I lift a hand and call out to her. When she turns to look at me, her face is deathly white and void of the bubbly teenager I know. Her hair is matted with dried mud, and there’s dirt all over her hands and dress, like she’s been crawling for hours. Maybe days.

“Are you alone?” Annika’s voice whispers.

Shura clambers away, terrified. With ashen-blond hair and gray eyes too dull to seem real, she holds up her trembling hands to shield herself. “Please, stop. I can’t take it anymore.”

“It’s okay,” Annika says, soothing. “I’m here now. It’s going to be okay.”

I feel myself take a step forward, and something crunches beneath my boot. When I look down, I see a shattered human skull.

I am standing in a sea of bones.

The world dissolves once more, and I see a woman with sleek raven hair, high cheekbones, and olive skin. She’s wearing a yellow scarf around her head, and her face is streaked with ash. Her arms are wrapped around Shura.

“Hold on!” The words rip out of me, even as the rest of the world is torn away like it’s being ravaged by a tornado. “We’re almost there!”

“We’re not going to make it,” the woman shouts over the wind wailing around us.

“If they find us, they’ll send us to War,” my voice shouts back. “We have to make it.”

The earth explodes nearby, sending dust and bone flying through the air. Shura throws her hands to her ears, burying her face into the woman with small eyes.

The woman fights her tears, her smile tender. “Take Shura and run to the border.”

“I’m not leaving you,” I argue, but she’s already pushed Shura into my arms.

“I know,” the woman says, placing a hand against my cheek. “And I love you for it.” She kisses me as the world is imploding, and then she tears herself away, even when the horrible scream rips out of my throat.

“Eliza!”

The woman plunges into the dust, and her yellow scarf falls silently to the floor, just as her arms fling outward and lightning erupts from her fingertips. Sparks envelop the sky, and the woman moves like electricity, setting fire to everything in her path.

And then something pointy breaks through the fog—a spear with a metal tip.

I don’t see it pierce the woman, but I hear her scream.

When the Residents descend from the clouds like angels of death, I grab Shura’s hand and the scarf on the ground and run.