1 A Prologue Of Sorts

Ada Remag tapped her foot, nervously. After receiving a disapproving look from the lady two seats to Ada's right, she planted her bouncing foot firmly on the shiny white tiles covering the floor. Subconsciously, she began drumming her fingers on the glass side table which had a variety of different magazines splayed over the top. Ada couldn't help it. She was drowning in anxious energy, and rightfully so. Her sister was about five meters away, in a hospital room, dying, and Ada wasn't even allowed to be with her. Okay, maybe Leyla wasn't exactly dying that moment, but she might as well have been dead.

Leyla had been in a coma for a whole month now. Saying that Ada missed her, would be an understatement. Saying that Ada missing Leyla was an understatement, would be an understatement... Ada wasn't sure if that even made sense. All this waiting was driving her insane. Soon, she'd probably be in this very hospital as a psychopath patient, rather than a visitor. Then again... maybe being a patient would be an excellent cover to spy on her parents and the doctors' hushed conversations about Leyla and her "condition".

Ada hated it when they called it that. The word "condition" made it sound like a disease. Yeah, it was technically a disease, but they didn't have to call it by that unpleasant word. It just made everything seem a lot worse than it already was. And Ada would be the first to admit it, things were bad. Like, really bad. Every since the doctors had found the tumor in Leyla's brain, things had been downright awful. Really awful. Leyla apparently had an illness with an obnoxiously long name that Ada had a hard time both remembering and pronouncing. It caused Leyla to frequently have seizures due to an abnormality in her brain. The doctors were worried that the seizures would cause a coma, so they decided that it would be in Leyla's best interest to artificially cause a coma themselves rather than wait for the inevitable final seizure to happen. Ada read all about it. She knew all the science and logic behind it. Ada had always wanted to be a doctor, after all. Of course, that dream was now only that. A dream. Ada would never be able to make it a reality. College and medical school cost money. Lots of it. There was no way Ada would ever have enough to pay tuition, especially not with all the Remag family's rainy day money, and savings going towards Leyla's hospital bills. It struck Ada as selfish to be thinking about her own future when her sister was in a room, dying (maybe she wasn't dying that exact moment, but you get the gist).

Ada picked up a random magazine from the side table, shooing away all thoughts about her sister dying, doctors, and selfishness. She skimmed over an article about some celebrity scandal. Apparently, some famous person's daughter had disappeared or something? Ada wasn't sure. She wasn't really reading it. More like gliding her eyes through the page, acknowledging each word, but forgetting it as soon as she read the next one. Her language arts teacher would be so disappointed in her. Ada did deserve some slack though, her sister was in the next room. Dying. Well, not yet, but still...

This was getting repetitive.

*

After waiting for two billion centuries... wait, no, that's not right...

After waiting for one hour, Ada was pretty sure that she would have died if that nurse hadn't beckoned her to Leyla's hospital room. If Ada had died, Ada wondered if the coroner would write off her cause of death as boredom or anxiousness. While debating whether those two cause-of-death's would be acceptable on an autopsy report, Ada let the nurse lead her inside Leyla's room. She fidgeted with her fingers when the nurse opened the door. Almost instantly, the hum of conversation morphed into silence. The only sounds in the room belonged to the soft beeping of a heart monitor device, and the nurse's clicking shoes, as she went to check on one of Leyla's life support machines. The adults that had been talking, Ada's parents and one of Leyla's doctors, looked at Ada sort of guiltily. Their talking had abruptly ceased as soon as Ada stepped foot in the room. It was obvious they were talking about something they didn't want Ada to hear just yet. Ada thought back to the last time whispered dialogue and hushed conversations had made an appearance in her life. It had been when her parents and the doctor had decided to give Leyla a drug-induced coma. Ada wasn't the best at math, she definitely preferred biology, anatomy, and physiology, but based on her experiences Ada was pretty sure that whispers + an unconscious Leyla = bad news. But Ada wasn't the best at math, so she gave them the benefit of doubt, even as they exchanged uneasy glances. They seemed to be talking telepathically, but Ada knew that was impossible. Her parents didn't own the latest telepathic communicator technology. They didn't have the money for any of the latest tech. They didn't even have the money to get Leyla modern health machines. She was hooked up to the bulky machines all the way back from the 2030s.

The doctor cleared his throat.

"Well, I'll go get some, uh, more IV fluids," he said awkwardly breaking the silence. He left the room and the nurse followed, leaving Ada and her parents alone, with Leyla too, of course, but she wouldn't really be an active participant in the interaction.

"So...?" Ada let her voice trail off, and get kind of high near the end of the elongated word, making it seem like a question.

So... what was with all the secrecy?

So... why did the doctor practically run out of the hospital room?

So... why was everyone acting so strange?

So... was there something they wanted to tell Ada?

Sometimes not finishing a sentence could be a lot more effective in conveying a question than completing it. Her parents had apparently gotten the point and Ada's father squirmed. Ada looked closer at her parents, studying them like she would a biology textbook. She noticed the wiped tears on her mother's face and her puffy eyes. She noticed her father's sad expression, his brows were furrowed and he looked like he was going to throw up. Ada tried to not let her mind jump to conclusions. She glanced behind her parents and saw Leyla peacefully laying in the hospital bed. There were tubes running along her arms and she had an oxygen mask. Ada should have been used to it by now, but it made her heart both catch in her throat and fall to her toes at the same time, whenever she saw Leyla's lifeless frail body like that. The only thing she took comfort in was the fact that the heart monitor was beeping steadily and that Leyla's chest was rhythmically rising and falling. Ada looked back at her parents.

