Christen awoke, gasping for air with something over her face suffocating her; she tried to remove it and couldn't move a muscle. Adrenaline spiked through her veins, and flashes of heat and ice shocked through her.

Her eyes finally snapped open, only to slam shut, but she forced herself to open them against the low light. It took a moment before her bleary eyesight revealed a sterile white room, although she could basically only see the ceiling.

Somewhere behind her, little beeps and whirs revealed life support equipment. A sound she remembered from spending time with her grandmother in those last three weeks, and it added the pins and needles of panic.

***

This heightened awareness sparked the memory of being launched through the air in their car as it flipped, being crashed against the front seats of their SUV, the roof, and her siblings.

Even as the world spun and her body bounced around, she still had time to wonder how her seatbelt had gotten unbuckled.

For a brief moment, her eyes met with those of Anna, and she realized her sister had sneakily unbuckled the belt to get her in trouble with their father.

Few things angered him as much as an unbuckled seatbelt. When he was a child, his little sister died in a car crash because she somehow always managed to release the catch.

Their mother braked sharply to avoid a collision, and the momentum threw the little girl forward against the front seat's backrest and snapped her neck.

The left-hand door popped open as the cabin warped, and momentum flung her through the opening as the car spun and bounced off the ground.

Impact shuddered through her bones as her body connected with the soft grass beside the road, and she rolled back onto the tarmac with no control over her body.

The uneven surface and the speed at which she spun ripped through her soft jumper, grazing her arms, hands, and face before her head bumped against something, and she passed out.

But the worst part was when she woke and watched helplessly as the car exploded, killing her entire family, and then... she died.

The memory brought her back to the present. Her heart rate and blood pressure shot through the roof, alarms went off on the unseen machines, and somewhere a disjointed voice told someone that subject 23A just awoke from her coma.

***

A faint voice just below the edge of her hearing said, "Yes, Ma'am," and something whirred close to her.

The sedative went to work the second it hit her veins, and although she fought against it, by the time a nurse or a doctor arrived with a tiny light that they shone into her eyes as they spoke to her, Christen was mostly out of it.

"Good girl, we thought we lost you," she said, but her voice seemed to come from another room, and her face looked funny.

Christen struggled to cling to consciousness, and just as she was about to give in to the familiar darkness, the woman spoke again.

"Doctor Skinland, this is Nurse Clause calling to inform you that 23A woke. As far as I can tell, she had a panic attack of some sort, and we sedated her."

A short pause followed.

"Her stats are good. Pupils are even and responsive, despite the sedatives. Should we move her to the lab?"

Christen couldn't make any sense of the words as she floated among pink clouds with little chirpy birds flying around her in slow motion.

***

Christen opened her eyes and blinked blearily against the low lights, and it seemed like Déjà vu.

All she could see was the high ceiling of a metal structure, like an airport hangar high above her head, and this confirmed that she hadn't been dreaming the previous time.

The same as before, she couldn't move her body or even feel it, and the dryness of her mouth also tasted like medicine.

The sluggishness of her thoughts made her wonder if she was still sedated to keep her calm or if that bump against her head had caused damage.

Although her inability to move stirred panic, it was not like before.

A slight electric whir made her tense, and she expected another dose of sedative, but the top of the bed lifted to bring her into a more upright position.

This angle brought into view a plethora of equipment and monitors. Still, it took a moment to recognize that her face was being reflected at her from a security feed connected to a monitor.

Adrenaline again flooded her.

That wasn't the face of a sixteen-year-old kid but a woman in her early twenties.

Unfortunately, it was undeniably her. She was older and without the baby fat and had a paleness bordering on pasty, as if she hadn't seen the sun in years. Her features were stronger, firmer, and more defined.

Why were her storm-gray eyes strangely blue? Her dark hair seemed much darker against her skin tone, and despite lying down, she was much taller than she used to be.

Four inches if she were to trust the graph that she could now read without her glasses, and that alone was a miracle.

Something fell, startling her, but the other people in the room didn't react to the sharp metallic clang, and a frown wrinkled her brow.

Should she not be dead? The memory of dying was so... vivid.

***

"Welcome back, Christen; you've been asleep for a long time and worried us. Be calm, I am Doctor Strickland, and we will explain everything," a woman said, but it wasn't the same voice as before.

Strickland, it seemed familiar... Yes, the doctor that Nurse Clause called.

"I..."

Her throat was so dry, and she coughed, but she needed to say the words, "I died... not asleep." She had to take a moment to swallow again.

"Something impaled me... left a hole you could drive a car through..."

She coughed again, and the doctor let her sip some water through a straw, but she struggled to swallow and had to go slowly.

"That's enough for now," Strickland said, taking the water away even though she wasn't done.

