The year is 202X, and Siang Cheng is having the tie of his life. He had been travelling in China with his family for the past few days, although most of the time he walks around alone, separated from the rest of his family. He took this time to experience some really weird things, like doing some questionably legal stuffs, and he managed to sneaked into a shooting ground for a TV or a Movie by pretending to be an extra and signing his name on the registration list for the extras.

But today, he is with his family, and they are going to some place that Siang Cheng didn't cared enough to ask. They took a taxi and arrived in a building located right next to a busy highway. The building is fairly tall, about 20-30m in height, it is half cylinder dome shaped, with a giant entrance facing the highway. There are small
stalls and counters inside the building. Siang Cheng still didn't know what this place is supposed to be, but he sees a lot of people in the building and the crowd quite loud, so he assumes it to be an exhibition or sort.

Siang Cheng and the rest of his family is queuing in a stall when it happened. He heard a low pitch but fairly loud "thud", and he moved his eyes away from his phone and looked up. He saw a small white dot in the horizon, and then it becomes bigger, and bigger, just when he was about to tell the rest of his family, the shockwave arrived. Sending a strong wind that passed right throughthe building, and knocking down a few signs and some stanchions.

A mushroom cloud rises from the white dot. It is, without a doubt in Siang Cheng's mind. A nuclear explosion that just hit the center of the city of where they are right now. Even though where they are is far away enough that the explosion wouldn't post any immedient threats, he can't help but wonder: what caused this? Is it a nuclear reactor meltdown?But that's highly unlikely in a densely populated city center. Does that mean this is a nuclear attacks carried out by a foreign power?

While Siang Cheng's spacing out, his father says that his phone is lost all signals. Siang Cheng looked at his phone too, and the internet is sitting at 0 bars, with the words "no service" on the top of the screen. Whatever happened, it knocked down the internet cables and phone line almost immediately. People in the crowd are panicking, so they started running around and the whole building erupted into chaos. Siang Cheng and his family decided to abandon the queue, and they walked to a bench located near the walls of the
building and sat down there. Siang Cheng is still desperately trying to google what happened. But with 0 internet connection, he soon gave up.

They sat there, watching the panicking crowd, with his mother trying to calm his little sister down, who is crying hysterically. However Siang Cheng himself didn't really know what to think, he was simply confused. He never thought such a thing would be possible.

So they sat there, with nothing to do except eating bread and drinking mineral water, and watching the panicking crowd. The event organizer broadcasted an announcement trying to calm everyone down, but to no avail, as they had no idea what happened either, and you can almost hear the panic in the announcer's voice as well.

Sooner or later, it's now 7pm, and it is getting darker. The crowd generally calmed down a lot, probably because they realised that panicking does nothing in this situation. Everyone is siting on the ground in circles. The power of the building went out sometimes ago, but the interior of the building isn't exactly dark, as the headlights of the cars on the highway outside passing by, and the bright light from the city center, which Siang Cheng assumed is a fire caused by the explosion, lighten up the surrounding. Speaking of the cars, Siang Cheng suddenly realised the traffics haven't stopped since the explosion, there's obviously more horns can be heard, but it's still in general order. Some cars simply pulled over and park illegally on the side of the highway, and the people walked in the building, trying to look for answers, but no one have any.

So the spot Siang Cheng and his family sitting on is getting too dark, so they decided to move and sit into a circle of people, they started a small fire in the middle of the circle. And some people are telling stories to each other because no one had any things better to do. Siang Cheng didn't paid any attention to the story, he is simply spacing out. He did overheard a 20 yo girl talking about her name, saying she's from Japan, and talking about her childhood, he didn't cared to remember any of the contents of the story though.

So then some yelling came from the back of the building, the event organizers found some small diesel electric generators from their warehouse, and they are trying to ask for help from some of the men in the building to carry and set them up. Siang Cheng, seeing there's something that he can do to take off his mind off the situation, decided to volunteer to help them. Although his parents tell him it is probably the bad idea to be seperated right now, Siang Cheng told them it'll be fine and walked away from the circle towards the organizers in the back.

After the generators are properly set up, the organizers said that now they need someone to try connecting them to the main circuit board of the building properly. As the crowd is spread out very unevenly in the building, the organizers thought that they should only power up the lights where there's people sitting around, to try and waste as little of the
limited electricity they had as possible. So Siang Cheng is tasked to connect the wires to the specific part of the circuit board. He connects the generators to specific set of wires, and then turn the power on, and a few runners would go around the building to report which areas of the lights are on, then Siang Cheng would turn off the power, reconnect the wires, turn on the power, and sent the runners to confirmed which areas had lights again. This process repeated several times, during which the light came on and off and on and off periodly.

