Power vomiting on an empty stomach sucks. Your guts cramp, your abs clench, and all you get for your trouble is a sharp burn and nothing to show for it but pain. Various receptors in your body can trigger it based on nasty food, toxins in your system, and any other number of things. Your diaphragm and abdominal muscles join hands and start flexing inward and upward to expel whatever it is that’s causing the issue. The problem here, though, was that there seemed to be nothing in my stomach—not even bile.

  The Olive Garden seafood pasta, breadsticks, and tiramisu I ate less than four hours ago were nonexistent, for some reason. I know I didn’t hallucinate it; it was my solo birthday celebration and, as far as birthday dinners go, it wasn’t too bad. The waitress, Lay, a young twenty-something, was very friendly. The tiramisu was her idea once she found out why I was there. I could tell she felt bad that I was celebrating my forty-eighth birthday alone. That delectable dessert was the only present I got.

  Actually—scratch that. I also got an all-expenses-paid trip to…somewhere. Somewhere incredibly odd, that much was certain.

  The air reeked of hot copper and ozone, thick like microwaved pennies. Beneath me, I could feel the ground pulsing faintly as silver-blue veins crisscrossed the rock like something alive had been trapped just beneath the surface.

  The sky had no right to be the color it was. Greenish-gray, tinged with violet clouds that drifted zily—against the wind. Some approximation of trees grew bent and twisted, leaning away from me like startled animals.

  Everything around me was just bizarre.

  I spun in a slow circle and found a nearby puddle of silvery liquid, like mercury. With another gnce around me, I saw that those pools of liquid were all over the pce, so I decided to check it out. The surface was like a mirror, the only indication it was liquid and not solid being small ripples across the surface.

  It was then that I noticed something in my own body every time the pools rippled. Every time my heart beat, a ripple spread across the surface. And it wasn’t a normal heartbeat—it felt like I’d just sprinted a mile in full gear. Every single thud reverberated through my entire body, and the surface of the small pools would react.

  But it wasn't me causing the ripples. I don't even think it was me causing my heart to pound like it was. All around me I could feel a low thrumming, the kind of background noise one gets used to and mentally blocks out, only I couldn't block it. Instead, I felt drawn to it. I felt it in my core. And every few moments, a pulse would expand throughout the area affecting me, the puddles, and those silvery-blue veins in the ground. These veins glowed faintly already, but with each pulse they would fre in brightness.

  I leaned over one of the silvery pools of water and what I saw made me forget every bit of the bizarro world around me. Because if what I was seeing was supposed to be me, then coming to this pce wasn't the only big change in my life.

  I was forty-eight years old. My brown hair was beginning to go gray, and I had scars and the weathered look of a retired career Marine of twenty-seven years. But what I saw in the pool, well, it looked a hell of a lot like eighteen-year-old me from right after my graduation from boot camp. Fresh-faced, slim, muscur, and with a determined, hungry look that I recall from those days.

  Seeing a face I hadn’t seen in ages, my hands immediately fell to my body. If my face had changed, what else had? Even after three years of retirement under my belt, I had kept myself in fighting shape. I may have been out of the Corps, but the training never left me. Years and years of the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program along with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Krav Maga wasn’t something I wanted to forget anytime soon. I’d worked hard to get where I was with my martial arts training. I was proud of it.

  I had bulked up throughout my years in Recon and then in the Raiders Regiment. Most of that was gone now. I was back to the lean, hungry muscle I had in my prime—less professional wrestler, more predator. Instead of panicking about reverting in age, however, I was more curious about the fact that I was still wearing my regur clothes like I’d just hopped off a pne; jeans, a tight Under Armour t-shirt, and bck hiking boots.

  My hands began patting my pockets. I had emptied them when I got home but still had my phone and a pocketknife clipped to the inside of my front pocket. I tilted my head curiously when I looked back to where I had originally stood as I spotted something familiar lying on the ground.

  I grinned as I knelt, picking up the item. My trusty Ka-Bar knife had been in the truck, and I’d brought it inside with me to sharpen it. I guess I was holding it when I was brought here. Before I could pull it from the Kydex sheath, though, I felt a strange pressure behind my eyes, like a migraine with static fuzz crawling along the edges of my vision. My heart was still bounding—not out of control, but I could feel each pulse throughout my body.

  Something suddenly cracked inside me. Not a bone or a joint, but something deeper. It felt like a wire had been stretched too far and finally snapped. Then I stumbled, clutching my gut. Heat fred through my chest then rushed to my limbs. My fingers twitched. My vision stuttered, jumping frames like a broken VHS tape.

  And underneath it all, a low thrumming, pulsing in sync with my heartbeat…but it wasn’t mine. The ground? The sky?

  No. The world was breathing.

  And it was breathing through me.