"Okay, you died. Technically, your heart stopped beating, and you flatlined long enough that we were worried that not even cryogenics could save your higher brain functions.

"But our equipment kept your blood flowing while we ensured you got oxygen to your brain."

This was the truth, but why was it so hard to think?

"Ironically, the thing that killed you also saved you, but that is a long explanation reserved for another day. From your reaction when you woke and this morning, you know what happened to your parents. You saw, and you remember," Strickland said as she adjusted something near Christen's hand.

"I died..." she motioned for more water, and the doctor obliged her, not allowing her too much, "on a road in the middle of nowhere. Something killed me and indirectly my entire family..." her voice sounded hoarse, as if she hadn't spoken in years and maybe she hadn't.

"Do... you... think I'd settle for... hearing the truth another day?!" Fatigue rolled over in waves from even the slight exertion of speaking.

"You're weak, and I can tell from your brain function charts that you're still struggling with the effects of the sedatives."

Why did this woman have to be so unflappably calm, hiding behind her scrubs, clear plastic shield, mask, and cap as if she was about to perform surgery?

"Why... can't I move?" the edges of frustration and panic tainted her voice, but the monitor didn't yet beep.

Strickland stared at her for a long time before pulling a chair closer to the bed and seating herself.

***

"You're grades tell me that you are highly intelligent and wanted to become a doctor, and you would have been a good one if you hadn't sabotaged yourself. Unfortunately, that is off the table along with your entire future."

Christen didn't have the energy to contradict her.

"When you died on the tarmac that day, we saved you, but everyone thinks you were incinerated with your family, and you would have been if it weren't for an unfortunate chain of events."

Strickland picked up her hand, and she couldn't feel it, and something in her died when she realized this.

"The creature that escaped the truck, his name is Alexander, was an experiment we've been fiddling with for forty years. We discovered foreign DNA frozen in the ice in Antarctica beside the remains of a UFO.

"Yes, you heard all of that, and no, we found no little green men. We only discovered a perfectly preserved sample jar that took us ten years to figure out how to open, but that ship crashed to earth a hundred thousand years ago," Strickland stared right at her, challenging her to disbelieve what she was being told.

"At first, we crossed a strain of this DNA with a small frog, which turned into something that resembled an ape. Although it was inky black and docile, it was immensely strong.

"Still curious, we bred another, and the female turned out white. They got along well, and then one morning, we found the male torn to shreds.

"The Think Tank assumed it was because he wasn't the same as her, so we made another one. They developed into adults within weeks, and this time it turned out white as well, but the second it became sexually mature, she ripped it apart.

"Too late, we realized that she was pregnant, and the females, like a praying mantis, kills the male once she has conceived," Strickland said.

"What does this have... to do... with me?"

The doctor raised a brow.

If she wanted to know the truth, she would have to be patient, and that wasn't her nature. Plus, she wanted to be alone to mourn her loss, but she also had to know what was happening.

"We crossed another strain of DNA with a cockroach and ended up with the scariest looking insectlike creature you have ever seen. A praying mantis from hell, but it is as docile as a bunny rabbit, intelligent, and capable of reasoning, but they don't last long in captivity.

"The darned things just lay down, stop eating, stop reacting and die. So we didn't do that for long.

"The institute finally crossed the DNA with a field mouse and ended up with something that resembles a rhino," Strickland let go of her hand.

"Do you like science fiction? You might consider it akin to something from Star Trek. This creature in its home habitat is dangerous and hard to handle but not normally aggressive.

"We didn't know that it becomes territorial once you remove it from its enclosure. The others thought it would adjust, and it didn't. Instead, it escaped.

"The Taurian isn't as smart as the Mantilore or as perceptive as the Gordeon, but it isn't dumb," Strickland explained, and somehow Christen's mind made the connection.

The Taurian was whatever pushed that horn through her, and the memory was sharp enough to stir the monitors to life briefly.

"The Institute paid a guy to build that truck from titanium alloy to which we added a compound found on that alien ship that renders these creatures nearly unconscious.

"This metal is hard to extract and use. Plus, it's worth nearly five million dollars a gram. Thirty grams of this Terrillium26AMega would make that truck impenetrable to a missile strike.

"Unfortunately, the engineer chose to use twenty grams. It was enough when we worked with the other creatures, but with Alexander, it wasn't.

"The alloy weakened him sufficiently to cut his hide, and a piece of the metal remained to make him bleed just below his horn.

"When he hurt you, he thought you were one of us taking him from his home and killed you, but his blood got inside you.

"The compound brought you back to life and kept you alive when you should have died," Strickland shifted her weight, and Christen stared at her face, almost too stunned to react.

Did this woman lose her mind, or did she? Aliens, weird compounds, creatures, and blood that brought things back to life? Was this a joke?