Location: Dulce Base, New Mexico, USA — One Year Later

The drone of the internal alarm was deafening. On. Off. On. Off. It wailed like an injured child into the thick smog that quickly filled the facility. Overhead lights flickered and fizzed while electrical cables torn from their fixtures sparked and crackled.

Freya hoisted her head from the cold floor, her skull still ringing inside. Her eyes stung from the acrid smoke, and her breathing was labored. She knew she couldn’t stay where she was. Her attacker was still in the room with her—somewhere.

With a grunt, Freya shoved herself upward and supported her weight on her one good ankle—the other was badly twisted, maybe even broken. Blindly, she limped forward, her arms outstretched to feel for a wall. She’d lost her Beretta and didn’t have time to search the floor for it. As she moved, her knees clanged into the metal frame of the bed. Shit. That hurt.

She tried to focus on the task at hand rather than on her burning ankle and now throbbing knee. Behind her, the smoke was a lighter gray, and the light from the tank illuminated the thick atmosphere. That meant she was dead center in the room. If she circumnavigated the bed, the door would be ten feet in front. Using one hand to guide her around the cot and the other to feel out in front, Freya hobbled on.

A scuffle in the corner.

Freya froze. Her heart beat fiercely in her chest. Freya squinted, hoping to see something—a shape, anything—but there was nothing. Breathing out her fear and controlling her nerves, Freya hopped forward again. Almost there. Her fingers left the safety of the bed frame. Ten feet to go.

A clang—this time from the opposite side of the room.

Shit. Have to dash for it. Freya clenched her jaw, bracing for the pain of trying to run on her damaged ankle.

Whump.

Before she could take another step, Freya was thrown clear over the bed. She smashed into the floor and slid to the back of the room amongst the illuminated smog. Before she could regain her composure, Freya was lifted by the neck of her shirt and thrust against the cold aquarium. Her head thumped on the glass, sending a ripple of sound through the water inside.

From within the dense smoke, the sickly, drawn face of a woman appeared. The sunken, crimson eyes, hidden behind a mass of limp, blonde hair, bored a stare into Freya’s soul. The woman’s teeth were bared. The animal instinct within her giving only one command—kill.

Freya squirmed against the vice-like hold. As she struggled to free herself, a menacing shadow entered her peripheral vision.

Wak swam up from within the aquarium to the glass and then slowly sank down to Freya’s level. It gazed outward, fixed on the women. A powerful seizure gripped the animal, forcing its head to turn to the side, and its eyes to clamp shut. It lasted a few seconds before letting loose its painful hold. The creature then banged its head on the tank’s glass—over and over.

“Victoria—” Freya’s sentence was strangled off by one of the woman’s strangely powerful hands.

A brief, controlled explosion blew in the door to the room. It crashed and rattled about the floor. Behind the smoke, Freya heard the voice of a soldier calling her name.

“Ms. Nilsson, are you in there? Are you okay?”

Victoria hissed in anger and tightened her grip on Freya’s throat, squeezing out her last gasp of air.

“Ms. Nilsson!”

Freya kicked in the air, desperately writhing as her body fought asphyxiation and lungs screamed for oxygen. Then, there was only darkness—peaceful, quiet, eternal.