Siang Cheng was so focus on the circuit board as he was trying to take his mind of the entire situation, that he fails to notice around 20 cars just pull over on the side of the highway right in front of the building. One of the car even hits another parked car and triggered the the alarm, but it was drown out by the sounds of the crowd inside the building. As Siang Cheng turned on the power again, part of the building lighten up, and the runners went to confirmed the areas. Siang Cheng saw around ~20-30 people got off the cars and all of them are holding something in their hands, before he can pay any close attention to make out what they are, the runners came back, reporting on which areas of the building had lighten up, and Siang Cheng turned off the power and start adjusting the circuit board. When he turned the power back on, he heard a loud scream from the front of the building.

The people that just got off the cars are attacking the people in the buildings, they are holding knives, baseball bats, golfball bats, cleavers and all sort of weapons. And some of the people sitting near the entrence are laying down in blood, and the attackers are rushing towards the crowd. Someone shouted, people starting panicking and pushing each other around. Someone knocked Siang Cheng down and tripped over the wires of the generators, turning the power off. The building plumbed into darkness, and people starting screaming, yelling, crying in the dark, full on panic and chaos started. Siang Cheng tried to turn the power back on, but among the chaos he lost sign of the wires. He gave up, trying to ran back to his family, but he have no idea where they are among the chaos.

Siang Cheng felt something warm in his mouth, the guy right in front of him was stabbed in the stomach by a sword, and the warm blood splashed all over Siang Cheng. He realize he needs to run away, right now. Since he's at the back of the stadium, he quickly ran to the backwall and tried to look for an alternate exit. At as soon he found the backdoor which was still closed, he immediently slam the door open, and ran off into the woods behind the building.

As he's running off, he turned around and looked at the building, people are still screaming inside, and because of the darkness no one seems to able to find an exit. But he did saw one person ran out of the building through the same exit as he did: the japanese girl from earlier. He stopped looking back, and started full on sprinting into the woods.

After running for maybe 15-30 minutes straight into the woods, Siang Cheng is exhausted. He sat down on the dirt, trying to cry, but no tears came out, he stood up, and kept walking. And after walking towards without a clear direction for a while, he saw a place with unflickering light, clearly not fire. With no idea what to do, he walks towards it.

After he get close enough, he starts making out what the place is. It is a small village, but it looks incredibly ancient, as all of the houses are built in old chinese style. The lights are coming out of the houses, and from some filming studio lights. Siang Cheng realized he's in a filming set when he saw the giant cameras, but no one is around. Somehow the power of the entire set didn't went out, or maybe it's backup generators on the set. Siang Cheng walked around, looking for anyone.

He saw a desk, and there was a man behind it writing something with a large stack of papers on the table. Siang Cheng thought the man's face looks familiar when he walk towards him. Then when he stood right in front of the desk, he realized where he had seen this man. He was the same person on the extras registration counter on the film set he sneaked into a
few days earlier. The man said "Are you here to register your name?". Siang Cheng didn't know what to respond, and the man seems to completely ignore the blood and dirt on him. So he answered "yea", and grabbed the pen on the table and looked for his name among the extras list, he found his name among the list, the same place he listed them when he snuck into that set a few days ago, he ticked beside it, and he realized not a single name on the list is written as presented.

Siang Cheng put the pen down, and he have no idea what to say next. He tried to say something, anything to the man, but the man seems so calm and collected he's not sure if the man was just his own delusion. But after a few seconds of settling he mind, Siang Cheng asked "You do know there was a nuclear explosion right outside here, right? What are you even doing here". The man stopped writing, and look directly at Siang Cheng, and said "Well, since I have nowhere to go I figured I should show up on-"

Before he can finish his sentence, a loud bang can be heard right behind Siang Cheng. And before both of them can react the shockwave sent both of them flying, another nuclear explosion, this time much closer. Siang Cheng saw buildings of the set being ripped from their foundations and destroyed, he couldn't looked directly into the blast, everything were too bright, before he can rethink what happened, he landed on his back, he heard his own scream, the fall had broke a good number of his bones, he can feel himself bleeding.

Siang Cheng pulled himself up, and he stared into the horizon. He's on a hill, and is facing towards a lake, behind that lake is another city where none a single light was on. Before his mind settled, the city were obliterated by another nuclear explosion. His eyes were blinded instantly, the shockwave sent by the blast travel across the lake, and pushed him onto the ground again, this time lighter. It's over, he thought, most people in the world will probably never find out the truth on what happened, what caused the nuclear attacks, because it's the end of the world. As he thought to himself, one of the old looking buildings of the set right beside him shaked violently because of the explosion, and collapse onto him, killing him instantly.