The room is long and wide, the size of a football field. The acrid smell of sulfur burns my nostrils, makes my eyes water. The air is hot and stuffy. And then I see them at the far end of the room: two figures shrouded in shadows, one much bigger than the other, and menacing even from a distance.

“They got away. Somehow they got away. I don’t know how. . . .”

I move forward. I feel the sort of calm that sometimes comes in dreams when you’re aware you’re asleep and that nothing can really hurt you. Step by step, nearing the growing shadows.

“All of them, all of them killed. Along with three piken and two krauls,” the smaller of the two says, standing with fidgeting hands beside the larger man.

“We had them. We were about to—,” comes the voice, but the other cuts him off. He scans the air to see what he’s already sensed. I stop, stand motionless, and hold my breath. And then he finds me. A shudder runs up my spine.

“John,” somebody says, the voice a distant echo.

The larger figure comes towards me. He towers over me, twenty feet tall, muscular, a chiseled jaw. His hair isn’t long like the others’, but cut short instead. His skin is tan. Our eyes stay locked as he slowly approaches. Thirty feet away, then twenty. He stops ten feet short. My pendant grows heavy and the chain cuts into my neck. Around his throat, like a collar, I notice a grotesque, purplish scar.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he says, his voice level and calm. He lifts his right arm and pulls a sword from the sheath on his back. It comes alive at once, keeping its shape while the metal turns nearly liquid. The wound in my shoulder, from the soldier’s dagger during the battle in Ohio, screams with pain as though I’m being stabbed all over again. I fall to my knees.

“It’s been a very long time,” he says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say in a language I’ve never spoken before.

I want to leave immediately, wherever this place is. I try to rise, but it’s as if I’m suddenly stuck to the ground.

“Don’t you?” he asks.

“John,” I hear again from somewhere on the periphery. The Mogadorian doesn’t seem to notice, and there’s something about his gaze that holds my own. I can’t look away.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” I say. My voice sounds watery. Everything dims until it’s just the two of us and nothing else.