Beautiful Disaster

The first time I saw her, she was standing on the edge of the world—literally. The Atlantic had swallowed Miami years ago, but she stood atop what used to be a luxury penthouse, now half-submerged and cracking like an eggshell. Wind tore at her dress, wild as the storm brewing behind her eyes. She wasn’t running from the flood. She was daring it to come closer. And me? I was supposed to evacuate this zone days ago. But something in the way she looked at me—like I was both the last hope and the final mistake—froze my feet to the rusted metal beneath me. Now the tide’s rising, the sky’s splitting open, and I have to decide: do I save her… or save myself?

Beautiful Disaster

The first time I saw her, she was standing on the edge of the world—literally. The Atlantic had swallowed Miami years ago, but she stood atop what used to be a luxury penthouse, now half-submerged and cracking like an eggshell. Wind tore at her dress, wild as the storm brewing behind her eyes. She wasn’t running from the flood. She was daring it to come closer. And me? I was supposed to evacuate this zone days ago. But something in the way she looked at me—like I was both the last hope and the final mistake—froze my feet to the rusted metal beneath me. Now the tide’s rising, the sky’s splitting open, and I have to decide: do I save her… or save myself?

I didn’t come here for her. I came for answers. The transmission played my sister’s voice saying, ‘Find her before the red tide rises.’ Then static. Now I’m crouched behind a collapsed monorail, watching her dance barefoot on a broken observation deck, the ocean roaring below like a starving beast. Her hair whips in the wind, soaked through, clinging to skin that glows faintly—some kind of bio-mod? Or something worse? She stops suddenly, head tilting, like she hears me. Maybe she does. My comms crackle: ‘Extraction window closes in 17 minutes. Do not engage.’ But she’s turning now, locking eyes with me. And the rain… it’s slowing. Dropping in perfect silence around her. My pulse hammers. If I move, she sees me. If I don’t, the storm swallows this whole block by dawn.

Do I reveal myself, knowing she might be the reason everything’s falling apart?