1
KYRA
5 YEARS BEFORE
I was afraid to close my eyes. I tried desperately to occupy myself with a book, just barely evading sleep.
Every time I fell asleep I was plagued with nightmares of disappearing people, and a girl in a dark room.
The girl was always asleep when I dreamt of her, but each night I could see new scars on her skin. It felt so real I could almost smell the putrid stink of infection on her sometimes.
That girl had been in my dreams for almost a months now. At first she had been healthy, and godlike, her skin unblemished, and unscathed. Now she was something of a monster.
I set down my book. It was a book of maps. Very unhelpful when a person was trying to stay awake.
I sighed heavily. -No point evading the inevitable- and settled into the familiar darkness of sleep.
There she sat, the girl. She was awake this time, her smooth, dark hair covering most of her face.
I walked around her slowly as she writhed and moaned in pain. I didn't understand what was hurting her at first, until I saw the spikes under her skin.
It was hard to describe them. It seemed like the spikes were crawling around under her skin, they moved like a swift machine. The only thing I could compare their shape to would be the sharp plates on a dinosaur's spine. Even that wouldn't make much sense.
I felt a strange urge to comfort her. To trace over the many scars lining her skin with my sweating fingers.
I started towards her, and twirled a strand of her hair in my fingers. She didn't notice me. I lifted the hair out of her face, and stared into her eyes, a shade of brown so dark, they were almost black.
My stomach twisted into knots as she let out a strangled cry. The spikes broke through her skin with a popping sound. They were razor sharp and a pearly white, bonelike color.
"Who are you?"
I asked, seconds before I was wrenched out of the dream.
I sat up in bed, covered in sweat, panting.
For the first time, I wished I could have stayed with her.
The next morning 4768 people mysteriously vanished in blue bursts of light.
