I don't know how long I laid unconscious, but what woke me up was the feeling of cramping in what felt like it should have been my lungs. Trying to shift my position to alleviate the pain, I realized I couldn't even feel my limbs. Trying to crack open my eyes was only met with unbearable brightness. It wasn't until the feeling of raindrops hitting my skin returned that I was able to relax as the pain slowly faded away. Slowly, my other senses stabilized, and I kept staying on the ground for a few minutes, waiting for the discomfort to go away. As I lied there unmoving, the memories that I tried to suppress for many months began to resurface, and I cried into the rain. The emotions were overwhelming, all the way that my family died, only then that I was feeling the full weight of it. Cursing all those low lives in my mind, I almost screamed out loud in frustration.
After what felt like a small eternity of weeping, I finally gathered enough strength to sit up. Looking around, the sky was dark, the rain was especially heavy, the grass I was sitting on was almost flooded, and beside me stood the door, the gems noticeably duller, but still more pristine than any human made materials I had ever seen. The memories of what happened the last time I touched it returned in segmented hazes, and I cringed back from it. Suddenly I realized that there were no way that the rain could get to where I was before. My eyes darted around, trying to take more things in as my breath hastened. No soldiers around. Sighing in relief, I stood up and almost fell back down because of a sudden wave of dizziness. Or, I actually fell and hit my face, then I was immediately standing upright, I couldn't tell which was the case.
As I looked around more carefully, the darkness was all consuming, and the only place where there was light was a few meters surrounding me and the door frame. I chose a direction to walk in, away from the creepy frame. Astonishingly, a small circle of light followed me when I neared the threshold between light and dark. I kept walking, and soon, the grass came to an end and gave way to a familiar street, the one near my school. It was only then that I registered the silence of the area. No gunshots. No thunder. Only the constant sound of rain hitting the ground, and the creepy distance tune that adds to the lonely ambience. I wandered around, finding places that should have been destroyed from the constant fighting still stood steadily. I grabbed a cloak swaying on a hanger to shield me from the constant rain. It looked badly damaged, but the sheer size of it kept me away from the droplets. I kept wandering, finding more and more structures and items, but no people nor foods. After a day, I began to feel unnerved by the place. After two, I was desperately looking for a way to leave the town, but no matter how far I went or which way I fared, I always ended up back at another identical one with small variations after a few hundred meters of plain grassland. But one thing remained constant in each iteration of the town, the white stone relic. On the third day, I was running while laughing maniacally to the sky, trying to reach somewhere different. I refused to touch that door again. On the fourth, I was still running. Not once in the time I was there that I felt hunger or fatigue. Finally, the fifth day was when I truly broke down and started destroying things.
My rampage went on for days, at least that's what my biological clock told me, and after a long time, I gave in and approached the door again. As soon as my hand touched it, the door split in the middle and opened up to the same basement where I first laid my fingers on it. Almost immediately I collapsed on the ground before the door as it snapped shut without a sound. Before I got a chance to rest though, a commotion above made me tensed up. Slowly, I got up and approached the basement door. I peeked through a small gap to see three men who seemed to be Collaboratists talking at the top of the stair leading down. They talked in a language I didn't know, but based off of their demeanor, they were ambushed by one of the other sides and had to take refuge in the town hall.
Just as slowly as I approached it, I backed away from the door, but it seemed that the stress of staying too long in there finally caught up to me as I slipped on a puddle of water and made a big THUD sound. Their conversation died down. I could practically see they pulled their gun out and pointed it at the basement door. Maybe I did see it, it was too vivid to be just an image crafted up by a fatigued mind. Either way, they called out to me, and I stuttered a few broken words back as I stumbled on the oversized cloak. And as soon as they identified me as the harmless little thing I was, two of them dropped their guns and exchanged a few words with each other. As I watched them talking, my heart was beating so hard it felt like I was being pounded by a sledge hammer. Finally, after a minute that felt like forever, the third man finally dropped his gun and produced a transceiver and started speaking with someone on the other side. The other two helped me, who was still paralyzed with fear and shivering with cold, over to the small military cooker thing in the most intact corner of the hall. They sat me down and began talking.
"How long did you live here?"
I didn't know how to answer, all my life I have rarely ever left this town, but was he asking for that, or-
"S-Since I was- I was bornt."
"I see." Silence followed.
-was he asking how long I have been living in the town hall?
"S-Six mon-months."
"I see." Silence followed.
Suddenly realized what happened, I tried rechecking my memories to see what I actually told him, but was stunned by my own memories.
I told him both answers at the same time?
"How old are you?"
"Th-Thirt-Thirteen."
He only nodded at that.
After a while with the third Collaboratists shouting over the transceiver in the background, he finally came back and said something in his language to the other two.
"Look, kid." The one who asked me said. "We have a refugee camp back there, do you want to come?"
I lightly nodded in affirmation.
"Good, now take a good rest. Tomorrow we're departing."
He then gave me a bar of ration, a cup of water and started talking with his squadmates again. I quickly gulped down the food, thanked him and lied down on the floor to sleep. At that point I couldn't care about sides or any of that shit, I just wanted human interaction.
