Aspen's lungs still felt heavy with the last of the flu. The virus wasn't anything unusual, but conditions in the village meant that illness spread like wildfire. Overcrowding and poor sanitation provided no safety barriers, and within the space of a week, nobody was left uninfected. The symptoms would get worse as the days went by, encouraged by the dropping temperatures outside. Aspen's family were not the first to be killed by the flu that month.
After Robin died, Aspen was certain she only had days left. She had two options: stay and die in the village, or use the last of her fading energy to head for the city in search of help. The latter won in logic, and so the latter was what she did.
The city wasn't unimaginably far. She made it in a day or two, catching lifts where she could. Her fever was ebbing now, but Aspen had seen too many neighbors expect to survive as the flu loosened is its grip, only for it to latch back on a day or two later. But city healthcare promised wellbeing; hope was a difficult friend to lose sometimes.
The next few days were mostly the same. Waking up in a cold sweat from a mixture of fever and grief. Stumbling into the streets to beg for enough money to pay for medical help. Failing to fall asleep as night arrived. Crying into the silence of midnight. The fourth day was no different at first. In the late afternoon, Aspen retreated into an alleyway to count the coins she'd managed to collect when a figure came to stand beside her.
'You look sick,' he said, hazel eyes clouded by concern.
'The flu. That's all.'
'Is that for medicine?' he asked, gesturing towards her handful of coins.
Aspen opened her mouth to reply as the man grabbed the change from her hand and knocked her to the wall. She pushed back against the brick and yelled as the thief nonchalantly left the scene. In the far end of the alley, a group of maintenance workers turned at the sudden shout. The thief's hand went over her mouth and nose, and by the time the maintenance workers had run the length of the alleyway to break up the commotion, Aspen was already unconscious from lack of oxygen. The thief dropped her in shock, having only meant to silence her, but the force of the concrete floor meeting Aspen's head as her legs crumpled beneath her was too much to recover from.
She awoke in the dark, a cold sweat plastering her black hair to her forehead. Some instinctive part of her mind could sense the presence beside her. Aspen's breath hitched, brown eyes widening in sudden panic. Images burned through her thoughts: the man in the alleyway, grabbing the coins from her hand.
'There is a door in front of you,' the figure beside her spoke slowly, carefully. 'Go through it and you will find yourself outside a bar. Inside the bar, the others are waiting. Find them.'
Aspen initially didn't move, but she could feel the presence urging her to leave the dark room. Cautiously, she lifted a hand until it brushed against a wooden surface in front of her. This was the door, she assumed, as the pressure from her touch eased it ajar. Strangely, although there was light beyond the open door, the room remained pitch black. She stepped outside, and the second her feet made contact with the ground, the room behind her vanished into thin air.
Confused and a little freaked out, Apsen wrapped her arms around herself. As promised, a run-down bar loomed only a few meters away. Treading carefully, she approached the doorway and peered inside: a small group of individuals were crowded together, talking in urgent tones. She didn't dare enter the bar; this whole thing felt too much like a glitch in the matrix, and fear kept her rooted to the spot.
