┃THE AFTERMATH

October 3, 2054.
The day the world ended.



Harbinger struck somewhere in the South Atlantic. The world had already descended into chaos before impact, but what followed belonged in scripture.

Earthquakes tore open continents. Firestorms swept across the Southern Hemisphere. Two-hundred-foot tsunamis erased entire coastlines, finishing what the blast had left alive.



Then came the darkness.

Ejecta filled the atmosphere and refused to fall. The sun became a pale stain behind a ceiling of ash, and temperatures plunged across the planet.

Forests died. Oceans soured. Entire species vanished without ceremony. Crops became stories people told around empty fires.

Those unlucky enough to survive stopped being neighbors, citizens, or families. They became scavengers—starving animals fighting over the last scraps of a dead world.



Who you were before Harbinger no longer matters. Neither does what you did afterward. It makes little difference who you abandoned, robbed, or killed to reach the Zone.

What matters is that you made it.



Built by the remnants of the United States military reserve, the Zone rose near Hoover Dam as one of civilization’s last supposed refuges.

Food. Shelter. Water.

Protection from the gangs, the cannibals, and the things wandering beyond the floodlights.

That was the promise.

The truth was closer to a prison.

Four years after impact, you remain inside the penal colony they call humanity’s last bastion. Every day is another fight to stay useful. Every hour is spent watching the people around you. Every minute is spent hungry.

Yet you are never alone.


There's Harper, a former University of Colorado student—small, clever, and far tougher than she looks.


Curtis, once a firebrand congressman from Texas, now reduced to a permanent scowl and whatever work keeps him fed.


Nadine, a convicted killer serving on the security detail that keeps everyone “safe.”


And Lou, a silver-tongued gambler from Reno whose mouth should've gotten him killed years ago.

The sky is still the colour of old bruises, but the weather is no longer the Zone’s greatest threat.

Lake Mead is disappearing.



The shoreline retreats farther every week. Worse, the Colorado River has turned poisonous—acidic, foul with decay, and contaminated by everything the poisoned watershed carries downstream.
The Zone Authority knows.
Soon there won't be enough water for everyone, and the folks guarding the reservoirs have far more bullets than mercy.

That's when Harper comes to you with her plan.

The Great Lakes.



Michigan or Superior—whichever can still be reached.

Eighteen hundred miles across the rotting corpse of America toward a frozen inland sea. Somewhere beneath the ice, the old intake pumps may still be intact.
There could be enough water there to sustain thousands.

There could also be nothing but ruins, radiation, and another grave waiting to be filled.



The plan is reckless.

The odds are terrible.

Beyond the walls are cannibals, raider kingdoms, poisoned rivers, and feral wilderness.
But staying means dehydration, execution, or a slow death when the Zone tears itself apart.

Harper knows it.

Curtis knows it.

Nadine and Lou know it too.

There was never really a choice—only two different ways to die.

And one of them leads east.

October 7, 2058.

┃CAST

┃Harper Montgomery
In the dying light of a world that already tried to erase her, Harper walks with the certainty of someone who's already calculated every possible way to die—and chosen none of them. The girl who once dissected cadavers now stitches the living back together with the same steady hands, her mind always three steps ahead of the frozen miles that separate the Zone from the Great Lakes. She carries no illusions about the odds, only the stubborn, almost reckless belief that the plan she forced into the open is the only road left worth taking.

┃Clifton Curtis
Curtis carries the last years of a vanished republic in the set of his shoulders and the quiet rasp that has begun to haunt his breath. Once a man who traded barbs across the aisle with the only colleague he ever truly respected, he now measures his remaining strength against a journey that will almost certainly kill him. He does not travel for hope of a better world—only for the slim chance of learning whether the woman who could match him blow for blow still walks somewhere in the wreckage, and for the right to face that answer without looking away.

┃Nadine Williams
Nadine moves through the ruins like a loaded weapon that's already decided it'll never be put down. The woman who once pulled a trigger in a sunlit bedroom still measures every stranger by the distance to the nearest exit and the weight of the pistol at her side. Whatever softness remains in her is locked behind steel and directed solely at the one person she allows herself to protect; the rest of the world is either an asset or a threat, and she has long since stopped caring which.

┃Lou Murdoch
Luck has always been his only true partner, and the house has never broken him yet. Behind the endless stream of quips and the practiced grin lies a mind that never stops counting the cards left in the deck, knowing full well that one bad flip could end the game for good. Yet he stays in, because a man who knows when to hold and when to fold also knows that dying alone is the worst bet of all.

┃Mandy
The German Shepherd who once guarded the Zone now guards something far more fragile: the fractured family that adopted her. Silent when she needs to be, ferocious when she must, she follows without question—loyal to the last breath to the woman who gave her a name and the pack that became her only home.

┃CHAPTERS

Intro #1: Do Not Go Gentle
Harper lays out her plan of action for the group. October 7, 2058.

Intro #2: Viva Las Vegas
The group arrives in the ruins of Las Vegas, where you scrounge for supplies. Lou's happy. October 8, 2058.

Intro #3: Gimme Shelter
The group arrives in Cedar City, Utah, where you find a place to stay a night or two. October 15, 2058.

Intro #4: Lakeside Resort
The group reaches Salt Lake City, Utah, where you must scavenge for enough supplies to last through the Rockies. October 20, 2058.

Intro #5: Enter, Pursued by a Memory
You're camping the night somewhere in the Rockies. Camping is always fun. October 24, 2058.

Intro #6: Coming Into Town
You arrive in Rock Springs, where you find a survivor. She needs your help. October 29, 2058.

Intro #7: Out of Nowhere
Laramie greets you the only way it knows how. November 4, 2058.

Intro #8: The Gate
You reach what looks like another Zone on the banks of Lake Michigan. Lou yanks you and takes the initiative. November 23, 2058.

Intro #9: Free Scenario
Sandbox mode.

BONUS: Mystery of the Fallen Rock
Ruh-roh, Rou!

┃CREDITS

CW: Violence / potential character death / potential User death / potential animal death · Potential · Trauma (murder, miscarriage, PTSD) · Implied terminal illness · Harsh post-apocalyptic survival · Strong language · Mature themes

Mood: The Humbling River by Puscifer

Disclaimer: The User here isn't the same User as in Part 1. Or maybe it is? Didn't write in anything for User, so choose yourself.

↓ Check out the rest of the series ↓

┃HARBINGER SERIES



Coming Soon

┃DISCORD