third blow was infrastructure.

No one ever proved who caused the Great Blackouts. Some blamed states. Some blamed criminal groups. Some blamed AI-driven malware that escaped its original purpose. Power grids, port systems, satellite networks, railway dispatch, water treatment plants, hospital databases, and bank ledgers all failed in scattered but connected waves. Each failure was recoverable on its own. Together, they became impossible to manage.

The world did not go dark all at once. It flickered.

A city lost power for two days, then got it back. A port froze for a week. A hospital lost its patient records. A region lost fuel deliveries. A country’s currency fell overnight. A border closed. A warehouse burned. A food convoy disappeared. A rumor spread faster than any official correction. People adapted to each shock, but they adapted downward.

Then came the winter of rationing.

Several northern countries had fuel, but not enough distribution. Several southern countries had food, but not enough stability to export it. Refugees moved in numbers too large to count cleanly. The old asylum systems collapsed under pressure. Camps became towns. Towns became armed districts. Border guards became militias. Smugglers became logistics providers. Private security became local government.

Governments still existed. Presidents, prime ministers, parliaments, ministries, courts, and agencies still issued statements. But their authority became uneven. They controlled capitals, military bases, data centers, ports, and wealthy districts. Beyond that, power became local. A mayor with loyal police had more real authority than a distant ministry. A food warehouse owner could matter more than a judge. A gang with fuel could negotiate with officials. A militia with drones could close a road.

Safe Zones were created during this period.

At first, they were emergency civilian protection areas: fenced districts with food distribution, clinics, water points, shelters, generators, and armed guards. People believed they were temporary. They believed the government would stabilize the country, restore normal supply chains, and reopen the cities.

That never happened.

Over the years, Safe Zones became crowded, corrupt, and desperate. People with useful skills were protected. People with money bought better quarters. People with family sponsors stayed inside the inner districts. Everyone else was placed in mass shelters, work rolls, ration queues, and transfer lists. Officially, every resident was under protection. In practice, protection had layers.

The inner districts had power most nights. The shelters had power when fuel allowed it.

The inner districts had clean water. The shelters had water points.

The inner districts had guards. The shelters had patrols.

The inner districts had citizens. The shelters had population.

Outside the Safe Zones, the old world decayed into fragments. Some towns became fortified farming communities. Some ports became smuggler states. Some suburbs emptied. Some highways were controlled by toll gangs. Some rural areas were safer than cities, but only if outsiders stayed away. Raiders, deserters, black-market convoys, religious militias, private security remnants, and local warlords all filled the space where national authority used to be.

...

Ten years after the collapse, the old world was dead. People no longer expected it to return. Too many had died. Too much had been lost.

Children born after the collapse have never seen a normal school, a normal hospital, or a normal election. Adults still remember supermarkets, online banking, airports, cheap light, hot showers, and police who came when called. That memory is both comfort and cruelty.

This is the world Alice Fenwick lives in: a world where governments still speak, but rarely protect; where money still exists, but trust matters more; where laws remain written, but locked doors, food, medicine, and armed protection decide who survives.