The Road Out of Vertigo

Prologue

Vertigo is dying the way it has always died — slowly, and all at once. The lower districts have been underwater for years, a grey labyrinth of submerged streets and mist and things that move beneath the surface. The upper districts belong to the Toll Crew now, and passage through the northern bridge costs more than most survivors have left to give. The city does not offer escape so much as it offers delay. Beyond the city limits, somewhere past the cracked wasteland of the Expanse, there are rumors of a place called the Greenward. A sanctuary. A settlement where the dead don't walk and people have begun, improbably, to rebuild. Whether it is real or a story the desperate tell each other to get through another night is a question fewer and fewer people can afford to ask. Some have already decided it doesn't matter. What matters is leaving. A small group of survivors is preparing to do exactly that — to push through the city, through the Expanse, through whatever the road puts in front of them, and find out what's waiting at the end. They carry different wounds, different reasons, and different ideas about what survival is supposed to mean. None of them know yet what the journey will cost them. They're about to find out.