After a few hours of peaceful work, Ash found herself growing hungry. She decided to stop by the snack bar and grab something.

To her surprise, when she reached the kitchen area, Grean was standing there, munching on a bagel as he stared down at his phone. Ash mentally debated whether to say something to him or not and decided on keeping silent as she snatched a bag of chips. Grean was completely wrapped up in his phone, staring down at it with his eyebrows knit together.

"Miss Smith, did you see the news today?"

She shook her head.

Grean held his phone out, showing her what captivated him.

It was something about a new kind of supernatural link - or something like that. Ash didn't find any interest in it, but still smiled and nodded fr Grean's sake. Either he saw something else to read about it or realized she didn't care and held his phone to himself again. Ash checked the office clock. It read 5:20 in bold black numbers. She sighed, yanking open her bag of chips. She picked one up, pulling it towards her mouth as thoughts buzzed in her head. Before the chip reached her lips, her ears suddenly rang, drowning out any sound. She winced as a headache got a hold of her brain, squeezing it as hard as it could.

The world around her started to swirl together - she could make out Grean's fancy suit in front of her. Just as she thought it was going, something hit her in the stomach, making her clutch her gut, probably making a sound close to a dying cat.

Then, it was like there was a blinding light shining in her eyes, forcing her to blink to get it to go away. Her vision grew dark, she felt as though she was looking down a long tunnel. Then she blacked out.

***

After wading in the bog of dreamless sleep for she-didn't-know-how-long, the memories of everything flooded her head, and Ash woke with a slow start.

The first thing she noticed was how badly her wrists burned as if some invisible rope was wrapped too tight around them. She moved her hand - which, to add to her already many worries, was sore - and felt her wrist. She opened her eyes, shocked by where she was. It was a hospital, which she knew she should've expected, but she still wasn't prepared to wake up there.

Whenever she was young and the phantom pains - that's what her mother called them - came, she and her mother just waited them out, weary to spend so much money on a hospital bill.

An IV was hooked up to the back of her hand - bulky and painful as ever. She was comfortable in the blue bed, with white sheets spread over her from her waist down. She pulled in a breath, trying to calm herself. There was a white curtain pulled around her bed, hiding her from the rest of the world. She didn't want to be there - not even a little - but she didn't know what to do. Thankfully, she didn't have to wait long before her curtain was pulled back and a nurse's face appeared there.

The nurse had chocolate-colored skin, impossibly and yet naturally flawless, with curly black hair pulled into a tight ponytail and blue scrubs. She had kind eyes that twinkled with her smile.

"Well, I'm so glad you're awake now!"

Ash just smiled back, thanking the nurse with her expression.

"How are you feeling?"

Ash swallowed, trying to think about how to sum it up with words. The nurse saved her though, answering her own question with another question, that answered how Ash felt.

"Not good, huh?"

Ash nodded, strangely afraid to speak.

"Do- do you know what's wrong?"

Even though she already knew the answer, no, she asked it anyway.

The nurse's smile faded and she shook her head, rattling the curls in her ponytail. No matter how many times she heard it, Ash always felt disappointed at the answer to that particular question. The nurse was about to leave, but she narrowed her eyes in thought, pressing her lips together. She turned back to Ash before tilting her head up as if to say, "I'll tell you something I probably shouldn't because I feel like it's the right thing to do."

"It's Ash Smith, right?"

She nodded.

"You know, there's another patient here with the same symptoms as you."

Ash discarded her silence.

"You mean, none at all."

"But that's the thing, isn't it," Ash waited patiently for her to continue.

"Clearly what you're feeling is real, regardless of what the results say. I mean, do you think blacking out for no rhyme or reason means nothing?"

When she got the shake of the head she was waiting for, she continued, a smile etched into her features again.

"I think you might wanna meet this guy," she turned around again to leave but stopped herself. "My name is Rose by the way."

After getting unhooked from her IV, Ash followed the kind nurse, subtly rubbing her mysteriously sore wrists. They didn't walk far at all, maybe twenty steps, until ending up at a wooden door identical to the ones all around it. Rose knocked on the door, waited, and then pulled it open. The room was almost an exact replica of Ash's, excluding the few minor differences, the thing most out of place was the guy sitting on the bed where Ash was - in her room.

He had blonde hair with dark brown roots and bright green eyes that must've broken every heart they looked towards. Ash forced herself not to like this guy - who actually looked about her age -, she didn't know what he was like, and from the looks of it, he was probably a jerk. Just his complexion by itself made him look rich. Oh, great. He was talking to an older man, with salt and pepper hair and an expensive-looking suit and tie. Ash guessed that they were related, given their similar complexions and faces.

The older man was visibly angry, clearly only barely holding it together. The younger guy looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, mostly quiet as the older man carried on. Ash and Rose caught their attention, ending their - one-sided - argument. The older man glared at - what she assumed was - his son and stormed past Ash and Rose in a hurry. The younger guy sighed, trying to keep his emotions inside him as Ash walked up.

"Finn, this is Ash," Rose glanced at her new friends before returning her focus on him. "I- we think there could be some connections here."

Finn looked back and forth between them both, confusion knit his eyebrows together. Rose sighed.

"Tell me exactly what happened before you blacked out."

He was hesitant to speak about it in front of Ash, but Rose's confident presence encouraged the words out of him.

"I- I was in the alleyway next to my dad's- I was in an alleyway. Anyway, my ears rang all of the sudden and my head hurt, and then I blacked out." He sighed at the last few words. "Is that all?"

Rose looked hopefully to Ash. She couldn't possibly think their symptoms were related just because of some silly little similarities in them, right? For some reason, her wrists started burning again, asking for her to try and relieve them by rubbing them.

"Rose-" Finn's bored expression melted the moment he noticed Ash's movement.

"What are you doing? Why are you doing that?"

Ash grew suddenly aware of her rubbing, her ears turning pink when he called her out.

"What- what do you mean?"

He grabbed her hand, pulling towards him but she smacked it away.

"Do not touch me."

"Okay, okay just - show me your hands. Please."

Skeptically, she held her hands out for him to see. All three of them widened their eyes at the sight. A red, irritated line ran across Ash's wrists, the sight somehow made them burn even more. But the most surprising thing wasn't that. Finn held out his own hands for them to see - aggravated bracelets wrapped around his own wrists in the exact same place as Ash's.

"What . . ."

This time, the answer to her question wasn't no. Just, what in the world is going on!?