“Don’t worry about me, my sweetheart,” mom said, lifting her frail hand to stroke Zack’s face. An intravenous tube protruded from her arm, her once auburn hair now graying and thinning. Less than a moment later, she fell asleep, her body too weak to keep her awake. 

“Your mother has a severe case of lead poisoning,” said the spectacled doctor standing by her bedside. He spoke coolly, going through the motions with minimal care. Doctors at the famous Institute were simply too busy with VIP patients to bother providing adequate care to their obligatory patients like his mother. “Her kidneys are beginning to fail. I’m afraid that she will need to have an artificial kidney transplanted, or she will suffer from nephrotoxicity.” 

“Can she undergo the surgery?” Zack asked. 

The doctor paused uncomfortably, looking him up and down. He clearly did not think very highly of him or his mother. 

“Yes. It will cost a hundred and twenty thousand dollars,” the doctor replied. “Otherwise we cannot afford to commit hospital resources to her.” He glanced at his watch impatiently. 

This arrogant bastard. Zack had been around long enough now to know exactly what the doctor really meant. 

Your mother is not worth saving, and neither you nor her look like you could ever pay the medical expense, so we’re not going to waste our time with you. Get out of our hospital. That’s what you’re actually thinking, right doctor? 

He swallowed bitterly. A hundred and twenty thousand dollars was simply insurmountable. He’d never even seen that kind of money before. But he couldn’t just leave mom like this. She could die if she didn’t get that surgery. 

The doctor turned to leave. “I’ll leave you two to think about it.”

Fine. If life was going to play unfair, he’d return the favor right back. Time to resort to more unconventional methods, and fast. 

“Wait!” Zack exclaimed, right before the doctor left the room.

“Have you made up your mind?”

“Please register her for the surgery. I will pay for it.”

The doctor’s eyes narrowed behind his spectacles, a clear expression of doubt that the unassuming college student from a poor family background standing before him could keep his word. 

“We’ll need an upfront payment of fifty thousand dollars by the end of this week then,” he replied arrogantly.

Zack nodded in deference to the doctor who held his mother’s life in his hands. “Yes, I’ll get that for you by the end of the week.”

The doctor nodded, still unconvinced but satisfied with the arrangement for upfront payment. “Very well. If you get that payment to us by then, she will enter the queue for surgery.”

He left the room, leaving a weary looking Zack in the hospital ward. 

“Don’t worry mom,” he said to her. “I’ll get you that surgery, no matter what it takes.” He bent down and embraced her, his hands running across her muscle atrophied arms, and loose, frail skin. This could be the last time that he ever got to hug her. 

She did not reply, her sunken eyes closed. Only the soft sound of her breathing still showed that she was alive. 

He couldn't lose her. She was the only family he had left. 

He stood up and left the hospital ward labeled Annabeth Baker with tears in his eyes, and a frenzied determination to see things through, no matter the cost. 

––––

It was a rainy day in Vermillion City, infamously known as the city of sin. High-rise luxury buildings sat beside the waterline, contrasted by the neon-light filled crime-ridden red light district that lay inland, tall, imposing corporate office buildings harboring some of the world’s most powerful conglomerates right beside that, and a shopping center so large it looked like a man-made island known as the Plaza. 

“Hey, you! Stop right there!” the casino’s security guard shouted, chasing after a hooded young man wearing a mask. They were in the heart of the red-light district, where attractive female escorts wearing barely any clothes hovered around the broad suited shoulders of racketeers and businessmen and other colorful clientele, cigar smoke abundant around the tables. 

Zack leapt over a poker table with a cleaning sign on it and dove between two inactive slot machines, following the route that he’d planned and memorized over the course of four days. The alarm blared from above as one of the guards on the second floor balcony pulled out a handgun, which he caught with the corner of his eye. 

Go on. I dare you to shoot. Your bosses will lash you if you pull that trigger, because a single bullet will cost this casino a fortune, far more than what I could ever steal. 

As he suspected, the guard lowered his handgun upon seeing the looks on the guests’ faces, many of whom were major clients. Zack had calculated this already. 

Hugo gave him the tip-off that today would be a vulnerable day, and like usual, his information was always pristine whenever it came to misdemeanor but garbage when it came to anything else. His knuckleheaded friend had gotten himself a job as a bartender at the hottest casino bar in the red-light district, schmoozing his way into the seediest possible industry. Zack usually avoided this kind of thing, but today he had to thank him for the precious tip. 

With the bag of cash in hand, he hurtled down the hallway that led to the back entrance. He had to be quick, because now that he’d separated from the safety of the casino floor’s business operations, he could get shot or stabbed on sight by the guards since they didn’t have to worry about scaring the guests or reputational damage. 

“Hey!” a guard shouted from behind, emerging into the hallway. 

Shit, this was an off-duty guard he hadn’t planned for. Zack rotated to plan B, taking a right turn through the third door to the right. 

Bang! 

A gunshot ricocheted through the hallway right as Zack burst through the door. 

These thugs in the red-light district didn’t mess around, did they? 

He didn’t want to take this route because it involved jumping down the fire escape, but now he was glad that he always prepared a contingency plan. 

Holding the bag of money, he hurtled through the abandoned office room towards the back exit, cobwebs hanging from typewriters that hadn’t been used in decades. 

Just a bit further. He’d studied the building blueprints from an old record at the city’s library, and knew that just up ahead in the next room would be the exit to the old fire escape. The owners of this particular red-light district casino never bothered to clean up this floor because of an asbestos leak from years ago. 

