"Sometimes you need to get hit in the head to know you're in a fight."

- Michael Jordan

10:58 a.m

11 days earlier

Aside from Tim and Stella, the city bus had only two other passengers. The usual dank smell of hasty fast food and sweat that were so synonymous with public transports were non-existent that day. There were no spilled drinks on the floor, no teenager blasting their headphones with metal music or the usual chatter of businessmen and women on their phones twenty-four-seven. The bus was eerily quiet and any less noise would mean the bus had probably stalled. The pair sat at the last row, looking out the window onto the scarcely populated city streets. Barely a dozen people were visible at any given time and only half that number in vehicles can be seen on the road.

Stella held back her strawberry blonde hair as she leaned her face against the window to look outside. “What in the world is going on?” she said as she scanned the streets.

“I'm not sure,” Tim replied. “But if I have to make a guess, I'm thinking most of the people just contracted Sin.”

“This is really weird.”

“Tell me about it,” it was made more so by the fact that just two days ago he had seen thousands of people holding the protest in the park. As the bus neared their stop, he stood from his seat. “Let's go.”

The bus pulled up a few blocks away from the library, allowing them to alight. As it drove off, they could hear the echo of its engine chugging down the empty road. Given how empty the pavements were, Tim was sure the bus could have driven on the pedestrian walkway and not hit a single soul.

He met Stella's glance, her otherwise soft face was scrunched up with worry. They nodded to each other, wordlessly agreeing on the oddity of the situation before heading towards the library, each of their steps audible within the dying city.

Stella spoke up, “I don't think Sin alone can do this. Remove this much people from the streets.”

“I think so too. Let's see what Clay has for us first before we get too fantastical with our imaginations.”

“It's like the calm before the storm here.”

“You're getting that feeling too?”

“Like the world's gonna end?”

“I was just going to say that bad things might happen.”

“Like millions of people dying?”

“As long as it's not billions.”

“Maybe billions.” she added, as if to spite him.

He wasn't sure if she meant it as a joke or a serious thought that she just happened to speak her mind of. “Maybe billions,” he found himself repeating as they walked up the steps to Ridge Valley Central Library.

The automated doors slid open soundlessly, the burst of cool air relaxing their bodies. Stella let out an audible sigh of comfort. Howard Galloway looked up from his usual desk in the library, jumping onto his feet upon seeing the pair.

“Aha! I had a feeling you two would be coming,” he greeted enthusiastically. “Though I must admit, I was sceptical of that idea. Seeing the mythical Timothy Kleve two days in a row? 'Banish the thought!' I said,” he waved his hands wildly as he approached the two teens.

Stella smiled gently, greeting the man with an outstretched hand. “Always a pleasure Mr. Galloway.”

“Pleasure's all mine Stella Barber,” he took her hands in both of his, raised them up and lightly kissed the back of hers. “And you Tim my boy, I hope my assistance yesterday was sufficient in your endeavour?”

“It was, Mr. Galloway. Thanks.” Tim replied.

Stella turned to Tim, “You were here yesterday?”

Tim replied, “Yeah, I thought I told you?”

“You just said you were in the city. What were you doing here?”

“This boy,” Howard cuts in, putting one arm over Tim's shoulders, “Came in here after years, not even to say hi! Got my old legs running about for all sorts of articles and books, researching Sin. No consideration to a man my age, I tell you.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Annoyed, Tim wiggled out of the light grip. “Isn't it your job to help people in the library?”

Stella interjected before Howard could reply. To Tim, she asked, “You came here researching Sin?”

“Yeah,” Tim replied. “I haven't been reading into the news much these past few months, so I had a lot of catching up to do if I wanted to help.”

A small smile formed from her lips as she mouthed something akin to a 'thanks'.

“That reminds me,” Howard said, clapping his hands together as he did so. “Clay came in here looking for the same things you were, so I just passed him all the notes you left behind yesterday. He should still be upstairs.”

The two teen thanked the old librarian and climbed the stairs to the second floor. That level was designed in such a way that the centre contained the bulk of the books in roundel designed shelves. Surrounding them were white, plastic round tables and chairs in a neat circle. In the furthest corner nearest to the window sat Clay Barber, with his albino hair glowing with sunlight, at a table filled with small mounts of books and a mess of newspapers and magazines. He typed away at his laptop, occasionally looking over to his tablet before returning to the computer.

As the pair approached, they could smell the scent of the open books, the waft of leftover coffee from the plastic cups on the table. Clay had been there since school started in the early morning, and had obviously made himself comfortable. He had unbuckled the belt of his brown cargo shorts, and his oversized grey shirt had more than a couple of coffee stains on them.

Looking up from his laptop, Clay greeted his sister and Tim with a three fingers salute. “Hey kids. Aren't you suppose to be in school?”

