Page 36 of The Edge of Dawn

The engine roar of a landflyer.

“Give up,” the officer snapped, betraying his impatience. “Backup’s here now. There’s nothing you can do.”

Jade’s heart sank. What if he was right? What if Dragek was just a figment of her imagination, conjured by her subconscious as an antidote to the chaos in her life?

Was her mind truly capable of inventing a creature like him—all seductive darkness and devastating promises of violence?

And if he wasn’t real…

“Drop the gun, and let me take you into custody. Backup is here now, and believe me, there are a thousand ways they can take you down.”

No…

What if he wasn’t real? What if it all ended here?

Her life as she knew it… her freedom…

They would put her in an institution and treat her—rehabilitate her.

Her hand was trembling like crazy, but she didn’t lower the gun. A part of her could not give up on this dream—that somehow, he was real, and he was coming for her.

But there was no trace of him, and as time ticked away, a chasm opened in her chest, growing bigger and bigger, eating her despair and turning it into something dark and terrible.

Until shadows danced across her vision, and pressure built up inside her, like steam trapped beneath a lid, and the walls of her mind started to dissolve.

I can’t take this anymore.

Why won’t you come, Dragek? Are you even real?

That bitch, she’s done for. Look at her. She’s worse than what they said she would be. Completely psychotic. She’s going into the High Dependence Unit for sure.

Wait… what was that?

It was happening again. She’d just heard a man’s voice inside her head… it was coming from the guy across from her, and yet his lips didn’t move. He was just standing there, staring at her hand with the gun, the look in his eyes almost disdainful…

Not this again.

It always happened when her defenses were down, when she was emotional or upset.

And now there was something else.

The gun fell from her hand as a torrent of images rushed through her mind.

It was as if a high-speed train were shooting past, and she was catching glimpses of things in the windows; only those things were horrors far beyond what her human imagination could fathom.

Death.

So. Much. Death.

Death dealt in bleakness, in a cocoon of silence.

Stifling.

Suffocating.

Pressure in her head.

Pain, all-encompassing.

---