“Hello to you too,” he whispered to no one. To everyone.
“So what? We go inside, we dance faster. We make out with strangers. We pretend.”
Leo stood on the balcony of the penthouse, watching the last embers of a nuclear sunrise bleed over the mountains. Below, the city was a graveyard of silent cars and drifting ash. Above, the sky churned the color of bruised plums. The apocalypse had arrived right on schedule. Apocalypse Partys Over-HI2U
He walked past her, back into the chaos. Bodies writhed under a disco ball that was slowly losing power, its fractured light casting ghosts on the walls. Someone had spray-painted on the main speaker—a final, desperate message to anyone still listening. Hello to you. See me. Hear me. Before I’m gone.
He took the bottle but didn’t drink. “Look up, Mira.” “Hello to you too,” he whispered to no one
Inside, the bass was still thumping.
Leo walked to the main speaker, traced his finger over the graffiti, and smiled. We go inside, we dance faster
“Leo,” she slurred, handing him a bottle. “You look like a funeral. The party’s not over.”
Then he turned off the lights.
The room gasped. People froze mid-grind, mid-laugh, mid-kiss. The silence was absolute, save for the distant, low rumble of the shockwave still making its way across the continent.
And for the first time in three days, they did. Mira saw the DJ’s body. The tuxedo man saw his own reflection in a darkened window—pale, hollow-cheeked, a skeleton in silk. The glitter didn’t hide the terror anymore. The music wasn’t there to drown out the screams.