4 CHAPTER I: A GHOST TOWN - Part 2
Virla throws away the notebook and squeezes her hands over her head. The headache doesn't stop and seems to press harder and harder to the point that she thinks it will explode.
~No, that's not my name, I'm sure~ But no matter how much she tries, the only thing that comes to mind is that strange name: Virla, and nothing else.
The girl feels another name at the tip of her mind, in the voices of her broken memory, but the more she tries to remember the more her head hurts. She whispers the name over and over again, letting it fill her ears – assuring her that she had never heard it before – hoping that she will remember her real name, but she has to stop when she starts to get dizzy and feel her temples throbbing.
Painfully she gets up from where she was crouching on the ground and tries to clear her mind as she pinches the bridge of her nose. When the pain has dissipated almost completely, she opens her eyes and feels the need to kick something, and her impulse finds its place in the bag near her.
She passes her hand over her head, and when she senses her mind get a little clearer, Virla looks around, not knowing what exactly she hopes to find.
She is thirsty, and when she acknowledges that hunger is also made known.
The girl quickly scans the streets for somewhere where there may be food, such as a restaurant, shop or market. Her gaze finally falls on some places not far from where she is and her stomach seems to growl when she discerns the desserts in the stained-glass window of one of them. Then with one last look at the building behind her, she picks up the notebook and pen from the ground and sets off.
As she walks, she picks up things that she thinks may be of use to her, such as a briefcase and a bottle which water she finished as soon as she had it in her hands. She begins to realize that it is colder than she had noticed at first and it does not help that she is wearing a gown that hardly covers her instead of clothes. She debates whether to pick up some of the piles of clothes that are lying around, but if they're really there because people left them like that, she didn't really like the idea of putting on something she didn't know who had worn before. She finally decides to pick up a thick jacket.
When she arrives at the curiously arranged stores, she has to stop for a moment to look at them better.
In some of them there was no wall that divided the interior from the outside and they were separated from each other by low walls that do not reach the ceiling, in others she could see through the windows that they did not have cashiers. There is a shop on a corner that appears to be two stories high, with floor-to-ceiling windows letting her see the show inside; hundreds of shelves with sweets are arranged in such a way that it makes it seem like the store was made of them. That store was probably the one that tempted her the most.
But despite how much she wanted to contemplate the locals, the fact that most leave their insides in full view increases her appetite.
Virla starts walking to one of the premises, which looks like a small market, but for a second she thinks she sees something move through the corner of her eye and stops. The girl immediately flips over and waits a few seconds. This time she hears a sound, a hiss. A person.
The girl moves as fast as her legs allow her to the place from which the sound came. It is one of the open premises, a dessert shop, all products packaged. When Virla arrives in front of the place she is short of breath even though she didn't really run and the place wasn't far away.
She looks at each side and it doesn't take more than a second to see the kid lying on the ground. Virla runs towards him and in a few steps, she is in front of him. The child raises his gaze, his face in an expression of pain. Virla doesn't react to what she sees, she just kneels and takes the child by the shoulders.
"Are you alone?! do you know where the others went?" the words come out in a small cutting thread, and cost her more than she expected.
The boy just looks at her, the fear that crosses his eyes stops her from continuing to shake him and maybe threaten him for answers, realizing that she was scaring him. She hadn't really thought what she would do if she found anyone, she just had lots of questions, but now she didn't know what to say.
Virla sits in front of the boy waiting for him to calm down, his body shaking slightly as he holds his hand with care. He must be about eleven or twelve years old. The girl passes her hands down her face as she clarifies her thoughts.
"W-w-who are you?" The child stutters.
Virla looks up. He has moved a little further away from her.
"I am..." The girl doubts, not knowing herself what the right answer is "I don't know who I am" she answers in a whisper.
She immediately looks him in the eye realizing how useless that sounded. The boy shudders at her gaze, and makes Virla realize that she is scaring him more and more. She reaches out her hand to the boy and tries to smile.
"Sorry, my name is Virla, I didn't want to mean you" Her voice seems to be cut by more than just her hoarseness when she says the name.
The boy hesitates to take her hand, until she gets tired and lowers it awkwardly. Virla looks at the hand he still holds as if he had been wounded. She doesn't know whether to approach him, that might just make the situation worse. She decides to use her words despite how difficult it is to speak, but a sound stops her.
Virla realizes that the noise is coming from the boy, who now grabs his belly with one of his hands. The girl sighs and manages to draw a little smile. She gets up heavily and begins to check the packages full of desserts, which are arranged in dispensers she had never seen before. The girl decides on one of the pastries, so she approaches to take it.
"DON'T!" the kid screams.
Virla stops and gets away from the desserts in a jump. She looks at the boy, into his crystalline eyes. He gets up, finally letting go of the hand he had kept hidden for so long. It's red.
The girl keeps her gaze, waiting for him to explain himself. And while the boy seems to muster the courage to speak to her, Virla notices that he was not only trembling because of fear; he's cold. Unlike her, he wears blue clothes that look like pajamas, but they probably don't give him much more warmth than what she's wearing. She hesitates to hand her jacket. ~Don't be selfish.~ She scolds, but before she can convince herself, the boy starts talking.
"I tried to take one of the packages, but something seemed to electrocute me" he says it so fast that Virla almost doesn't get it.
"Okay, I'll be careful."
The girl starts to check around the dispensers, looking for some idea of why that happened, and that's when she sees on the platform under the dispensers a small rectangle sticking out. The rectangle has a screen that shines and shows a few words in an unknown language and with some figures: a card and a bracelet. Then the silhouette of a hand appears with a point on the wrist and the canceled signal.
