The Distant Echo

Agitated Specters

Vertigo dominated, to the point of extreme sickness. All around him, there were streaks of colored light and shimmering particles — spinning through a tunnel, everything light and speed. The sensation of velocity increased, and it was like falling and flying all at once.

The tunnel converged into a concentrated, subatomic point, a place that might have been another realm of existence. There was no light or any recognizable reality, only the quiet, only the dark.

Until the explosion.

Branches of electricity surged, crackling across him, burned meat searing into smoke. The force of it wrenched him forward, and he collided with something hard. Another explosion released him from the current, and he collapsed to the floor.

A rush of blood pressurized his head, and he violently sucked air into burning lungs. Muted light broke through black dots in his vision, and from every direction, gray blurs moved like agitated specters. He reached out for them, petitioned for help until he became too alarmed by their haunting sounds.

Growling and hissing, clicks and squeaks — somehow, he knew those were animal vocalizations infused with intelligent speech. Certain that he never heard such noises before, a sense of dread plagued him because of its familiarity. Then, a terrible sound ricocheted to the front, and the foreign nature of it morphed to native English.

"Get up. The Conquest is under attack!"

Another explosion rocked the floor, and his vision cut out again. Blood pooled in his throat, and he coughed, red fluid spraying over his face and agony exploding from every nerve. Agony driven impulse made him scream. Foreign sounds spewed from his mouth, click-squeaks that hissed into a bloody coughing fit. Panic made him try again, and he forced air from his lungs until his throat burned from exhaustion. But the sound hadn't changed, it remained something other than his voice, something terrible.

After choking on more blood, Alex concentrated on a shape that moved near. A series of blinks shed the gray, and he gasped when a human-sized lizard materialized, lunging at him. Alex flinched and rolled away, pushing himself upward. Arm muscles failed, and he collapsed, falling hard, smashing his face into the floor, a jagged bone just below his elbow ripping through the skin.

As if a switch had been triggered, Alex realized that lizards were everywhere, that all the moving figures were human-sized lizards. Their vocalizations began to register, moving from the front of his mind to the deep recesses, returning like an echo in words he understood.

"The lead commander is injured and not responding well to this. Guards subdue the lead  commander and take him to the Medical Bay. Use force if necessary."

Two lizard creatures ran toward him. The floor shook with a thunderous quake, a series of detonations blazing across exterior windows. Thick bolts of electricity arced, and Alex laughed. "Hot damn, this is impossible, right? It's got to be a hallucination. Maybe a dream? Definitely a dream."

Alex's amusement was cut painfully short. A lizard took hold of his arm and heaved him onto his stomach, driving a sickle-like hook deep into the meat of his back. The second lizard impaled Alex with another hook, and while he wailed hysterically, they began to drag him away.