Excerpt

Chapter One:

A long, abrasive, invisible tongue grazes the fleshy part of my left cheek. The creature snorts beside my ear, but I can't bear to turn my head. My mind plays tricks, rippling my memory until all that remains is an intangible, cold touch. I don't have the power left in me to fight.

How do you fight something you can't even see?

Hot breath flashes across my frozen cheek as a muzzle nudges along my neck, making me shiver. The creature takes slow, deliberate inhalations, edging to my ear, into my hairline. Repulsed by the intimacy of its touch, the burden of consciousness threatens to depart.

"Runa, you know what's waiting outside. You can't possibly be so stupid as to think you can live in the elements alone. I know you don't believe me, but the Morph is out there. With the way its evolutionary leap defied nature, no one can predict what it's capable of now. You need to respect that. Besides, RationCaps aren't hidden in the woods. Food doesn't grow on dead trees, you know."

The memory of Baxten's warning echoes from the past.

Regardless of my brother's admonishment, I had to take the chance. After everything that's happened, after all that I'd be losing … I knew he'd never understand, but unfortunately, now he never will.

The Morph's sticky tongue returns, paying particular attention to my eye socket, drenching the area in saliva. The viscous liquid pools in my eyelashes, cementing my eyelids together. Whatever its intention, it plans to take its time. I swallow hard and will death to claim me.

For a moment, darkness consumes everything. My eyes flutter open as my long white hair whips across my face. The delicate braids I'd taken so much time to arrange this morning would blend into the snow beneath me, if I weren't staining it crimson. The sweet stench lingers in the air, tugging my impulse to gag.

With no warning and even less fanfare, the Morph's claws slice through the flesh above my left eye. My skull screeches as claw contacts bone and an instant later squishes unceremoniously through my eyeball.

Suddenly, I'm four again. The smell of death carries from the present, clear through to the memory. But now, I can't take my eyes off my father's sunken face. The light in his warm brown eyes is gone, yet I clutch his hand, desperate to keep his essence somehow attached to his body. The room vibrates, pulsing with an energy that makes my skin crawl and my stomach lurch. The medics arrive, wrenching my hand from his without thought, and wheel him from my life. So I will move on. So we'll all go on as if he never existed … So we'll forget.

But I never did.

I still hear his deep, boisterous laugh echoing through the main corridor of our Living Quarters. I remember the way my head bobbed up and down on his chest when he held me close. The way he always smelled like engine grease and electricity. I recall his last few moments, his last few breaths, as if I'd taken them myself.

To have him treated like that … his body destroyed without so much as a salutation to a life once lived felt wrong.

I blink away the memory, fighting through saliva, sweat, and blood.

The Morph's enormous paw dangles above me, covered red so it can take the shape of my would-be killer. He's massive, easily ten times the size of my frail body. My vision blurs, my head lolls to the side as I wait for the end.

Between the branches of this barren forest, snowflakes flitter through the air. They accentuate the blazing array of color from the sun as it hangs heavy in its locked region of the horizon. The halo is bright today, wrapping around the orb in a circular rainbow.

This place between life and oblivion is surprisingly peaceful.

Little gray birds gather in the trees. They call back and forth, seeming to be speaking to each other about me. A few scratch at the dirty snow beside me, looking for something. Their hops are odd, scritching back, a quick hop forward, just to start all over again. My memory download on animal resurrections from Earth called them juncos. Kind of a funny name.

One in particular hops closer, tilting its head from side to side, examining me, this dying bag of flesh and blood in front of him. The junco has beautiful black eyes and a white beak—an oddity, since the others' are yellow. A small smile breaks across my lips, and I chuckle.

He's just as different as I am.

The peaceful moment with the birds is interrupted as a ferocious howl snaps me back to the present. Seconds later, my body makes a crevasse in the snow and slams backward, hitting an enormous tree. What little vision I have blurs and takes on a brighter, more intense quality. The Morph pushes my upper body through a huge gash in the side of the tree, dangling me partway inside. My scalp tingles as the inner chamber of the tree resonates all around me.

The birds screech, and the one with the white beak swiftly dives in. His little gray body is so small, and his swooping gesture does nothing to distract my attacker. Pinned inside the tree under a dripping paw, I watch again as the bird circles in, and like a bomb, dives. The Morph grunts as the bird bounces off the nothing that should be its back.

The air ripples around us as the tiny bird lands in a heap beside the tree's entrance. Gray feathers ruffle in the breeze on an otherwise still body. Slowly, its white beak parts, to offer a final exhalation.

The unfairness tugs at my heart.

How could something so innocent give its life for me? What a waste.

My hair whips in circles, striking the sides of my cheeks, attacking my tears for even attempting to emerge. The tears burn, and I struggle to blink away the blood streaming into my remaining eye. The massive structure I've lived in my whole life comes into focus.

The Helix.

For the first time I can remember, disgust bubbles at the building's stark contrast of glass and metal with this forest of dead trees. Out here, the gnarly dark branches rise into the sky like they're orchestrating the celestial sphere. Some of the trees are ancient; their trunks command the space of a building, and for as long as I can remember, they've called out to me, whispering their stories of memories long forgotten.

It's unfortunate humanity never got to witness them in their glory. The Helix's history downloads tell us no life existed on this planet before the colonization happened. Yet, I'd hoped to be granted a way to study them as part of my professional appointment. With the way Pendomus is tidally locked, we know little can survive on its own. Humanity has been lucky. We've found survival on this temperate band between the desert and frozen tundra.

Supposedly, we brought the spark of creation with us. However, this remnant of the past, when life had sustained itself, is evident. Even in this landscape of hushed sounds and broken fragments of a life different from my own, life finds a way. This knowledge has always granted me comfort.

I'm probably the only one in all of Pendomus who thinks this way. These woods had been my place of peace. It's hard to believe only days ago I thought I'd been given a sign, a trinket from these woods. A simple blue crystal that held so much, a promise my journey ahead would be bearable, maybe even beautiful. I wish I'd brought it along instead of leaving it behind inside the Helix for Baxten to remember me.

The Morph snorts, evidently nonplussed by the bird's feeble attack. He bends in, lapping up the sticky red liquid from my face and nudging my head for better access. With no fight left in me, I blink slowly, allowing the intrusion to continue. Bright light pours into my vision, and I'm floating … floating … A pulse of heat spreads from my right side, and through me, all the way down to my toes. The warmth surrounds me, cocooning me in a blanket of serenity.

Finally. The end.

The heat radiates again, just as I'm submersed in the creature's saliva. A bubbling sensation tickles at the side of my face but quickly becomes unbearable. Ripped from my peaceful death, my boiling skin itches. My shredded eye sears with an intense pain I didn't have the sense to feel moments before.

I pull as much energy as I can and desperately wipe at my face, trying to make the pain stop. My body submerges into something warm and wet. I flail, trying to get a bearing, but to no avail. Despite no unfrozen water being found on Pendomus, I'm floating deep inside the hollow tree, surrounded by a murky green substance with a remarkable resemblance. The frothing water sharpens my agony, and I realize my right calf has been damaged in the attack.

The edges of my vision crack and darken. As I slide out of this world, a white, five-petaled flower glowing bright in the middle of a green field flashes through my mind. The image contorts into a large bearlike creature walking beside me. Beyond, an enormous tree comes into view and I'm urged onward. The tree has an intricately designed door in the side of its massive trunk, which tugs at my memory. As I reach out to touch it, the tree vanishes and a little blue crystal rests in the palm of my hand. The blue object in my palm pulsates, expanding until everything in my vision is consumed, and my entire awareness is filled with the color blue.