"Well?" Despite the question mark, it wasn't a question this time. It was a demand.

Well, tell Ada what's going on.

Well, tell her why you two are being so weird.

Well, is there something wrong with Leyla?

Well, keep her in the loop!

Ada hated when she didn't know what was going on.

Her parents understood the implied meaning behind Ada's aggressive, "well."

"We..." Ada's mom began, but her words turned to sobs.

Ada felt as if someone had punched her in the gut. She felt like she was about to be in a Flar (a brand of flying car) crash. She felt like she could see the other Flar cruising towards her. She knew they were going to crash, but it would all happened too fast to push the breaks or to even brace for impact. Ada knew what the next words spoken were going to be. She braced herself prepared to feel pain, grief, but when her dad opened his mouth, Ada didn't hear what he said. But she knew what words had been spoken. There was a deafening ringing noise and Ada didn't know whether it was in her head, or if everyone else could hear it too. Ada didn't know what she felt. She couldn't tell if she was mad or sad. The blood rushing past her ears and the growing lump in her throat didn't help her focus. Ada was scared and angry and heartbroken. She didn't know how to react. Was there even a right way to respond to something like this? Everything was just so... wrong. Ada spared a last glance at her sister and did the one logical thing she could think of. Ada ran.

*

Ada didn't stop running until she was safely out of the hospital. It seemed like such a cheerful place, with "get well soon" cards on display, flowers, and balloons at the head of the beds, and small toys to occupy children and magazines to occupy older people in the waiting room. It looked so happy, but it wasn't. It was so fake. People died there, every year, every week, every day. Ada had never once considered the fact that Leyla would be one of them. Sure, she heard snippets of conversations saying that the doctors weren't optimistic. Yeah, she heard the discussions about how her parents were running out of money, and how they wouldn't be able to keep Leyla on life support forever. And she had read hundreds of articles on the web about the chances of a coma patient waking up. Ada always thought, no, knew, that Leyla would make it, that she'd beat the odds. Now, all of Ada's reality was crashing down on her. Leyla only had about a week left. Not even that. The next payment due date was at the end of this week. Leyla only had six days. She had six days to wake up. Six days until they pulled the plug. Six days until she was dead. And Ada couldn't do anything about it- unless...

Ada vowed. Ada vowed that she would give her sister more time. She would save her sister. How hard could it be?

*

Apparently, very hard.

Ada swished her HoverChair back and forth and looked at the eLibrary's computerX screen in defeat. There was no way she would be able to earn 14,631 eCoin$ in six days. Why did it even cost 14,631 eCoin$ to keep Leyla on life support? The technology wasn't even that good! It was sooo out of date. Ada could rant for hours on end about this atrocity, but that would mean wasting a big chunk of her six days. Although Ada felt very discouraged, she wasn't going to let the hefty price tag stop her. This was for Leyla. Ada would do anything for Leyla.

Ada's fingers swam through the holographic screen. She tapped and swiped trying all kinds of keywords in the search engine, muttering under her breath.

"How to make fast money..."

"Where can I get a good-paying job..."

"How to save your sister who will die unless you find a way to earn 14,631 eCoin$ in six days..."

That last one was kind of desperate. Frantically, scrolling through the results, Ada almost considered giving up. Almost. Ada read through an engineering job offer. Nope, Ada couldn't even build a house out of eLegos. She saw a yodelling contest that awarded 20,000 eCoin$ to its winner. Pass, Ada sang like a dying duck. Wait, no, that's an insult to dying ducks everywhere. Ada saw a writing contest. That seemed interesting. Ada thought she was rather good at writing... but the winners would be announced in a month. Ada didn't have a month.

Leyla didn't have a month.

Ada continued scrolling. She swiped past a HoverBoard racing competition (she didn't have a HoverBoard, they cost too much), a job offer for babysitting a cow (it was too far away, it would have taken six days just to get there and back), and a college TA "hiring now" flier (Ada hadn't even finished her freshman year yet). Ada bought a couple of lottery tickets, but there was a million to one chance that she'd win and Ada needed a surefire source of money. Ada scrolled for another half hour, getting more frustrated with each outrageous offer. She came to the point where she began to wonder whether she should rob the eBank. Her hacker skills weren't sharp enough to pull that off though, so she put her criminal thoughts on the back burner. As Ada promised to herself that if she ever did steal from a bank, she would pay them back the moment she had the money, a link caught her eye.

"Need money? Try out our game! 15,000 eCoin$ to completers!" Ada mumbled, reading what was on the screen.

In small print, it wrote, "Has not been tested. Click at your own risk. GameMakers Co. does not hold any responsibility for injuries obtained through this program. By clicking you are consenting to allow us to do as we like. We will not be charged for deaths. Again, click at your own risk...You have been warned."

Ada didn't read the small print. No one ever does. Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have clicked the link.

Ada moved her finger right above the word "money," and touched the screen lightly. The hologram glitched for a second before it went white. There was a small rainbow-colored circle in the middle that spun round and round. It reminded Ada of a lollipop for some reason. The words "Loading... Please wait..." popped up under the spinning circle.

Ada shouldn't have clicked the link.

She really shouldn't have.