Read Awakening: Dead Forever Book 1 for Free Online

unleashes a sadistic dance that penetrates deep into every muscle, a hideous torture as I am burned alive—from the inside out. Bright flashes obscure all vision, lightning storms so intense there is nothing else to see, and bombarded by unbearable booming thunder, there is nothing else to hear, only this body’s every molecule slamming into every other.
    A furious vibration rattles my bones. Jared failed to mention the weapon’s effect on bone, and only now does the truth strike—bones are much harder than the rest of the body. Perhaps not as hard as concrete, yet apt to shatter just the same. A terrifying thought—my entire skeleton disintegrating, leaving behind slush held in a bag of skin. A horrible end.
    Every circuit is shutting down, the pain is too great.
    Sight dissolves, sound fades.
    I feel no more, I am done.
    All is black, all is numb.

Chapter 2
     
    I am floating through space. Outer space. Countless points of starlight dot the blackness. The sensation is wonderful, gliding across an expanse of unrestricted nothing, a taste of total freedom. Alone in a calm, there is nothing I must do. I may never grow tired of this experience.
    But it can’t be right. My blood should boil. My body should explode. Yet here I am, serene, and without fear. The reason—I am without a body. There is nothing to me. I simply exist, surrounded by endless space.
    An immense pull summons me. My bodiless nothing is drawn into a narrow space, long like a straw, that stretches to infinity. Captured by the mysterious force, I am taken away and accelerated to an immeasurable velocity.
    My journey ends when a solid object crashes into me. Or I have crashed into it. In either case, the result is pain, which only a body could provide.
    Everywhere is dark, thick smoke, I can hardly breathe. Dread strikes—smoke means fire, feeding this burning temperature. I must not die by fire. Beyond the obvious fear of burning alive, there is more—I must avoid fire at all costs.
    Another person is present. She is looking for something in a cabinet. Scattered remnants of memory surface. There was a battle, and we are traveling to join others, but our vessel has suffered a malfunction.
    The woman hurries across the compartment, darts back again, and stops when she notices me. Her eyes are mesmerizing, tender blue with an electric dazzle. I sense another kind of heat emanating from this beautiful woman. I’ve made a mistake, and she’s unhappy with me.
    “What are you doing?” she says. “Put it out.”
    I want to say something, but I can’t. I am a spectator, a lifeless rag doll, yet subjected to every unpleasant sensation associated with being here.
    “They’ll get us if we burn,” she says. “Hurry! Put it out.”
    I don’t understand what she means, but in a way, I might.
    An intense flash—the flames surge brighter, roaring out of control, there is no hope of fighting the blaze. The small compartment becomes an efficient crematorium.
    Somewhere in the flames, I hear her screaming. I don’t want to hear that, anything but that, then I don’t—my ears have melted, and my eyes, I want to cry, but there is nothing left that cries. I am coming undone.
    Our vessel collides with something and the compartment explodes. My remains scatter to the wind, a mist of ash going all directions.
    I am lost. I no longer have a body.
    * * *
    A burning sensation is concentrated on my shoulder. Opening the eyes I’m surprised to have, I find Jared poking me with a long stick, painfully hot at one end.
    “Stop that!” I cry.
    Take me back to the dream, the part without a body, without this antenna of pain reception.
    He withdraws the instrument of torture, a telescoping rod that he collapses and slips in his coat. “Nice of you to join us,” he says. “You didn’t have to pass out, you big baby.”
    My head is still full of cobwebs. I was having the dream again. I’m not dead. But not much better off, after getting zapped by that damn microwave