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things they’d done to each other’s naked bodies—no! She hadn’t done anything. False memories, that’s what they were.
    Silent tears dripped from her closed eyes as she surrendered to the confusion inside her. She didn’t know what was real anymore and what she’d dreamed. Something was very, very wrong with her.
    Another prick in her thigh, the other leg this time, and she fell back into the welcomed blackness where she didn’t have to think or remember. Where she could hide from the thing that called her, where she would be safe until a champion rescued her.
     
    “You sure you needed to shoot her twice?”
    Mick frowned at Wil.
    “Do you want a repeat of what happened earlier?”
    “Point taken.”
    Mick relaxed as the doctor consulted with Creed in the utility room. His thinking no longer clouded by lust, he was able to assess the situation as the trained agent he was. Like it or not, he had to leave. Davies was a free agent, contracted by the agency and allowed to do things his own way, no questions asked.
    Mick didn’t have that freedom. He had to walk the straight and narrow, which meant he should be calling in an agency team. Protocol was paramount.
    Before he could do it, Wil walked up, bag in hand. Creed followed.
    “Time to go,” Wil said.
    Mick looked toward the bed where Chiana lay.
     
    “Tell her goodbye if you want, but she may be too far under to hear you,” Creed said.
    Mick offered a bitter smile. “I think I’ll keep my distance. Besides, she’ll be back at the end of our two days off, right?”
    Creed nodded and said with a conviction he didn’t feel, “Sure. Whole and hearty.”
    Mick slung Wil’s backpack over his shoulder while the scientist picked up his laptop. They were almost to the entry door when the floor began to vibrate. The air in the room grew warmer, and on her bunk, Chiana began to hum, an eerie sound that made the hair on Creed’s arms stand on end.
    “Any other way out?” he asked Wil.
    “There’s a fruit cellar on the other side of the utility room. That far door leads into it, but it hasn’t been used for years.”
    “It’s going to be now.”
    Creed ran into the office and shoved a high metal shelf out of the way, cans and boxes flying. He kicked the rusted door latch and yanked on the knob. It stuck. He kicked again, repeating the pattern twice more until the door opened with a screech.
    “Go!”
    Once Mick and Wil scurried into the dark, dank space, Creed slammed the door shut and shoved everything he could against it. He hoped there really was an exit to the world at the end of that fruit cellar. If not, and they died here, that would be their grave.
    Chiana’s humming turned into a low keening that put every nerve in Creed’s body on alert. He ran toward her bunk, stopping when he saw the sweat glistening on her body and her feverish face.
    She shrieked with excitement when the fortified steel door rattled as if pounded by a huge weight. The long fluorescent light tubes flashed; Creed closed his eyes against their brilliance. A slow cooker on the kitchen counter exploded in a rain of crockery shards. Water gushed from the sink faucets, a sound echoed in the adjacent bathroom.
    Creed embraced the adrenaline rushing through him. Whatever happened next, he’d be fighting for his life, and Chiana’s. Whether one creature or a horde, they wouldn’t turn away until they had what—whom—they came for.
    The ceiling lights began to shatter, one after another; tubes of glass rained onto the hard concrete floor. On the bunk, Chiana rose to her knees. Her eyes snapped open, and she screamed in a language Creed had never heard before.
    The words poured out as she stared toward the entry with unseeing eyes, beautiful phrases he couldn’t understand, filled with longing. She held her hands at arms’ length, palms toward the vibrating door, repeating the same phrase. Desperate, Creed ran over and wrapped his arms around her. He began shouting every