The SUV ride was a masterclass in motion sickness. Jake sat on the floor of the vehicle, his hands numbing behind his back, listening to the muffled sounds of things breaking outside.
It was a rhythmic symphony of glass shattering and distant explosions. Every time the driver hit a curb or swerved around a stalled car, Jake's head knocked against the interior paneling.
"Great," he thought. "I'm going to die of a concussion before I even find out who bought me."
When the door finally opened, the air didn't smell like the burning city he'd left behind. It smelled like expensive mulch and freshly cut grass.
He was hauled out of the vehicle and his feet hit a paved driveway that looked like it belonged in a car commercial. He looked up, squinting against a set of high-powered floodlights.
He wasn't in a bunker. He was at a palace. It was a massive, sprawling estate of glass and limestone, perched on a hill that overlooked the chaos below like a king watching a play from the balcony.
High concrete walls topped with electrified wire surrounded the perimeter, and men in the same matte black gear stood at regular intervals with rifles held across their chests.
"Keep moving, author," one of the guards said, giving him a shove that sent him stumbling toward the front entrance.
The interior of the house was even worse. It was full of the kind of art that people bought when they had more money than personality.
Huge, abstract canvases hung on the walls, and the furniture looked like it was designed to be looked at rather than sat upon.
They led him through a massive living room where a fire was roaring in a hearth the size of a garage.
At the center of the room, standing by a wall of monitors showing live feeds of the city's collapse, was a man who looked like he had been expecting Jake for dinner.
He was lean, wearing a tailored cashmere sweater and holding a glass of amber liquid that definitely wasn't fermented juice. He turned around, and his smile was so white and perfect it made Jake's skin crawl.
"Jake Morrison," the man said, his voice smooth and warm. "The man who saw it all coming. I have to say, the back cover photo doesn't do justice to the sheer terror in your eyes right now."
"I'm glad I could provide the entertainment," Jake said, trying to steady his breathing. "Is this the part where you tell me you're a big fan and ask for a signed copy? Because I'm a little short on pens at the moment."
The man chuckled and walked toward him. He gestured to the guards, who stepped forward and snipped Jake's zip-ties. Jake rubbed his wrists, the blood rushing back into his hands with a painful sting.
"My name is Silas," the man said. "And in a way, I am your biggest fan. You see this estate? The security protocols? The way we secured the regional water supply four hours before the first riot started? I did all of that using the blueprints you provided in Chapter 8. Your section on decentralized command structures was particularly enlightening."
Jake looked around the room. He saw a copy of his book sitting on a marble coffee table. It was dog-eared and covered in yellow highlighter marks. It felt like looking at a crime scene.
"That was a theory, Silas," Jake said. "It was a guide for community defense. It wasn't supposed to be a starter kit for a private kingdom."
"Oh, don't be so modest," Silas said, taking a sip of his drink. "You didn't write a community guide. You wrote a manual for survival of the fittest. You just didn't have the stomach to admit it to your readers. But that's not why you're here."
Silas stepped closer, his eyes losing some of that artificial warmth. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a thin, manila folder. He tossed it onto the table next to the book.
Jake didn't need to open it. He recognized the faded stamp on the corner of the envelope. It was the same seal he'd seen on the boxes in his father's attic.
"The book was a little too accurate, Jake," Silas whispered. "I did some digging. Your father wasn't just a paranoid history professor, was he? He was a consultant for the Department of Civil Defense during the Cold War. These documents... they aren't theories. They're the actual government contingency plans for a total collapse. Plans that were never supposed to see the light of day."
Jake felt a cold pit form in his stomach. He'd spent years translating his father's dense, bureaucratic notes into catchy, digestible chapters for the general public. He thought he was doing the world a favor by giving them a head start.
"My father was a packrat," Jake said, his voice flat. "He kept old papers. I just liked the way they sounded. It's fiction, Silas. I sold a fantasy."