Virla assumes that it is required to put a card on the platform in order to use the dispensers, so she starts looking among the clothes lying on the floor for a wallet, if it is that they even left that behind as well.
The boy waits silently as Virla rummages through the things lying on the ground. It doesn't take long to find a wallet and when she's about to get up and go where the dispensers, she spots a coat in one of the piles. She takes it quickly and when approaching the wall she hands it to the boy.
"Cover yourself" and with nothing more than a glance at the coat, the boy obeys.
She searches inside the purse and it doesn't take long to see the wallet, next to a cell phone. She pulls out the two of them and quickly puts the cell phone in one of the pockets of her jacket while the boy is still distracted by putting on his coat. She honestly still doesn't know if she should trust anyone simply because of their age.
The wallet has no cash, although when seeing it better it doesn't really seem to be a wallet. Virla starts testing with all the cards inside, there are at least four or five, until one produces a "beep" and stops. A few numbers appear on the screen; it needs a password.
The girl curses in her mind and reopens the wallet and then purse in hopes of finding some sort of note, but she has no luck, so she gives up on taking something from one of those dispensers. If what the boy says is true, she doesn't want to sacrifice her hand.
After a moment another simpler option comes to mind. She starts checking through the premises until she ends up going out of the shop when she can't find it inside. But outside she sees it immediately.
On the floor is a paper bag lying around, poking out a packaged bread. She takes the bag checking that there is enough food inside and turns to return to the kid, but he has already stepped forward and is poking out on the edge of the store. The boy looks at her hopefully, but at the same time doubting if some of that food will be for him.
Virla walks towards him and points to a place in front of what they are at that appears to be a small restaurant.
"There are some tables there, let's sit down to eat at one, we can talk when we've eaten something." Without being sure what else to say or if the boy will even accompany her, she turns around dubiously.
The girl starts walking and before she can turn around to check if he is following her the boy is already by her side. When choosing a table on the terrace, Virla takes everything inside the bag to better see its contents: A couple of breads, cheeses and a dessert; a piece of chocolate cake that the two look forward to. When she sits down, she leaves her back bag on the floor and begins to split the food, giving the cake to the boy despite how much it took her to release it when she did.
The boy starts devouring the food without saying anything and after seeing him for a moment Virla does too. For quite a while nothing is said until the silence becomes uncomfortable. The boy is the first to speak.
"Thanks" Virla looks at him perplexed; she really didn't expect him to say anything "f-for the food."
"It's nothing," the girl replies "it's not like it's mine."
The boy begins to hesitate, not knowing anything else to say.
"Do you know what happened here?" he asks suddenly.
~So, you are lost too~ laments Virla.
"I honestly don't know, my memories are quite blurry," she gives another bite to her piece of cheese "I... I woke up under that building, I don't know why." the girl points to the building under which she formerly was, which stands out among the others.
"Me too" he replies.
Virla assumes that he must have been the person who was causing all that noise after she woke up. And when she thinks about it, even though she did it a little before him, waking up almost at the same time was strange in itself. Why were they asleep to begin with? Virla starts thinking about the last thing she remembers before waking up again, she seemed to have fainted going somewhere, had she been in a coma? for how long?
"Virla?" the girl reacts to the boy's hoarse voice and returns to herself.
"Yes?" she responds quickly.
"Ah, nothing, it's just that you zoned out for a moment."
"Sorry, it's just that all of this is very strange, by any chance, did you hear any alarm when you woke up?"
"No" the boy answers slowly as he thinks about it too.
After a moment Virla notices him swallowing heavily, he must be thirsty. She thinks about the bottle with water she has with her, but then remembers that she has already drank all the water, so the girl gets up and takes the bottle.
"Where are you going" asks the boy with an obvious fear of being left alone.
"Are you thirsty? I'm going to fill the bottle" after a moment the kid nods and goes back to the piece of bread he still needs to finish, trying to hide the feeling of a moment ago.
The girl looks at him one last time and gets going. It takes longer than expected to find a faucet, as the kitchen was closed and it was difficult for her to find the bathrooms. When she returns, the boy has already started eating the cake and devours it, except for a piece he set aside.
"You didn't have to leave a piece for me." Virla sits down and passes the bottle to the boy, who immediately grabs it and doesn't take a second to put it in his mouth "By the way, you haven't told me your name."
She waits with a bit of eagerness for the answer while the boy finishes drinking the water. He was really thirsty.
"Telos" the girl waits a moment in case he's going to say anything else until he realizes her expecting gaze "What?"
"Is that your first name?"
"Yes"
The expression of confusion that he displays because of the question leaves her more perplexed, she had never heard of a name like that. Maybe he is from another country, but it didn't seem very likely since they are communicating perfectly and no accent highlighted in his voice. He also didn't mention any last names, maybe he just didn't want to.
Virla decides to ask him for his last name, but stops when a thick voice seems to speak into her ear.
~"Welcome contestants, to the new world. Now that everyone has finally woken up, it's time for us to start."~
Virla looks at Telos, but the boy hasn't moved his mouth an inch. His expression reveals that he also listens it.
~"You have 50 minutes..."~
"That voice again" says Telos with his hands on his head.
"Again?!" Virla's surprised.
~"... to prepare for the world to begin to move and the territories to separate. Do not forget your mission"~
Virla waits a few seconds for it to say something else, but when silence fills her mind and she's sure it's over, a part of what the voice said makes her think. "Everyone has woken up." They had done it long before, it couldn't refer to them, so...
The girl gets up from her chair leaving her things behind. Looks to where the building is and runs a few steps before seeing them.
People.
There are people walking, confused, scattered, searching, talking.
But there are people.
Virla takes her things, saves the unfinished food in her bag, eats the last piece of cake in a bite, and gets going before Telos even finishes peeking out.
