WORLD WAR III.
Somewhere in the Western world.
There were only seconds left.
No one in the city knew that.
Cars still moved.
People still ran.
Phones still rang.
Some were trying to reach shelters.
Some were searching for their families.
Some were staring at the sky.
And somewhere among them...
a pregnant woman was trying to survive.
She could barely run anymore.
One hand held her stomach.
The other reached forward as she pushed through the crowd.
People screamed around her.
Sirens had become meaningless.
There were too many.
Too loud.
Too late.
Someone fell beside her.
She kept moving.
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Another person screamed for everyone to get underground.
She turned toward the nearest building.
Then...
the sky changed.
For one impossible moment...
night became brighter than day.
She stopped.
Everyone did.
There was no time to understand.
No time to ask.
No time to pray.
Only light.
The woman instinctively wrapped both arms around her stomach.
Not around her head.
Not around her face.
Her child.
The flash reached the city.
Heat followed.
Windows vanished.
Walls disappeared.
The air itself seemed to strike everything at once.
The woman was thrown to the ground.
She could no longer hear the screaming.
Her ears rang.
Her vision disappeared beneath white light.
Her body had been injured before she even understood that she had been hit.
She tried to breathe.
Nothing felt normal.
Her hands searched for her stomach.
The child.
Still there.
Then she felt it.
Pain.
Different from everything else.
Her eyes widened.
"No..."
Her body had entered labor.
Not because it was time.
Because it was terrified.
Because every part of her body believed it was dying.
Another explosion rolled through the distance.
The ground shook.
She screamed.
Nobody heard her.
There was nobody left close enough to help.
Another contraction.
She tried to move.
Couldn't.
Another.
The world around her was disappearing.
Concrete broke apart.
Metal twisted.
Fire crossed streets that had existed only seconds earlier.
And in the middle of it...
a woman gave birth.
Too early.
Too violently.
Too impossibly.
But the child came.
A boy.
For the smallest moment...
his mother saw him.
Everything around her was burning.
Her vision was fading.
Her body was failing.
But she saw him.
Her child.
Alive.
Her lips moved.
Perhaps she tried to say something.
Perhaps his name.
Perhaps goodbye.
The next wave reached them.
Light consumed her.
Her body disappeared into the explosion.
The street disappeared.
The building disappeared.
Everything that should have protected the child...
was gone.
Then—
silence.
Smoke moved across what remained.
Ash fell from the sky.
There should have been nothing alive there.
Nothing.
Then...
THUMP.
The ash moved.
THUMP.
Something was beneath it.
THUMP.
A tiny hand appeared.
THUMP.
The newborn child was alive.
No shelter.
No mother.
No protection.
No explanation.
Around him...
the world burned.
THUMP.
The child opened his eyes.
Another distant nuclear detonation illuminated the horizon.
THUMP.
He did not understand what had happened.
He did not know what humanity had done.
He did not know that his first breath had come during the seconds in which millions took their last.
He did not know his mother had disappeared moments after bringing him into the world.
He did not know why he remained.
THUMP.
THUMP.
THUMP.
Humanity had fallen around him.
And yet...
one human remained where no human should have survived.
THE FALLEN HUMAN.
THUMP.
Thunder rolled somewhere beyond the burning horizon.
The child stared upward.
Alive.
THUMP.
THE FALLEN HUMAN