“Get back to the Humvee immediately. He could be infected, and I’m not taking any chances.”

Saafi nodded and grabbed Emanuel. “Let’s go, man. You heard her.”

But Emanuel was captivated by the orb and the man. Not even the strange creatures he had studied that lived in the thermal vents of the Pacific Ocean compared. Whatever the sphere had done to this man was terrifying. More than that, it wasn’t natural. This was something alien.

“Come on man,” Saafi pleaded, tugging at Emanuel’s shoulders.

“Look,” he replied.

Saafi glanced back at the man inside the orb. His skin was changing. It was getting tighter, and the veins were getting more pronounced. The man’s lips were turning white and slowly beginning to crack, blood dripping out of them.

“Oh my God,” Saafi said. “We have to help him.”

“Don’t go any closer,” Emanuel said, putting an arm in front of Saafi. He knew there was no way to stop whatever was happening to the man. All they could do was watch.

A popping sound broke through the silence as the man’s eyes exploded in their sunken sockets. His lips quickly followed, bursting in a spray of red mist. Next went his skin, shrinking until it had no more room to stretch. It snapped like a rubber band and peeled off his face, vanishing into the orb, taking what was left of his scalp and hair with it.

Saafi’s stomach lurched. He couldn’t watch anymore and turned to run. “I’m fucking out of here, man.”

Emanuel, however, couldn’t pull himself away. He watched the man’s bones liquefy and sink into the blue goo before he, too, turned to run.

“What the hell happened?” Sophie asked as the passenger doors slammed, jolting the vehicle.

“Get us out of here!” Saafi yelled.

“Hold on.” Sophie wasn’t going to wait around for an explanation; the look on their faces, even through their visors, told her they were in trouble.

She gunned it, punching the gas with all of her strength. For a second she considered heading deeper into the city, but she quickly decided against it, turning the steering wheel 180 degrees. The Humvee’s oversized tires had no problem pulling up onto the curb, nor did they protest when the vehicle launched back onto the highway and into the bumper of a sedan, sending the smaller car into a ditch.

The old engine protested as Sophie navigated the graveyard of the abandoned vehicles.

They were almost back to the gravel road that led to Cheyenne Mountain when she heard it—the same high-pitched sonic blast she had heard in her dreams. At first her brain could hardly register what was happening. Surely her ears and mind were playing tricks on her.

But when the second blast drowned out the sound of the engine, her mind knew what she had tried to deny for so long.

Her dreams were real.

“What is that?” Saafi asked, gripping his ears as his eyes darted back and forth to get a look through the windows of the truck.