Visiting A Friend (Lina POV)

Lina sighed as she drove through the heavy traffic of Sydney. It was still peak hour, with mundane people hustling to get to work and start the day. She didn’t have a job and was unsure how she was going to move forward with getting one. The past two weeks had really just been a blur of emotions and grief.

She had attended three separate funerals, two of them for her friends and one of them for Adam. She’d cried the hardest at that one. Their relationship had been a good one. He had treated her well, and she did the best she could for him. His **** had hit her hard, and she wasn’t sure how to process it.

Madi had been there for her the whole way, though she’d been just as grief stricken. Lina was glad that they still had each other, and that Amani was still alive, albeit in a coma. The healers had assured them that Amani would be okay, but they couldn’t give a time frame for when she would wake up and be able to resume her life. There were just too many factors at play.

Her parents had been supportive too, as best they could. They hadn’t cared what she did with her life, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t care about her. The shock of that day had shaken her badly, and the funerals didn’t give her much closure. She felt a numbness of sorts, and her life felt surreal. She sometimes woke up expecting Adam to be beside her.

But he was gone.

She wanted to hate The Gamer for what she and her friend had done. Gemma and Skylar were their names. She didn’t have the energy to though. She felt tired all the time now, something she’d never experienced before. She knew that the anger and hatred would come later. She could feel it bubbling under the surface. But it was suppressed under a mountain of apathy towards life.

She also knew that she would now have to find a job in the mundane world, more than likely. She couldn’t survive in the abyss on her own, she wouldn’t even be able to survive with Madi and Amani’s help. She knew that one other member of her guild had survived, but she didn’t know him very well, and she hadn’t seen him since that day either.

How was she supposed to get a job? Especially when she was feeling like this? She hadn’t bothered to finish high school, because she was too busy having fun with Adam and her friends. With Sydney being fractured as it was and having no proper ruling guild, there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure around. That included an abyssal version of high school. With the mundane version being exceptionally dull to her and the abyssal version inaccessible, she had found more fun things to do with her life.

And now she wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. Her parents were lovely people, but she didn’t think they would support her forever. They were both abyssals but had very limited power, so they lived mostly mundane lives and tried to stay under the radar. They were pretty average among mundane people.

She pulled into the parking lot of the Healers Guild HQ and put the car in park. She turned the engine off and put the keys in her purse. She sat there, staring emptily through the windscreen. Dully, she registered the sounds outside her car. The people talking, the birds chirping, the trees rustling in the wind. Distantly, she heard children playing in the nearby park.

She sighed deeply. She wasn’t sure how to move forward with her life, but at least she could keep coming here to check on Amani. She picked up her things and got out of her car. She locked the doors and made her way through the parking lot and inside the building.

The receptionist recognised Lina and gave her a friendly smile. “Has she woken up yet?” The receptionist shook her head. “No but you can go visit her if you like?” “Yes please.” “You know where to go?” Lina nodded and the receptionist smiled again. “Hope you’re okay dear.” Lina gave her a brief (fake) smile, and walked down the corridor to Amani’s room.

She pushed open the door and sighed when she saw her friend, only slightly less sickly and pale than the day she’d arrived here. Despite what the receptionist had said, some part of her had been hoping that she would walk into the room to find her friend awake and babbling happily, like she always had before that day.

She sat in the chair beside Amani’s bed. The events of that fateful day replayed themselves inside her mind, and she leant forward, resting her head in her hands. This had become a daily routine for her. She had absolutely no idea what to do or where to go other than sit right here, beside her comatose friend, in the hope that she would be by her side when Amani woke up.

Maybe when Amani woke up, they could figure out how to move on with their lives together. She wasn’t sure. The feeling of helplessness, overwhelmed her. The despair, guilt, sadness, regret, anger, grief and hopelessness washed over her like a tidal wave as she stared at her friend, laying motionless on the bed.

She took Amani’s hand in both of her own, closed her eyes and looked down. She tried to hold back the tears, and she was successful, for the most part. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she pictured that day over and over again. She knew now that what they had been doing was wrong, but that didn’t stop the grief of losing half of her friends and her boyfriend.

That wasn’t to mention the constant worry over whether or not Amani would wake up. The healers had assured Lina and Madi that their friend would be fine and make a full recovery, but she had her doubts. It was difficult to believe that she would be fine when she looked so deathly ill. And how long would she take to wake up? Who really knew? Certainly not the healers.

Amani had been a power reader, of sorts. She wasn’t able to tell what somebody’s innate ability was, but she was able to detect when somebody had an innate ability and how powerful it was. Lina didn’t really understand how it worked, but she did remember that the healers had said that Amani’s condition was caused by an overexertion of her magic.

Just what had she seen that had caused her to go into a coma?

Lina heard the rustling of bedsheets and a flicker of hope ignited inside her. She opened her eyes and looked up, to find Amani sitting up, awake and wide eyed, staring at Lina with bloodshot eyes. “Amani what’s wrong? Are you okay?” The glimmer of hope was immediately replaced with more concern and worry.

Amani grabbed her and pulled her close, looking her dead in the eyes, unblinking and looking absolutely terrified. Her grip strength was weak, but Lina could tell that she was holding on as tightly as she could. When she spoke, she did so in a hoarse voice that sounded like she hadn’t tasted water in weeks.

“Stay away from The Gamer. She is dangerous. You do not know what she is capable of. Neither does she. If she ever figures it out….Gaia help us all.” Amani’s grip loosened and she fell back on the bed, her eyes glazing over and closing. Lina sat there in shock. Distantly, she became aware of urgent beeping noises. Healers rushed into the room and one of them urged her out while they worked.

She walked out, still processing what just happened. At the very least, she would heed her friend’s warning. Her friend was in a better position than most to figure out just how dangerous somebody was, and if she said that The Gamer was dangerous, then she it was a safe bet that she was extremely dangerous. She got back into her car and shook her head. What the hell was she going to do?