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No sooner had she thought it, then the waves crashed in from all directions.
Beneath her perch on the soaring precipice, water swelled and roiled, devouring the valley below. It had been a city down there; she knew that. Knew its entire population was being swallowed up, drowned by the sudden, punishing flood.
"No!" The word exploded in her head, but her mouth made no sound at all. She watched through uncaring eyes as the catastrophe spread, destroying everything in its path. "No! Noo!" Bereft, sick with horror, she hardly felt the soft, warm touch on her arm. The din of chaos and annihilation was deafening. The entire world around her had gone dark and bleak. Empty.
"Jenna."
She startled at the sound of the feminine voice - someone else alive with her in this hellish plane, someone who knew her name.
"Jenna, can you hear me?" Claire Reichen's voice, velvety and steady, coming from the left side of her. "Look away from the carnage, Jenna. See me. I'm here with you now." She did as instructed, amazed to find she had the strength. The racket of the disaster and the death it was leaving in its wake still filled her head, but there was a peace now too. A tether reaching out to her from the dark.
Claire took her hand and nodded. "I found you. Do you want to try to go back to the beginning with me now that I'm here?"
Jenna nodded, unable to command her voice - the voice of whomever she embodied in this dreamscape - to speak. She wanted to go back. She could do this. She had to.
A sudden jerk of motion yanked her backward through the darkness.
The waves retreated at hyperspeed, flood and destruction unwinding in an instant. Rolling her back to the moment she always entered the dream, teetering at the brink of coming destruction. Then back even further.
She looked down from the tall crag, astonished. The moonlit city in the valley below was ancient. Columned white temples and bricked roads spread out in all directions. Massive gates and stone towers, protective moats and water-filled canals that ran like arteries through the heart of a pristine, thriving metropolis. Its beauty was mythical, breathtaking.
She swiveled her head to see if Claire was witnessing the same thing. But before she could glance her way, a sudden bright light flashed on the far horizon in front of her, illuminating the night sky like a newborn sun.
The earth rumbled beneath her feet. The tremor rocked with terrific force, so massive she staggered where she stood, nearly losing her purchase on the jagged mountain ledge. The entire planet trembled, as though about to crack open at its core.
And out over the sea beyond, a great cloud was forming. It billowed high and furious, ashes churning up from a stalklike funnel crowned with a roiling mushroom head. The cloud blew a gale of heat so intense, she had to lift her arm to shield her face from the burn.
Below her in the valley, some of the taller white temples began to shudder and break apart. People poured out of homes and taverns, spilling into the cobbled streets in a din of panic and confusion. Their screams went up on the dry night wind like banshee cries.
The wail and howl of a population experiencing its own sudden, wholesale demise.
As the waves rose up from all directions, Jenna tore her gaze away from the carnage about to take place. She searched for Claire beside her, but she was gone.
Now someone else stood next to her on the cliff.
An Ancient.
There were three others with him, all the same immense height, hairless heads and bared torsos covered in otherworldly dermaglyphs. Their thin-pupiled eyes were catlike in the darkness, raptly enthusiastic as they watched the destruction taking shape before them. They were exultant.
And they had done this terrible thing, she was certain of it.
All at once, the reality of it hit her. Here, in this moment, this awful landscape, she wasn't Jenna. She was one of them. One of these Ancient marauders - the one who implanted his bit of alien material into her human body and made her into something else. A shadow of himself. A vessel to carry his history, no matter how cancerous and ugly it was.
This moment wasn't only a dream. It was memory. It was a past event playing out for her, frame by horrific frame.
In the city below, people screamed and wept. They tried to flee, but the ocean was swelling even more, crashing high onto land. There was nowhere for them to run. No hope for any of them to survive.
One of the Ancients at her side pivoted his unfeeling amber eyes on her. The fools should have surrendered when they had the chance.
Not a voice, but a thought sent deep into her brain.
Another glanced her way, equally unmoved. She will never surrender.
From a third: And what of her legion who escaped with her?
We hunt them down. This voice was Jenna's, yet not hers. A psychic projection of thoughts she wasn't even aware were hers. Because they weren't.
They belonged to him - the one whose alien skin she occupied now, in this nightmare landscape.
