"Six more," the astronomer said. He was a wiry man with thinning red hair and bags under his eyes. He stood at the podium before a U-Shaped table in the United Cities headquarters. "We saw them arrive yesterday, through the telescope."

"Impossible!" shouted the head of London's Scavenger Team.

"It's not. It's confirmed," Moira said. She dismissed the haggard scientist and took the podium. She ordered a blackboard brought behind her that showed a crudely drawn map. "In addition to the city above London-Chicago - which we have still not identified - five more cities have appeared in the Void. We have identified Paris, Tokyo, New York, Mumbai, and Sao Paulo."

The room erupted. People shouted questions: how? And how many people? Where?

Moira quieted them with a hand and a firm expression. "Our team at the observatory has made a preliminary map of their locations. It seems as though the cities are split almost evenly among the Eastern and Western Blocks -" she moved to the blackboard and divided the map in half. She labelled the side with Moscow-Beijing "Eastern Block" and the side with London-Chicago "Western Block."

"There's good news: we're closer to Mumbai and Sao Paulo, as well as the unknown city above us, which we'll call City X. And there's bad news: Moscow-Beijing is much closer to New York and Tokyo. Paris is almost perfectly in the middle, so that could be anyone's. I-"

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I'm sorry, Madame Executive," said General Eastford, "but it seems to me like you think this is a race to conquer as many new cities as we can before the other side does. Do I understand you correctly?"

Moira's face remained flat. "I don't need to remind you, General, that our fuel, food, and water supplies are dwindling quickly. My Scavenger team estimates London-Chicago runs out of fuel for our generators in a matter of days. We have a few weeks of water left, but we haven't been able to reliably purify wastewater. So unless you want you to bottle your piss and drink it, General, we don't have a choice."

Moira turned back to the blackboard. She circled a few cities. "Our most obvious choice is City X. It's the closest. But we don't know who they are - it could be St. Petersburg, or Hong Kong, and as far as we know England and the United States are still at war with Russia and China. If we can avoid fighting, I will, but if City X is hostile it makes us sitting ducks. It's a lot easier to go down than up. That makes our next choice Mumbai. It's about level with us, but farther away. We'd have to fly there, which is troubling because we don't have a plane or fuel to power it. Put out a call for anyone with aviation experience to work with our engineers. We need all hands on deck, as always."

Moira looked grimly at the assembled council. "This morning, our team at the Observatory saw Moscow-Beijing's military gathering at the edge of their bedrock, facing New York. They're moving fast, while New York is weak and disoriented. If Moscow-Beijing links up with Tokyo and New York, they'll have the upper hand - we can expect them to be at our doorstep in a matter of days. Tokyo and New York will have more resources and technology than Mumbai, São Paulo, and Paris combined. We need to act smart and fast. You are dismissed. May God be with you all."