  I was suddenly very aware of everything around me. Not just the gnarled trees and cracked ground, but the glowing veins in the ground and, oddly, a swarm of four winged beasts circling me high above. Even the mirrored pools felt different now. I knew they had been there, but I could feel power emanating from them; not just into the sky or seeping into the ground, but into me.

  Each breath felt heavier now, like I was inhaling the charge before a lightning strike. Something else was riding it. Something I didn't understand.

  My skin felt tight, and my muscles felt like they were vibrating. It wasn’t painful. Quite the opposite. It felt like an overload of potential energy that desperately needed to be released. It felt like my instincts were on high alert. It felt like I was in battle.

  The hair on my arms stood up. The world had gone quiet—not the peaceful kind, but the predatory kind. The kind I’d felt seconds before an ambush in Kandahar.

  My grip tightened on the Ka-Bar. Something was watching me.

  It broke from the tree line to my left, a wolf-shaped thing, the size of a rge Great Dane with gssy skin and a twitching, not-right gait. It didn’t growl. It didn't snarl. It just ran, silent, like a bullet of bone and sinew. Shock hit me, but standing there with my mouth open was a fast track to getting torn apart.

  It was fast in its dead sprint, and ten meters out it leapt into the air. Its mouth was wide, and if the sight of this beast hadn’t screamed danger, the rows of needle-sharp teeth definitely did.

  My bde was pulled from its sheath, and I side-stepped just as its trajectory brought it into reach. With a strong fluid movement, and a build-up of energy screaming to be released, I plunged the seven-inch bde into its neck…just in time for something to sm into me from the left.

  My mind was screaming, admonishing myself for daring to forget one of the most important facts about wolves: they hunt in packs.

  The Ka-Bar was still buried in the first. That left me empty-handed for round two. Its first bite barely missed my face as I jerked my head to the side, and I shoved my left hand upward into its throat. I didn’t know how strong these things were—hell, I didn’t know how strong a regur Earth wolf was—but I needed to keep my fleshy bits away from its mouth or this trip would be over very quickly.

  Out of reflex from my training, my legs locked around its waist, and I squeezed as hard as I could. Its front paws began to dig into my chest while it aggressively snapped its maw, working with fervor to cmp my head in its jaws. While one hand kept its head busy, my other hand delivered punch after punch to its ribs.

  When I heard a resounding crack and a brief whimper, I squeezed harder with my left hand, choking off its windpipe while I continued to y into its already broken ribs. It tried to scramble away, and I felt the panic in its kicks. But my legs were locked tight, and this big bastard wasn’t going anywhere until I was done.

  It reared back in panic, throwing its bance off, and I took that opportunity to roll. Now mounted atop it, its frantic spasms wearing it out more than I could on my own, I smiled like a lunatic and continued to bring my fist down over and over again. When its right side felt like I was pounding wet sand, I switched hands, choking it with my right and repeating the same work on its ribs with my left.

  I don’t know when it stopped moving. I’m not even sure if I managed to choke it out or if I caused so much internal bleeding that it just gave up the ghost. My chest heaved—not from exhaustion, but from the battle high. The rush. And underneath it, that strange pressure again. That power. Still begging to be let out.

  Standing, I stamped on its neck, snapping it for good measure, then found the first wolf to grab my knife. Its coat was useless for cleaning the bde, and there was little grass or even leaves on the oddly shaped trees. The blood, like nearly everything else in this weird pce, was the wrong color. Instead of a deep red, it was bck, like thick ink with silver glitter throughout.

  Above me, I heard hisses and a loud squawk. Those rge flying beasts were still circling, and it looked like they were very curious about what I was doing.

  “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” I called, receiving a screech in reply.

  My shirt was only partially shredded, a testament to the staying power of polyester. I was smeared in saliva, weird fur, and bck blood that sparkled like glitter in a bottle. Deep scratches were on my chest and abdomen from the second wolf’s mad cwing, but what I didn’t find was blood. My blood—the red kind.

  I know that wolves preferred their teeth as a primary weapon, ripping chunks of flesh from their prey so they’ll bleed out quickly. They could also use the same attacks these two had used, unching themselves at their prey to knock it down then ripping out a neck or two. Wolves—even domestic dogs—had cws. Not cat-sharp, but sharp enough to shred skin.

  I looked down at my chest again, then at the dead wolves. They were damn big, and I could see rge cws poking out from their lifeless paws. Why wasn’t I bleeding?

  With a shrug, I began to walk away as my military training took over. First, figure out where you are, see what resources are avaible, and then make a pn from that information. Unfortunately, the area I found myself in was the size of a rge, empty kebed dotted with dozens of those shiny puddles and the occasional clump of gnarled trees.

