Vander awoke to hazy sunlight filtering through a dusty window. It wasn't bright. Street-grime on the outside of the pane saw to that. But even so, it was more than enough to provoke her migraine. A barely-audible whine escaped her, and she rolled over in bed, away from the hateful light. 

She missed the days when she awoke to the blaring of an alarm clock. She missed the days when it was an agenda of school assignments that pushed her out of bed everyday. When she could sleep eight hours, and feel rested after. But those days were years in the past. Now, she always awoke to the start of a withdrawal, feeling as though she was coming down with a bad flu. 

Withdrawal. Her head pounded, badly enough that to get out of bed seemed a monumental task. Every muscle was sore. And she there was a constant and overwhelming ache originating from the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger, but eating often made it worse. Until she had her fix, at least. Lucid made the ache go away. Squinting against the light, she sat up, letting her legs fall from the bed to seek out the floor. Her apartment was tiny. The counter was only a few steps away from her bed. But it felt so much farther. Each step was effort. To reach down and grab the waiting hypodermic was effort. Everything was blurred, she couldn't bring her eyes to focus. Her hand shook, but she managed to slip the needle under her skin. 

And then the world began to clear. 

She looked down at her forearm as it came into focus, the syringe still buried in a vein. A droplet of blood was welling around the tip - shaking hands tended to make for a less than flawless injection. Most of the inside of her arm was decorated with faint scars from other times she had hopelessly botched the process. Those scars sharpened into crisp detail as the drug took effect. She slid the needle out and dropped it back onto the countertop. Her headache faded away. She began to feel as close to normal as it came. 

She couldn't have been asleep more than a few hours. A glance backwards toward her bed, where a digital clock projected the time onto the wall, confirmed that it was early evening. She had spent the start of her day at a pawn shop in fifteen, trying to get cash for some old lecture disks. The shop owner had been terribly stubborn, and she'd walked away with a fraction of her asking price. 

With a quiet sigh, Vander reached down and picked up the small glass container that sat behind her hypodermic. At the bottom, there was a few milliliters of a dark liquid. In the dim light, it looked black. In actuality, there was a hint of blue-black to the substance. Lucid. The very last of her stash. There was just over one dose left - enough to last her the night, but it would be gone by morning. She set it down, the ache in her stomach returning in the form of intense unease. If she wanted to last another day, she needed another dose. And for that, she needed more cash than what she had scored at the pawn shop. 

The Lucid was in her veins now, and she could think clearly. Without hesitation, Vander grabbed her leather jacket from where she had discarded it on the floor. She probably could have gotten a good bit of money for [i]it[/i] at the pawn shop, but some things couldn't be parted with. The slightly-oversized garment almost, [i]almost[/i] managed to conceal how worryingly skinny she was. A glance in the mirror revealed that her hair was acceptable, and her eyeliner unsmudged despite falling asleep. Not that anyone at The Spit would care too much. And if they did, well, she wasn't going there for their attention. People at the Spit liked to get drunk. They liked to get rowdy and careless. And if she was very lucky, maybe someone would be careless enough to lose track of their wallet. 

Vander slipped her feet into her boots, and then she was off, not even bothering to lock the door behind her.