She heard his voice.

"Shh. Be still, Lanni. You're doing great."

Soothing hands cradled her head, softening the pain. She pried her stubborn eyes open and saw Alex's emaciated face hovered over hers. He looked so much older. Fire razed everything inside her skull, and as much as she wanted to care about Alex, her own suffering dominated her attention.

Other voices droned in quiet conversation, near, but out of sight. Sensei Rumiko and her husband John, she thought. Dr. Harris was with them, too. Had they all come just for her?

The biting reek of the monster's breath still burned her nostrils, a reminder of what caused her pain. The memory triggered a warning bell.

The monster! Danger! Had it escaped? Did Alex kill it? What if it was still in the house?

Her body barely responded to her mental distress. She wanted to shout but had to settle for a weak frown. The tickle of alien energy coursed through every cell of her body, electric blood, ready to jolt her flesh into action. Instead of obeying her, it responded to Alex's touch, tingling the most around her wounds.

Another energy, distinct from, and somehow at odds with the first, coiled deep inside her like compressed light, held back, but eager to shine. Unaware that she had been suppressing it, the strain of holding it in quickly became too much. It expanded until she was encased by it, like an invisible exoskeleton.

A pained wince ruined Alex's smile. His hands jumped back from her head, but he quickly smiled again. Lanni recognized his fake smile. It was sweet of him to make an effort.

"What did you just do?" he asked. His tone was soft, but insistent.

Do? He wasn't making sense. She hadn't done anything. She expressed her confusion with a barely perceptible shake of her head.

He touched the sides of her face again. He flinched but held his hands on her skin for two more seconds before jerking them away. Anger, or perhaps frustration darkened his face, but the plastic smile bounced right back.

She had seen this expression countless times, though seldom directed at her. He typically reserved his "patiently annoyed" look for people who interrupted a muse-inspired frenzy of drawing or painting.

"I'm trying my best, Lanni," Alex said. "You're doing really well, but I'm not done yet. You have to stop this... whatever it is, for just another minute. Can you do that?"

"I'm not doing anything," is what she intended to say. The strangled, wordless sounds that gurgled up from her throat were more like a comedian's portrayal of a drunk than actual speech. Frustrated and exhausted from the effort, she let her head loll to one side.

A glass figurine toppled from the tall chest of drawers behind Alex, as the little football-shaped brain-monster moved into view. Lanni couldn't say a word to warn him. Her fingers barely lifted when she tried to point.

Alex hadn't noticed. He touched the sides of her head again and closed his eyes.

"Lanni," he groaned. "Please stop. I really can't take it anymore." Each phrase struggled out through clenched teeth. He sat beside her on a huge bed, staring at his hands. The room around them was entirely unfamiliar.

The nasty odor of rot and burning plastic, along with her spinning head, made her stomach lurch. Were his hands smoking?

"I'm going to get you out of here, Lanni. I'll take you somewhere safe."

She couldn't answer, and even worse, she no longer cared to try. The pain in her splitting skull spiked when he let go of her head. She gave in and let the pain drag her into unconsciousness.

As she sank into a welcomed sleep, an important-sounding voice on the radio advised everyone to stay in their homes until the authorities determined the nature of the attack.

#

When Lanni woke up, there was only pain. No trace of light reached her eyes, nor sound her ears. Neither warmth nor chill alighted on her skin. Pain was her entire existence.

And then the world lurched. It dropped away beneath her and rose again with a fury, knocking her around with merciless unpredictability. She only knew that a foul-smelling monster had bitten into her skull and killed her.

Sounds came next. A cacophonous racket of rattling metal and glass punctuated the deep growl of a diesel engine. Another lurch reminded her that she had a body, and it was none too pleased about taking such a beating.

Sensei Rumiko would have said, "Embrace your pain with joy, child, for only the living can feel it." This tidbit of advice usually followed a stinging strike with a bamboo training sword called a shinai.

