December Valence writes for the only newspaper in Pluto City—a digital refuge hidden from the raging civil war above. When mysterious power outages begin plaguing the city and her paper remains conspicuously silent, December's carefully constructed reality begins to fracture.
With each blackout, memories return—fragments of her forgotten role in bringing people to this sanctuary. When her attempt to report the truth is blocked, December initiates a covert exploration of what Pluto City really is, and what that makes her: savior or accomplice?
As the boundaries between simulation and reality blur, December must unravel the city's secrets while confronting her own complicity. The more she discovers, the more she questions whether this refuge is worth preserving—or if she should risk everything to help its citizens face what waits beyond.
"She could smell the sea. An onshore wind carried the smell of the red tide into the bay and through the bony docks, where trawlers and sailboats tipped gently in the harbor, and between the small cracks allowed by the aging door jambs and window sills, depositing tiny particles of the musk onto flat surfaces in every house, and every shop along the intersecting streets of a modest downtown, and up, still, to the golden rolling, razor-wired hills that overlooked Mirror Bay."
Into the Quiet Barren