The world around them winked into existence but Alec paid no attention. He fell to his knees, hands clasping his head, ill beyond description. His forehead hit the ground. Everything tilted wildly around him. Bile rose in his throat. He retched.
Someone’s cool hands stroked his forehead and pulled him against a shoulder. Alec squeezed his eyes shut from the glare of bright lights and leaned into the soothing presence next to him. He felt awful.
Slowly the illness passed. The dizziness subsided and the urge to throw up lessened. The pounding behind his eyes dropped to a dull roar. Gently, he pulled himself away from the person who was cradling him and blinked several times.
A blond woman, pale and regal-looking withdrew her arms. Her smile was gentle and warm. “How do you feel, Alec?” she asked.
“Kinda sick,” Alec said quietly. Even moving his mouth to speak made him feel queasy. “What happened?”
“You were ill. The effects of the attack, I’m afraid.” The woman stood up and looked around. Alec remained on his knees at her feet. His fingers tugged at the long grass beneath him. It was too bright to look around properly. “Fortunately, she did not cause any permanent harm.”
“Who didn’t?” Alec’s brain was muddled. He had no real recollection of what had just happened. The blond woman looked familiar but he couldn’t quite place her.
“Riley.” The blond woman touched Alec’s hair in a stroking fashion. “You knew her briefly. Another Terran, taken over by the Others to do their bidding. I was fortunate enough to stop her in time.”
Alec struggled to remember. The name Riley was familiar. He couldn’t quite picture her. The Others were familiar too. A shudder of fear coursed down his back at the mention of that name. “I’m sorry,” he said, glancing up at the blond woman. “I can’t remember who you are.”
“I am Anna, your Guardian,” the woman replied. In her right hand she was holding something on a chain. She held out her left. “Try to stand up, Alec. We have a ways to go.”
A warm sense of companionship, and something more primitive and urgent, filled Alec’s heart the second he clasped her hand. Now he remembered her. Trusted her. Loved her. Of course she’d saved him. She always did. He got unsteadily to his feet.
He cracked open his eyes. He was standing on a high rocky hill, overlooking the ocean. A heavy bank of grey clouds was off to his left but directly overhead the sun was high and bright. Seagulls swooped above, their plaintiff cries echoing over the age-worn cliffs. A brisk breeze, laden with sea smells tugged at his hair and overalls. There was nothing civilized in any direction: no buildings, no airplanes, no boats. Alec had no inkling of where he was, but it didn’t matter. Anna was with him.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Newfoundland,” she replied. “Shortly transport will arrive and we will leave this planet.”
The idea of leaving Earth didn’t faze Alec for a moment. He felt numb and disoriented and couldn’t be sure that leaving was something out of the ordinary. Everything inside his mind was so jumbled, it was hard to sort through what was memory and what was imagination. He struggled for a moment against an unwillingness to try and think about her. “And this Riley person, what happened to her?”
“She and her accomplice, Darius Finn, were captured,” Anna replied. She let go of the crystal pendant around her neck and the sun caught the prisms inside turning it to millions of microscopic rainbows. She raised a hand over her eyes and peered back down the hill towards the windstunted shrubs, rocks, and grass. Far below them, the valley was blanketed by the approaching clouds’ shadows.
“They were working together and were a danger to you and the mission you serve. They joined forces to attack you and render you incapable of completing your mission. They managed to injure your mind, hence your memory difficulties. It was fortunate that I intervened. Now you do not have to worry any longer, Alec.”
Alec frowned. The names were familiar and tugged at him somewhere deep inside his mind but the more he tried to remember them, the more uncomfortable he felt. He shuddered.
“Why not? Won’t they try again?”
“I have taken care of it as I always do,” Anna replied. She reached out a finger and traced a path across Alec’s forehead, erasing the worries in his mind with her touch. “They cannot hurt you any longer. Both of them are dead.”