Page 38 of The Edge of Dawn

Maybe… it would be better if she just gave up.

If she went with them.

Get real.

The aliens weren’t coming to save her.

And this tempest in her head… it was pure torture. All she wanted right now was for it to stop.

She craved silence.

She just wanted to sleep.

Jade staggered around until her hand found a rough stone wall. She leaned against it, breathing heavily. The images kept coming, and she wasn’t strong enough to stand against them. She saw visions of alien worlds, of barren deserts rendered in strange hues—rust-red and purplish brown. She saw worlds with double moons and planets where the surface was entirely water. She saw ancient empires and decaying civilizations.

She saw hands—his hands—covered in blood.

So. Many. Times.

How quickly he could move. How ruthlessly. He could crush a mind with just his presence and then physically snuff out the life therein with his lethal hands.

Sometimes, with just a single blow—a tap of the fingers in the right place.

His existence was carved from such cruelty and bleakness that she found herself caught in a torrential downpour of emotion so overwhelming she felt as if the world was about to split into two.

Tears streamed down her face. Her throat closed up. Pain shot through her chest.

Her screams echoed throughout the cavernous mines, but she barely recognized her own voice. She detached from herself, present but not. She could float away from her body at any moment.

She was untethered, her mind splintering into a thousand fragments.

This is the end.

I’m going to die here.

Visions of alien terror mixed with flashbacks of her own life: perfect, predictable, peaceful. She was a lawyer. Newly married. Barely starting to make strides in her career.

Not a fugitive. Not a damn psychic or a clairvoyant or whatever the hell this was supposed to be.

Now, she was sobbing. The pain was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. It wasn’t physical pain; it was something far deeper. And combined with the terror was grief, for she knew that this was an endpoint.

The people from her past life were ghosts now. She could never go back.

So she wept uncontrollably as she fell to pieces.

She was all alone.

The torrent of images wouldn’t stop, no matter how hard she tried to control them. The chaos mingled with screams—from both humans now. And then, all of a sudden, they stopped.

The voices—the real, human ones—had been silenced.

There was only the sound of her rasping voice and the wetness of her tears.

She didn’t know anything anymore.

Why was it so quiet?

Yet, her mind was so loud.

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