Anyone. Anywhere. You're the main character.

StartThe prepper on her own bug-out drill, out on the hayfield before dawn

Twenty to four in the morning, and the cold finds your teeth through closed lips. You are halfway across your own hayfield on the drill, head torch on, rifle on its sling, every round counted twice. Down on the county road a stock truck has pulled over with its hazards going, and the driver leans out to see what the light in the field is. You lift a hand. He lifts one back. Then the hazards are gone, and the driver with them, and the dog over at the next ranch stops barking. Twelve years of getting ready, and not one binder had a page for this.

> Grab the rat by the tail and stuff it into my inventory.

It is quicker than you, but not by much. You get the tail, then the rest of it, and hold it up while it says everything a rat can say. Four seconds is a long time. Then it is gone, and so is the noise.

> On party chat: Mei, I'm down to 6 HP. Can you get to me?

You sit with your back to the wall and watch the end of the street, and count your own breathing because it is something to do. It is a long minute. Then Mei comes round the corner at a run, already muttering the words, and the light coming off her hands is the best thing you have seen all day.

> Jump from the stack of crates to the burnt-out generator.

You clear the gap with nothing to spare. Your shin finds the generator's edge before the rest of you does, and for a second the whole avenue is very far away and very bright. Then you are up, on top, and limping with dignity.

> Offer the crawler with the cricket bat a fist bump.

She looks at your fist, then at your face, then at the bat as if consulting it. The bat has no objections. Her knuckles meet yours, briefly and with great seriousness. "Priya," she says. "Nurse, before. If you find stairs, you tell me first." Then she is gone up the crossroads, bat over one shoulder, and her name is sitting in your contacts as if it always was.

> Follow the arrow that says STAIRS. I want out of here.

Someone has gouged it into the rock at head height, one arrow and one word, pointing into a gap barely wide enough for your shoulders. You turn sideways and squeeze in. The first stride looks exactly like the rest of the floor. The second one is not there at all.

> Throw the frying pan at the goblin's head.

It leaves your hand beautifully. It turns once, catches the light, and goes nowhere near the goblin. Tomas, standing right beside it, takes it on the back of the head with a sound like a church bell. The goblin looks at Tomas. Tomas looks at you.

> Read the bounty board and take the ash wolf one.

The board is a slab of grey timber by the well, studded with nails and the stubs of older notices, most of them weathered past reading. One is fresh, in a guard's square hand, under a drawing of something lean and pale with too many teeth. You pull it free. A halfling on the inn steps watches you do it and shakes her head slowly, the way people do at weather.

> Grab a loaf off the baker's stall and run for it.

You get the loaf, and three strides, and then a sound behind you like a wardrobe falling down a staircase. The guard by the well has turned. Then the one by the gate. They are not fast, and they do not need to be. Every one of them in the village is walking your way now, and the gate is a very long way off for a loaf of bread.