Tim replied, “Had to leave early. Your favourite senior decided to pay us a visit.”

Clay pondered for a few seconds before replying, “Jacob?”

“No, the other one.”

“Ryo?”

“No,” Stella said, rolling her eyes. “The other, other one.”

Her brother took a deep breath, as if to clear his head. “Dwain?” He asked.

Tim took a seat beside his best friend. “No. It's the one you twacked with a mop.”

“Oh...Joseph. Yeah...” Clay replied, folding his arms and nodding in a joking attempt to look serious. “If I remember everyone I pissed off in school, I'd be a savant.”

Stella sat opposite Tim, moving her chair closer to her brother. “If everyone you've ever pissed off remembered you, you'd be dead.”

Clay replied in agreement, “That is true.”

“So,” Tim said. “What have you got?”

“Not much,” Clay said, stretching his back and arms. “There's not really anything that we don't already know and you've covered almost all the statistics side of things in your research yesterday. Seriously though kid, you did all that in one day?” he looked to Tim.

“Yeah...why?” Tim replied.

“Just, it's amazing. I wouldn't even know where or what to begin searching with,” Clay turned back to the table of notes. “Have you seen the streets though? Fucking ghost town shit out there.”

“Yeah,” Stella replied. “What's up with that?”

“There were cop cars and military trucks all over the place this morning moving people off the streets. Some were even arrested,” Clay turned his computer around so they could see a website he had pulled up that featured a wallpaper that proclaimed it was undergoing maintenance. “All the major news websites are running pages like these now. And independent sites like blogs and social media sites are being shut down left and right.”

Tim was speechless. He took over the laptops' trackpad and opened up the other tabs Clay had on the browser. Each of them showed the same thing, just as Clay said.

Clay continued, “The last blog I read shut down about an hour ago. Forums are starting to go offline as well. There's a good chance the internet might just get cut off at this rate. Doesn't take a genius to know there's been a cover-up.”

Tim leaned back into his seat, scratching his chin in contemplation. “There's not much we can do about this. If the government is involved to the point where they are willing to shut down so many websites, the only thing left for us is to go with the flow on that. But we can still focus on the smaller things. What have you got on Sin itself? Anything new?”

“Like I've said, you covered most of that already,” Clay replied, turning the computer back to him. “The only other thing new I could come up with was this forum post where a guy says he's been dreaming his memories. I've never heard of that before.”

Stella chimed in, “Dreaming his memories? Like a flashback?”

“Something like that. According to him, it's more like the world the dream created was based on his memories. It makes sense though, if these nightmares are happening in our heads and – dude, what are you looking at?” Clay tilted his head to Tim.

“Shush!” Tim silenced Clay as he stared off into space, his eyes widened as his mind concentrated intensely on a train of thought. He thought back to the night before in the diner with the old lady that tried to feed him to death, and of what the girl in white said.

I don't know, it's not my memories.

He had made the deduction that the barn was a possible alternate universe, but the diner was based off his memories for a place as he remembered it. But something felt off and Tim sifted uncomfortably in his seat as he tried to figure out what it was.

He mouthed the phrase his mother used to say, “The worth of a person was less what they're willing to live for and more what they'd die for.”

Stella leaned over the table so she could look Tim in the eye. “Are you...having a stroke?”

Ignoring her jest, Tim asked the siblings, “Saturday's strike, the newspaper said it was over unfair wages. What do you know about that?”

Clay started, “Well, the official reason was a wages strike. But there's some words floating around the online chat rooms that it was actually to protest hiding the truth of the statistics of the Vashmir Pandemic. We won't get confirmation about it until tomorrow, when the news fire gets the chance to spread. But even then, with websites shutting down, we'd might not get any info at all.”

Tim has stopped listening at the mention of the Vashmir Pandemic. “The worth of a person was less what they're willing to live for and more what they'd die for,” he repeated. “My mother said that. My mother said that. My mother said... – I wasn't in the diner!” Like a lock clicking into place, Tim snapped to his feet, his chair falling backwards as he did so.

“Tim?” he could hear Stella's worried voice like a whisper in a tunnel.

He replied, more to himself than the siblings, “It was my dad's memories. If it was my memory, I would be in the diner with my dad. And the waitress...was mom. And I – it was my dad's memory. I was in my dad's memory!”

For the second time that day, Tim found himself running. Sprinting towards the stairs of the library, bolting down the steps. He pulled his phone out and speed-dialled his father. The line did not go through. He bolted pass Howard on the first floor and out the door of the building, dialling his home phone in the process.

The phone rang once, twice, thrice. On the twelfth ring, the call ended. “Fuck!” he cursed out loud as he cut across the road, dashing through office buildings towards the bus stop on the opposite end of the area, hoping to reach there before the bus did. “Don't you dare sleep old man!”