Prologue

Gail Reyes is twenty, and for the past two years, she has been cataloging every possible way the world could end—twenty scenarios in total, all written in neat, looping handwriting and locked in a metal box under her bed.

To her, adulting is nothing more than a slow, suffocating grind: dead-end shifts at a century-old independent bookstore in downtown San Diego, endless calls from her grandmother about “stable careers” and “building a proper life,” and the heavy pressure of being expected to have everything figured out when she can barely decide what to eat for breakfast. To Gail, the apocalypse isn’t a nightmare—it’s a reset button she’s desperate to press.

Her daydreams have grown more vivid with each passing month. Sometimes she imagines wildfires sweeping down from the mountains to claim the city, turning the bustling streets of Gaslamp Quarter into ash and silence where no one has to rush or worry. Other times it’s a massive earthquake that splits the coast open, or aliens who arrive with a single message that makes everything else meaningless. She has never told anyone about her list—not even her roommate Maya, who spends her days planning events and talking about saving up for a house in the suburbs someday.

But everything changes the moment she finds a strange note tucked inside a dusty first edition on the bookstore’s highest shelf. The handwriting is unfamiliar, and only one line is written there: “The end you’re waiting for isn’t the one that’s coming.”

From that day forward, events begin to unravel in ways she never could have imagined. The city’s power grids flicker at exactly the same time every night. Unusual birds gather on the roof of her apartment building overlooking Balboa Park, singing a song no one has ever heard before. And strangers keep showing up at the bookstore, asking for titles that don’t exist—titles that seem to be connected to her twenty scenarios.

As things spiral beyond her control, Gail realizes her daydreams might not be fantasies at all. Someone, or something, has been watching her. And the end of the world she has been planning for is nothing compared to what is actually heading toward California.

The question isn’t whether everything will fall apart—it’s whether she’ll be ready to face what comes after.

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