Blackout
Although the office windows had always been shrouded, the curtaining felt newly oppressive. It was knowing what lay beyond it: the whole dark city, into which a crack of light would enter like a wound.
Everyone in the room could make light with a snap of their fingers. But no one had studied how to make darkness, for darkness was undesirable, the province of the enemy.
Lydia Giles envisaged what moved out there in the uninterrupted darkness.
"Our representative meets with the Cabinet tomorrow," she said. "I suggest that we second the government's proposal to evacuate the most vulnerable citizens."