But this couldn’t be all I remembered.
There had to be more.
What happened immediately before this?
The crash?
The fall?
The scene rewound once more.
I watched as Isabella dragged me toward the lake and I sank beneath the surface.
Isabella reversed out of the water and skipped back to her pick-up as I struggled on the lake’s surface.
The entire scene shifted on its axis.
It was a lurching movement that made me almost lose my feet.
I fell beneath the water and despite knowing better, I couldn’t help but hold my breath.
I watched as my figure struggled through the water and swam backward, toward the twisted metal hull of the plane I’d crashed and left at the bottom of the lake.
Down, down, down I went, before struggling back through a hole in the twisted wreckage.
I followed my earlier self down and joined him in the flooded cockpit.
He reversed into the pilot’s chair in the middle of the room and strapped himself in.
He peered around at his surroundings as if surprised to find himself there.
The water level lowered until the cockpit was empty and washed back through a hole in the hull.
The pilot took a deep breath as the entire ship shivered and shook violently, before slowly rising to the surface.
It broke through the top and a huge wave pushed the ship back up into the sky.
The ship flew backward, swerving to avoid Isabella’s pick-up, and reversed at a terrifying speed into the clouds and the awaiting storm.
The computer system wailed and the lights blinked.
My earlier version shouted something—in reverse, so I couldn’t understand it—and the ship shuddered even more violently as a bright light ejected from the side of the ship and out toward the dark clouds overhead.
It wasn’t a bolt of lightning that struck the ship as Isabella had informed me.
It was something smaller but just as powerful.
“Clint!”
It was Isabella’s voice, coming in loud over the entire scene again.
I was so engrossed in the scene I forgot she was still out there in the real world.
“Liam’s coming!” Isabella screamed. “He’s coming here right now! If you can hear me, you have to get up! Get up!”
“Hold on!” I yelled. “Not yet! I need to see what happens next!”
My ship reversed through the storm, the rain pelting the screens and making it almost impossible to make anything out.
Something flashed behind a storm cloud and a bolt of green light reversed into my ship.
Immediately before that, the pilot yelled:
“!eriF”
“Fire!” I thought.
This wasn’t a thunderstorm.
It was a battle between two ships.
Mine and…
My breath hitched in my throat.
Liam’s.
Or the thing that had morphed into him.
And if it morphed into him, it couldn’t be a creature of this world.
And that meant…
The technology I saw on this ship didn’t exist on Earth yet not because it had been developed by scientists holed up in a bunker somewhere, but because it’d been created on another planet.
By another civilization.
One more advanced than humans.
The blood drained from my face…
And that meant…
Did that mean…?
I was an alien too?
The scene froze and shuddered like a corrupted computer file.
“No, no, no, no, no!” I said. “I need answers! Don’t make me leave yet! I need to see more!”
The scene exploded into a frozen wall of snow.
The mist swirled about me in a torrential tornado and floated up into the sky.
I lost my feet and was sucked up with it.
I scrabbled to grasp at the mist to make it form the shapes I wished but it slipped through my fingers.
I spun end over end as I floated further and higher into the sky.
The darkness absorbed the mist’s dim light, turning it black.
I wound upward faster and faster until even the floor that’d been beneath my feet drifted so far away I could no longer see it.
Then I reached the apex of my ascent and began to lose altitude.
I spun end over end once more, this time descending and speeding up to crash into the mist below and the ground beneath it.
I stretched my arms out to brace for impact.
Those final few yards passed in the blink of an eye as I careened toward the floor and slammed—
My ass hit the seat and I jerked back, throwing my arms out wildly to reduce the impact of crashing into the floor…
Except there was no floor.
Only a dirty window that looked out on a layby somewhere in the country.
Red lights made long tails as a truck passed along the motorway beside us, making our pickup shake.
“Clint?”
It was the sweetest voice I had ever heard, from the most beautiful creature in the whole galaxy.
Isabella lurched forward and wrapped her arms around me.
“I was so scared!” she said. “I didn’t think you were coming back to me!”
I felt her warmth and peppered her face with kisses, savoring every last inch of her.
I tangled my fingers in her mousy brown hair and balled it into my fist.
I sniffed her in, subjecting myself to her with all my senses.
I knew how important these moments were, how much they mattered in both the small and grand scheme of things.
I was making memories and would record every moment to enjoy and savor later in case I ever found myself in that memory hole again.
I shivered.
God, I hope I never saw it ever again.
But there were more pressing matters—and questions—that needed solving:
“How am I in the cab of the pickup? And why are we parked by the side of the road? What happened to the motel?”
The story she told me was incredible.
I admired her for her quick thinking in getting us out of there.
If she hadn’t, I would never have woken up and might have been trapped in that memory hole for all time.
The thought alone sent a shiver through me.
I took Isabella in my arms and hugged her tightly.
“What happened to you when you were hypnotized?” Isabella said.
I wondered how much I should tell her, how much she was ready to learn, how much I really understood about what happened.
I told her about the mist and
