There now exists a world where the colour of your blood defines you; and there certainly isn't much room for different in the year 2138.
Suki Kione has known for a long time now that there's a clock on her life, one that runs a lot quicker than that...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I wake with a sudden intake of breath. It's like my lungs have been at a standstill and this is the very first breath I've taken in years. A fit of coughs overwhelms me and I raise myself onto my elbows in an attempt to make clearing my chest a little easier. My throat screams as the contractions seer through my trachea, leaving what feels like blistering pain in their wake.
I blink and try and focus my blurry vision, attempting to force the image of two seemingly vibrating copies of my outstretched palm into one solid picture. My head ducks to the side as if an imaginary hand is shoving it that direction. I yearn to keep still, but this proves to be much too difficult as I continue to struggle to keep my head straight.
"What is happening to me?" I find myself whispering, my words barely surfacing over the loud intake of breaths which I realise are coming from me.
'You appear to have suffered a mild concussion.'
"What?" I whisper, not understanding where this voice is coming from.
'Right, symptoms of a concussion include: confusion, headache, lack of coordination, dizziness, fatigue, sleepiness, and —'
A forceful squeeze in my stomach causes me to keel over as a burning feeling erupts in my gut and begins a quick climb out of my throat. It splatters on the floor in a puddle of yellow mush consisting of last night's dinner.
'Vomiting,' the voice concludes.
"Wh-who are you again?" I groan as I lean my head against something behind me, but at this point I still can't fully register my surroundings.
'I'm Aspen ... your room.'
I close my eyes in an attempt to ignore the side splitting throb wreaking havoc on the left side of my face. I reach a hand out to touch the area and am alarmed to find a dark-red mess of dried blood on my fingertips.
'You shouldn't really be ... touching that,' Aspen says in a tone I could almost mistake for a grimace.
"What?" I say with a light chuckle, "You some kind of doctor now?"
'No, but I do have all the knowledge the internet has to offer as well as all the extensive features and data that my makers have given me. This is hardly out of my reach.'
I take in a deep breath, finally noticing how the double-vision is slowly correcting itself.
"What happened to me?" I groan, the sheer ferocity of another wave of pain forcing me to sew my eyes together.
'You are the collateral damage of some kind of explosion that happened close to the end of the Ring last night. During your fall, you hit your head on the cell phone tower before falling for what should've been sixty meters.'
