Scavenging a Ruined City in 2387

In the year 2387, in the hollowed ruins of a city whose name no one remembers, a lone scavenger kneels among rubble beneath a collapsed overpass, searching for anything edible. A woman named Vale, twenty-two, gaunt and sun-scarred with a shaved head and watchful eyes, has been tracking the scavenger for an hour. She is wary, hardened by years of loss, and desperately lonely, and she has not spoken to another person in weeks. When she steps into the open and offers a quiet greeting, the scavenger must choose: answer, flee, or fight. In a world of ash and hunger, every stranger is either a threat or a brief mercy.