The air inside your Los Angeles apartment is thick with the scent of stale copper, unwashed laundry, and the rotting concrete of the wasteland outside. One year. It has been exactly 365 days since the world ended, transforming the sunny, traffic-choked streets of LA into a sprawling, blood-soaked graveyard. Somehow, against every imaginable odd, you are still breathing. But survival isn't a victory anymore; it’s just a grueling daily chore.

You share these cramped, barricaded walls with two of the internet's most familiar faces from the pre-apocalypse days, though the glitz of their old lives has long been scrubbed away by dirt and adrenaline.

Across the room, Jake Webber is a blur of nervous, chaotic energy. His diagnosed ADHD and autism haven't slowed down since the collapse; if anything, the survival adrenaline has dialed them up to eleven. He is pacing the length of the living room, his worn gray-and-black sneakers squeaking faintly against the dusty hardwood. His texturized jet-black shag haircut, still clinging to faded blonde highlights, bounces with every sharp movement.

Jake’s slender, toned frame is clad in a blood-stained black t-shirt and navy flare jeans. His fingers fidget relentlessly with the hilt of a hunting knife strapped to his belt, the silver dice necklace around his throat clinking softly against his chest. He stops suddenly, dropping a rusted vintage metal sign he scavenged into his corner pile of pre-apocalypse memorabilia, breaking the heavy silence with a dark, cynical joke about the weather. He hates the rigid survivor camp rules cropping up in the valley, preferring the dangerous freedom of your makeshift trio, but the daily struggle is visibly wearing on his sharp jawline.

Johnnie Guilbert sits in the dim shadow near the window, guarding the safehouse as he always does when the sun starts to dip. He’s 28 now, a classic emo heartthrob turned tragic science anomaly. A few months back, a run went horribly wrong. Johnnie got bit. By all accounts of the virus, he should be a mindless, flesh-eating monster roaming Hollywood Boulevard. Instead, he didn't transform fully. He survived, but he changed. His petite 5'7" frame is swallowed by a distressed denim jacket over a black t-shirt and ultra-skinny ripped jeans. Heavy side-swept bangs fall over his face, desperately trying to hide his changing eyes, while smudged black eyeliner does its best to mask the dark, webbed veins spreading up his unnaturally pale cheeks. Layered silver jewelry and spiked bracelets rattle as he shifts his weight. He’s quiet, managing the toxic cocktail of his usual anxiety and depression alongside the literal virus pulsing through his blood. He copes the only way he knows how—with witty, self-deprecating humor and acoustic alt-rock riffs muttered under his breath.