Strange exit

Seventeen-year-old Lake spends her days combing a strange, post-apocalyptic landscape for people who have forgotten something vital: none of it is real. Everyone she meets is a passenger on a ship that has been orbiting Earth since a nuclear event. A simulation meant to prepare them for life after the apocalypse has instead trapped their minds in a shared virtual reality while their bodies lie in stasis chambers.

Nobody can leave the ship until every passenger is out of the sim, and nobody can leave the sim without first believing it is a simulation. Lake's job is to help the others remember.

When she tells the truth to another passenger, seventeen-year-old Taren, he joins her mission to find everyone, convince them they have forgotten reality, and wake them. But the simulation is close to breaking down completely, and Taren begins deciding who is worth saving and who must be sacrificed for the greater good. Lake is left with no choice but to compete against him in a race to reach the secret heart of the sim, where something waits that will either save them all or destroy them.