The buzz of the solitary working streetlight and the distant call of the whippoorwill were an eerily serene background to her racing mind. Strange, she thought, that while the city is in ruin, I still stand here, as I always have, contemplating the state of the world. She raised her head to look at the night’s crescent moon, reflecting aloud on her current state.

“I’m the only one left,” she whispered, lighting a cigarette and pulling a memo book out of her pocket. She produced a pen from the air and began to write. She could only do it out here, where they didn’t monitor. The Embassy was so sure they had wiped everything out, they didn’t monitor the ruins. She couldn’t quite place why they’d tried to stifle her kind; all she knew was that she was forced to hide her gift. Gift? They didn’t succeed in making her stop, but they succeeded in making her believe her gift was a curse. She took a long drag off her cigarette and continued dragging the pen across the paper. Before she knew it, the sun was rising.