  I’d made it no more than ten meters before another surprise visitor decided to make an appearance. I couldn’t see it yet, but the same feeling as before shot through me. My grip tightened on the Ka-Bar. I’d already put two wolves in the dirt. What was one more?

  “Aw, shit…” I gasped when I found what was stalking me. It wasn’t a wolf.

  A panther-like beast leapt through a clump of the oddly shaped trees—leapt through it as if the trees were holograms and not real. Its fur was midnight bck that shifted like oil on water. While it stalked slowly toward me, its head down and ears pinned back, I found six eyes gring at me with unbridled aggression, each one blinking independently from the others.

  My eyes drifted down to its paws. There was a huge difference in those cws.

  It moved like a ghost, slow and silent, not a noise made with each move of its paws. Then, it stopped.

  “Fu—” That was all I got out before the thing pounced. There may have only been one of these beasts, but I knew enough about how big cats fought that taking on more wolves would have been preferred.

  The only thing I could do was rely on my training, prepare to receive, and become very, very angry. I’d been in this god-forsaken pce for less than twenty minutes and already three beasts were trying to make a meal out of me.

  My jaw clenched, my muscles flexed, and I stared down the six wide eyes focused solely on me, ready to meet this new threat head on. I’d already made up my mind—I was going to win. It might hurt, I’d definitely take damage, but…

  Uh…hang on. Why is it moving so slowly? It was still moving through the air, teeth bared, and inch-long cws extended ready to take me down. But it moved like it was swimming through mosses.

  There was no way I was going to miss out on this opportunity. At this point, with mutant animals, mercury pools, and something strange happening to my entire body, why question it?

  I lunged forward, stabbing my bde fully into its fnk just behind its left shoulder, and let the bde open a meter long slice down its side. Before I finished, time returned to normal, and the cat nded on all fours a full two meters behind me. Then, as if not realizing what I’d done, it let out an angry growl that quickly changed to a piercing screech of pain as it fell to its side, but not before its guts began to slide out of the massive incision down its side.

  “What the hell, man?” I excimed, watching the cat writhe, its guts sliding across the ground like thick ink. “What is this pce?”

  I suddenly felt as thirsty as a man ten clicks from water with blood in his mouth and spun, trying to find anything to quench my thirst. I wasn’t down for the count by any stretch of the imagination, but a few cups of cool water would work wonders right now.

  There were only those damn puddles of shiny metallic goo. After confirming the killer cat was dead, I walked to the edge of a puddle and stared down. Yeah, I looked like microwaved shit, but I’d been worse. Two Purple Hearts can attest to that.

  So far, I knew only that these strange puddles emanated a strange power, which sounded weird when I thought it, but I could feel it in my bones. And it was liquid. Of course, mercury was a liquid, and it could kill your ass in any number of ways. With that thought, my eyes went wide.

  “Is this mercury?” I asked aloud, surprised at how loud it sounded with no other noise to be heard.

  Just breathing mercury could cause lung or brain damage.

  Shit. How long had I been breathing this stuff? Did I have brain damage now? Was that why I was seeing such strange things? Wolves that looked like they were made of gss, panthers with six eyes and fur like oil—well, wolves and panthers being in the same area was weird, too, by Earth standards. And what about that damn slow-motion thing that happened?

  I needed to get the hell out of here before I started seeing flying pixies or an Airman who actually knew how to fight. There was no way in hell I was going to—

  “Sonofabitch!” I growled when another goddamn panther appeared out of nowhere.

  I was pissed off earlier. Angry at my situation. Furious at the copious amounts of bullshit I was dealing with. Enraged at the stupidity of these beasts who just had to have seen me decimate the ones before it.

  Now? Now I was fucking livid.

  “Let’s go!” I said through gritted teeth.

  The beast answered with a loud roar.

  I replied in kind with my best war cry. It flinched. I smiled.

  “Bring it, bitch,” I said and unched myself at it.

  The big cat wasn’t ready for me to come for it instead of the other way around. Its head popped up in surprise at how quickly the tables had turned.

  I was the hunter now. It just hadn’t figured that out yet.

  Something ignited in my legs—speed I didn’t know I had—propelling me forward. As it sat there in utter shock at the apparent audacity, I reared back with my right hand and brought it crashing down on its shocked face. I’d felt a resurgence of power coursing through my soul when I’d taken a deep breath to scream, and just like before, it was desperate to escape.

  My hand was surrounded by a lightly shimmering orb of light as it plummeted toward the beast like a comet entering the atmosphere. Was I stunned? No, that didn’t quite cover it. Because the damn thing’s head exploded like a water balloon full of motor oil.

  After wiping the goo from my face, I let out a deep sigh, then realized that had only made my mouth even more dry.

  Fantastic. Now I just needed a shower, some water, and a fucking clue.

  Also, a sandwich would be nice.