Chapter 1

Earth

2017

This wasn't her world, and that was the only thing she knew.

Not who she was or how she'd wound up on kneeling against dry, cracked desert ground, wind peppering her skin in a stinging spray of dust. The blue sky stretching above her looked absurd, like something she'd seen in pictures but never in real life. It all felt so foreign.

Foreign, but not unknown.

A boom exploded above her and she threw herself to the ground, covering her head. Jets swooped overhead. How long had she been here for the military to find her? Her clothes held only a thin layer of sand. So, not long. Minutes, or else she'd be plastered in debris from the wind.

This must have been a restricted area for them to have found her so quickly. Why here? Why was she in a restricted area on an alien planet?

And how was it that trying to remember her own name felt like falling through a bottomless pit but information about the military poured easily through her mind?

She wanted to cry, but didn't allow herself. She knew how to control her emotions, even when she was totally and utterly panicked. Compartmentalize. Set the feelings aside and think only about survival. That didn't seem normal or healthy.

Who was she?

She dared a look around. Directly behind her, a huge round pod sank into the ground with its metal door wide open.

Well, shit. This really must not have been her world.

Rumbling sounded from the distance. The jets were circling, sun glinting off them, and soon dozens of military jeeps drove over the hazy curve of barren land. Surrounding her.

She succumbed to the dizziness and rolled onto her side, so heavy. That didn't feel right. Maybe the gravity was stronger than where she came from. How terrifying. But she couldn't feel the fear even as she tried to, as if she'd split into two, and this piece of her could only observe the tremble in her fingers without trembling herself. The sensation didn't feel new. So familiar. Her life was quickly becoming those two dichotomies: familiar and not.

The jeeps kicked dust into the air and slammed to a stop in a barricade around her. Soldiers rushed out, pointing guns at her.

These were things she knew. The list was small, but growing. Like that she didn't recognize the sky as her own and yet she recognized the soldiers' fatigues as that of the United States army. Or that she knew the soldiers now shouting unintelligibly at her were aiming M4s.

She struggled to her knees and then her feet, the fear finally exploding into something she could feel. Energy tightening her muscles so she could run, if only there were somewhere to flee to.

"Get down! Down on the ground!" One voice broke through the others. An older man climbed out of one of the vehicles and motioned at the others. The soldiers fell to silence while the officer pointed his pistol at her. "On the ground, now!" He nodded at another man who pointed at her and then dropped down to his stomach, fingers laced behind his head. Showing her.

"I speak English," she said as she lowered slowly to her knees. News to her, as well. Shocking news.

Gasps crackled through the silence of the crowd. Maybe she should have kept this newly discovered fact to herself, but she'd blurted it out before she could stop herself.

"All the way down," the officer said. Anger hardened his voice, but it was fear she saw in his eyes.

Only once she'd flattened completely, did the man speak again.

"Who are you?"

He wouldn't like her answer.

His voice raised. "Who!"

"I don't know."

"Excuse me?"

She closed her eyes, tears squeezing free. "I don't know who I am. I don't know why I'm here."

Her heart pounded as both the fury and fear sharpened on his face.

She didn't know anything that mattered.