"Lanni? You awake?" Alex shouted over the growling engine. "I'm sorry about the ride. We're on an old logging road, I think. Fifty-Two and Twenty-Six are both parking lots. There's a cruise ship at the Naval Weapon Station, and I'm trying to get us there before it leaves."

The engine settled into a loud idle, and the bouncing stopped. Tension she hadn't even noticed around her chest, waist, and arms vanished, and after the sound of a sliding zipper, cool air blew across her shoulders.

"I bundled you up in a sleeping bag and strapped you to the seat with bungee cords," Alex explained as he unwrapped her. "The seatbelt broke away from the floor when I tried to buckle you in. It's rusted out."

"It really hurts," Lanni said, mentally celebrating the sound of actual words. "I can't see."

"Your head is wrapped up. I had to cover your eyes to make it fit. Dr. Harris was a little crazy, but I got some information out of him. Some medical advice. We're in his Scout."

"That explains a few things," she said, hoping he'd hear her weak voice over the engine. "Who's with us? Sensei? Martha?"

"No one. It's just you and me. Martha and Mrs. Harris are gone. I'm sorry, Lanni. Just sit tight. We can't stay in one place for very long. I haven't seen as many out here in the woods, but more than you might think." The engine roared, and they lurched into motion, pulling her back against the seat.

Lanni wondered if he meant the football monsters. How many could there be? Martha and her mother didn't deserve to die, especially at the hands-claws-of one of those things. She didn't have so many friends that she could afford to lose a few. How many more would die before someone got things under control?

She thanked God for Alex. Her somewhat pathetic, deathly ill twin brother had rescued her. He had really stepped up. She would never take him for granted again.

#

A persistent, droning buzz, like an angry alarm clock, battered through Lanni's wall of frightening dreams. Alternating flashes of red and white light strobed through her closed eyelids, demanding her attention.

Princess Jasmine and Prince Ali smiled down at her from their magic carpet, muddling her sense of balance. The warning light's blood red pall gave them a demonic cast.

Instantly alert, she sat up and scanned her surroundings. The room was barely large enough for the bed. Windows lined the wall to her right, and two doors faced each other at a right angle on the left. Disney characters, mostly princesses, smiled from wall- and ceiling-mounted posters.

The charged paddles of a crash cart near her bed dangled over the side rail, the word "ready" blinking green on a color LCD panel. Despite the fire alarm's insistence, she smelled no smoke.

She hopped down from the bed and pulled the Disney Princess bed sheet over her bare shoulders.

Where are my clothes?

A man's shouts in the hall distracted her from her search. Loud enough for her to hear over the alarm, his voice carried through her door.

"Back off! Stay back, now. I'm not..."

Gunfire interrupted his sentence, probably from a twenty-gauge shotgun. Lanni shrank into the corner beside the door as hard soled shoes ran past.

"Dammit!" the same voice shouted a second later. The gun fired again, and the tapping shoes came back her way. He spouted a stream of profanity that made her ears burn. Why couldn't people speak anymore without swearing?

She cracked the door to risk a peek. A pot-bellied, middle-aged cop was charging toward her. Barely missing a step, he noticed her opening door and fired the shotgun at her.

A chunk of the door frame and wall exploded where her head had been. As soon as she saw the barrel swinging in her direction, she pushed back from the door. In her haste, she tripped on the sheet and fell sideways on the bed.

The "electric blood" sensation returned, infusing her body and kicking her reflexes into high gear. She rolled with the momentum of her bounce from the bed and kept moving. The flashing lights and buzzing alarms slowed down. She had never seen the world so clearly or felt every motion with such precision.

Discarding the sheet, she grabbed a blood pressure cuff hanging from the wall, and hid beside the door. She pulled the coiled hose taut between her hands, raised it over her head and waited.

The door burst open before she could take another breath, and the chubby cop took one step into the room, planting a black boot on the floor in front of her. He moved in the same slow motion as the flashing alarm. Their eyes met while his gun swung toward her in a slow, sweeping arc. His brows lifted in surprise, but Lanni didn't wait to see if he was changing his mind.