Silas laughed, a sharp, dry sound. "Fiction doesn't predict the exact failure rate of the national power grid within a three-percent margin of error. You have the keys to the kingdom, Jake. You know the offensive strategies the government would use to regain control. You know how to dominate a territory, not just hide in it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Jake said.
"I think you do," Silas replied. "And if you don't, you're going to figure it out very quickly. I have enough food and ammunition to last five years, but I don't want to just last. I want to expand. I want the next three counties by the end of the month."
He signaled to the guards. They grabbed Jake by the arms again.
"Where are we going?" Jake asked, his legs feeling like lead.
"To your new office," Silas said, walking alongside them. "You're going to write me a sequel. Volume 2. But we're skipping the part about 'rebuilding society' and 'planting gardens.' I want the chapters on offensive domination. I want to know how to choke out the neighboring settlements before they even realize they're at war. I want the advanced resource hoarding tactics your father outlined in those classified files."
They reached a heavy oak door at the end of a long hallway. One of the guards unlocked it and pushed Jake inside.
The room was beautiful and terrifying. It was a high-end office with floor-to-ceiling windows that showed the distant, glowing embers of the horizon.
There was a mahogany desk, a comfortable leather chair, and a vintage typewriter sitting in the center of the desk next to a stack of blank paper.
There was also a guard standing by the door, his arms crossed over his tactical vest.
"You have a deadline," Silas said, standing in the doorway. "I want the first three chapters by sunrise. If you provide the level of detail I'm looking for, you'll be treated like a guest of honor. You'll eat the best food, drink the best wine, and be the safest man on the planet."
"And if I don't?" Jake asked.
Silas smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes this time. "Then I'll assume the book was just a fluke and I'll have no further use for the author. And in this new world, Jake, things that don't have a use get recycled."
The door shut and the lock clicked into place. Jake stood in the center of the room, listening to the silence.
He walked over to the desk and ran his fingers over the keys of the typewriter. It felt heavy and permanent.
"You've got to be kidding me," he thought. "I'm a prisoner of my own ghostwriting."
He looked at the guard. The man didn't even look at him. He was like a statue, staring at the far wall.
"Hey," Jake said. "You got a name? Or do they just call you Guard Number One?"
The guard remained silent.
"Cool," Jake muttered. "Great talk. Very productive."
He sat down in the leather chair. It was incredibly comfortable, which somehow made the whole situation worse.
He looked at the blank page. How was he supposed to do this? His father's notes were a jumble of codes and logistical nightmares.
He had cherry-picked the defensive stuff because it felt useful. The offensive stuff—the "domination" Silas wanted—was dark. It was the kind of stuff that turned people into monsters.
"If I write this," Jake thought, "I'm literally handing him the whip to lash everyone else with. If I don't write it, I'm a corpse by breakfast."
He thought about the woman at the grocery store, the man with the medication, and the teenager with the fire exit. They were all out there, probably dying or worse, because they followed a version of his advice that was incomplete.
And now Silas wanted to use the rest of it to finish them off.
He leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
"Dad, you old bastard," he thought. "You told me these papers were just insurance. You never said they were a blueprint for a warlord."
He looked at the typewriter again. He had to do something. He couldn't just sit here and wait to be executed, but he couldn't give Silas what he wanted either. He needed time.
He needed to find a way to mess with the information, to give Silas enough to keep him interested but not enough to actually win.
He reached out and pressed a single key. The clack of the typewriter echoed in the room like a gunshot.
"Chapter 1," he whispered to himself. "The Art of the Siege."
He started to type, his mind racing faster than his fingers. He wasn't writing a manual anymore. He was writing a suicide note or a revolution, and he wasn't sure which one yet.
He just knew that if he was going to survive the night, he had to become the expert Silas thought he was. He had to be the man on the back cover, even if that man was a liar.
He glanced at the window. The sun was still hours away, and the world was still ending. In here, the light was soft and the air was conditioned
, but the walls were closing in.
"I hope you're happy, Dad," he thought. "I'm finally in the family business."