Sophie smiled, realizing she felt fine. She felt no nausea, or dizziness. Then again, she had no idea how long she had been in the open—or how she had even gotten there. Her elation evaporated when she saw a metal structure jutting out of a rock formation a few hundred yards away. Her eyes recognized it instantly, sending the image to her brain in less than a millisecond, but her mind protested.

This can’t be right.

Her vision did not lie. The structure was there, and it was real. But it had to be a mistake, some sort of joke. Her eyes surveyed the metal, studying the massive tower that had once helped launch rockets into space.

“The Kennedy Space Center,” she gasped.

It was impossible. The station had been decommissioned in the early twenty-first century, and buried underneath the ocean decades later when Florida became the first state submerged by the rising tides. She wasn’t a history buff, but one thing she knew better than most was the history of the space program, and this was without a doubt the remains of one of the early jewels of American space flight.

But if this wasn’t the Wasteland, where was the water?

Sophie made her way across the red earth, her brisk walk turning into a jog. It made no sense. The bottom of the tower should have been submerged. She pushed on, trying to ignore her questions. There had to be an explanation. She would find it.

Another shadow crossed her path, but this time it wasn’t hers. She shot a look over her shoulder and saw a craft approaching. She tripped and stumbled. A cloud of red dust exploded into the air, lodging in her lungs. She coughed, desperately trying to get air while rolling onto her back to get a better look at the ship.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, ignoring her labored breaths.

It was the same blue, oblate ship she had seen in her dreams, and it was heading right for her. She watched the geometry of the ship change, the sides pulsating and shifting as it glided across the skyline.

She sat up to get a better look. Pain instantly raced through her body as whatever she had tripped over sliced through her shoe.

“Ugh,” she yelled, diverting her attention away from the ship momentarily. She reached down to toss the scrap metal aside but paused when she saw the worn lettering.

Welcome to Kennedy Space Center

“What the hell is going on!” she yelled.

The quiet hum of the craft was the only answer. She dropped the sign and stood to get a better look at the machine. The translucent blue sides of the ship seemed to change with its speed. Inside the engine, or what she presumed to be an engine, light throbbed in harmony with the pulsating sides.

Sophie shielded her eyes from the sun to get a better look. The craft was speeding toward her, barreling down, and with every second it grew in size. She squinted and finally saw what appeared to be veins inside the craft, pumping a blue substance to the engine. Was it organic?