All of this information was meticulously gathered from physical records and online hearsay. Zack had always been a good student, and it certainly showed now that he planned a literal heist. 

“Come over, you little rat!” the pistol wielding guard shouted, his voice uncomfortably close in the hallway behind him. Zack knocked over an overhead projector that landed on the tiled floor with a clank, then slammed his body against the door that led to freedom outside right as another gunshot ripped through the room. 

He closed the door behind him, heading towards what he thought would be the fire escape, when he came face-to-face with a floating hallucination. 

At least, that’s what it looked like to him. 

Hovering in front of him was a pulsating black hole, a tear in space itself, in the shape of a glowing oval with shimmering darkness without depth within it. It looked like abstract art, as if someone had taken a dimensional paintbrush and painted a portal over the fabric of reality itself. 

“What the…” he said in wonder, facing something that clearly did not belong in this world, something beyond his wildest imagination. 

Zack found himself mesmerized for just a few more seconds before two gunshots erupted through the door, nearly killing him if they had been aimed slightly more to the left. The bullets made contact with the portal and simply disappeared, causing a splash to ripple across the portal. 

“You can’t keep hiding in there, bastard!” shouted a gruff voice from behind the door. 

Another gunshot rang, and Zack flinched. He tried to go around the strange portal to the fire escape, but the pre-war constructed room was thin and so he could not find a way across. 

A fourth bullet pierced the door, grazing Zack on the side of his stomach. He winced in pain, his hand instinctively reaching down to assess the damage. Thankfully, it did not hit anything vital and merely grazed him. 

Zack’s heart palpitated as he panicked. This was how he was going to die, wasn’t it? He had nowhere left to go. He didn’t know what the portal was, but there was a non-zero chance for it to simply kill him. 

Well, he was about to die either way. He couldn’t turn back either unless he wanted to die the same way his father did. 

Fine. 

At least he’d die on his own terms. 

Zack ran towards the portal, diving head first right as a fifth gunshot pierced through the door. The bullet traveled straight towards his head, but the young man’s head disappeared first through the portal, followed by his body as the portal now began to glow hot. 

“I’ve got you now!” the guard shouted triumphantly, opening the door only to see an abandoned carry bag full of cash slumped on the floor of an empty room, both the portal and the thief gone. 

––––

As he passed through the portal, a sudden sense of excitement permeated throughout his body, and a strange phrase nested itself inside his head. 

Coconut milk. 

Zack blinked, his eyes adjusting to the bright lights. He found himself sitting at a table in an empty cafe, a red checkered tablecloth neatly laid with silvery cutlery resting above a large white napkin. 

He must have died. Was this the afterlife? 

He felt an overwhelming surge of confidence running through his body ever since he went through that portal. Why does it feel like I’m back to somewhere I belong? I’ve never been in this cafe in my entire life. Still, it feels so familiar. 

“Coffee or tea?” 

He recoiled in surprise, looking to the left to see a pretty server with silky long blonde hair and alluring blue eyes staring at him expectantly with a notepad in her hand to take his order. 

She smiled politely, her beautiful face radiating with charm and her body more pleasing on the eyes than the escorts at the red-light district, then repeated her question. “Coffee or tea?” 

He blinked. This was a trap. 

…

How did he know that it was a trap? It wasn’t based on any reason, he just seemed to know. 

The server waited patiently with an innocent look on her face as he contemplated his sudden revelation. 

For some reason, he knew the answer all along. 

Coconut milk. 

“Coconut milk.” The words left Zack’s mouth unbidden as he felt his body possessed by a spirit or something for the briefest moment. He felt a strange sense of deja vu. Nothing made logical sense anymore since he went through the portal, so he decided to just go with his newfound lack of control over his own body and his auditory hallucinations. 

The server leaned in with her ear, pretending not to hear him. “Coffee or tea?” she asked for the third time. 

Does this girl not know any other words? 

Zack began to feel a sense of irritation building in his chest. 

“Coconut milk,” he repeated, this time louder. 

The girl’s beautiful face soured into a sneer as she crossed her arms like a gangster, completely destroying the innocent facade that she had just a moment ago. “How do you even know about that? No one even bothered to sponsor you since you look so weak.”

She threw out that last word with contempt in her voice. 

“You know how bad I’ll look if I end up giving this to you and you die on the first round? Huh? How will you pay me back if that happens?”

Zack was taken aback by the sudden aggression from the server, who was now leaning over with her face nearly touching his. The contrast between her beauty and her current attitude was just too severe. 

He felt something possess his body once more, and his eyes glowed red. A surge of power entered his body, and he stood up, looking down at the server and straight into her eyes. 

“I said. Get. Me. Coconut. Milk.” His voice thundered and reverberated, as if infused by some kind of magic. 

That strange feeling of deja vu settled in again, before subsiding just as quickly as it came. The red glow in his eyes faded. His heart rate slowed back to normal, and he felt a strange sense of calm. 

The gorgeous server backed off while giving him the evil eye, heading into the kitchen. She emerged again a few minutes later with an old fashioned glass bottle and a single spiral patterned straw. 

She placed it in front of him, then backed off sulking and cursing under her breath. 

Now that that strange episode of possession had ended, Zack squinted curiously at the bottle of white coconut milk in front of him. It felt chilled to the touch, but otherwise rather unremarkable. 

So why was the server so unwilling to give it to him? 

Well, there was only one way to find out. He lifted the straw to his mouth and took a drink as the server continued to curse and stamp her feet while staring daggers at him.