Intro / Chapter one
crash
He spun around with a speed you wouldn't exactly expect when looking at him. After a few seconds of not knowing where the sound had come from, he relaxed when he saw it had just been a rat scurrying through the abandoned store and making a pot fall off a shelf. He reminded himself that he needed to always be aware of his surroundings even if he'd already triple checked everything before even thinking of relaxing a bit. He was out on a run, scavenging for supplies. Nothing in particular, he'd take everything he could find since they seemed to be low on everything. While he kept scavenging, he suddenly bent over, groaning, feeling a sharp pain in his side as though someone had actually stabbed him. When he rolled up his shirt though, there was nothing. No wound, no bruise, no nothing. Just his usual skin. He shrugged it off, trying not to think about it too much, thinking it was probably just one of those weird moments where you got some random pain for a few seconds; he had had a lot of those moments when he was a child, the pain was usually on his back, though.
A couple of hours later, the same thing happened again, now the source of his pain was his temple though. It didn't feel like a headache, as he initially thought. More like.. as if someone had tried to hit him and cut him or something. He wondered why these weird things happened today, but his attention soon switched to a nearby walker he had to take care of.
He was still out on his run when he found some dusty books in what seemed to be something like a group meeting room? There were chairs standing in a circle and one in the middle as if people had had some sort of meetings here. Maybe some therapy session? Who knew. He started looking through the now dusty books, finding one that peaked his interest: 'Gideon Archer' was the author of the fated book. The name sounded quite mysterious and intriguing to him, so he picked it up.