An entire city is watching. All he wants is to go home.

Gats had a life he understood: a quiet village, a family waiting at the supper table, and a woman he intended to marry. Then he wakes in a glass prison, surrounded by strangers who call him Subject One.

In Pearl, a dazzling city of white towers and extraordinary technology, devices regulate emotions, suffering becomes entertainment, and Gats is the most fascinating thing anyone has seen in years.

The scientists offer him an agreement. The audience wants a performance. Sarah, the woman assigned to care for him, offers moments of kindness he desperately wants to trust. But as the city’s interest in him grows, Gats struggles to understand what cooperation will costand how much of himself he can keep.

Intimate, unsettling, and emotionally charged, The Last Performance explores captivity, manufactured happiness, and the fragile bonds between people in a world that has forgotten how to feel.