The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was bright, purple glittering. I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but my eyes felt heavy and sluggish. For a moment, I wondered if I was dreaming, but, when my lids opened again, the purple glitter was still hovering overhead.

“Ms. Lemaire? Can you hear me?”

I lowered my gaze and attempted to do the same with my head, but it was bulky and cumbersome and unwilling to move. Standing beside me, there was a slender man with square, wire-rimmed glasses and a clipboard clutched to his chest. The colors of his clothing pooled together into a swampy green hue through my hazy vision, but I recognized the silhouette as a military uniform. He stepped closer and leaned down until I was able to make out a closely-shaven buzz cut on his scalp, and he reached forward to lift one of my eyelids.

“She seems alert, but I don’t know if she’s suffered any brain damage from the impact,” he said to someone I couldn’t see. “If we had electricity figured out here, I’d send her in for a CT, but we might have to go the old-fashioned route to find out.”

He reached into his breast pocket and extracted something with a click. The next thing I knew, I was blinded by a brilliant light. “Ms. Lemaire, if you can hear me, I need you to respond,” he said loudly. “Can you hear me?”

I parted my lips to respond, but I immediately realized my mouth was as dry as cotton. Dragging my tongue over my teeth to stimulate salivation, I croaked, “I can hear you.”

The light in my eye disappeared, leaving me with black spots swimming before me. The man straightened up again, though he remained close enough for me to touch if I’d been able. “Tell Burke the patient is awake. The Chief has been asking to see her,” he said, still speaking to the person I was unable to see. Then, dropping his gaze down to me, he introduced, “Ms. Lemaire, I’m Captain Geoffrey Biddle, a member of the USAMC and one of the doctors assigned to the Fifth Ward. I’ve been overseeing your treatment and monitoring your condition.”

His words sounded strange, almost as if he were speaking to me through a pane of glass. “What happened?” I whispered hoarsely.

“The Conquest was struck by an unknown source and crashed upon landing. Do you remember the accident, or anything before it?”

My mind retracted to the observatory onboard. I foggily recalled the sight of Albaterra, massive and vibrant against the pitch of space around it. An image of the Conquest crashing to the ground played through my head, but I saw it from a third-person perspective and knew it was merely my mental response to the information I’d just received.

“I remember—” Deep, reverberating coughs suddenly burst from my chest, rendering me speechless and erupting forth so violently I ached. I curled involuntarily as I hacked, but the doctor reached forward and gently pressed my shoulders back against the pillows.

“You’ve suffered quite a bit of smoke inhalation,” he explained. “You’ll experience some coughing, wheezing, hoarseness, and possibly headaches for a little while. We are also treating you for a concussion and second-degree burns. Thank God NASA made the jumpsuits flame-resistant.”

He was becoming more audible as my grogginess began to fade, but I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. While my body felt weighted, I wasn’t experiencing any pain to indicate any injury as severe as second-degree burns. If the coughs hadn’t still been wracking my body, I would have asked him to clarify, to explain further.

“Captain?” The voice was higher-pitched but still definitively male, and I tried again to lower my head and see the source. This time, I was able to tilt my neck a bit, and a man slightly shorter and rather bulkier than the doctor was drawing up to the foot of my bed. Biddle turned to him. “Burke says the Chief is onsite and will see the patient anytime she’s ready.”

Biddle looked back down at me. I could see indecision on his face. “I’m not sure if you’re well enough for a visitor, but it was the Chief who brought you in here and he’s been asking about you for hours…”

“I’ll see him,” I uttered throatily. I had no idea who this mysterious Chief was, nor why he wanted to see me, but he sounded like an important man, so I was agreeable to the idea.

There was a moment in which I was certain the captain would tell me no, but then he nodded briefly and looked at the newcomer by my feet. “Send him in,” he told him. “Five minutes.”

The man departed, and Captain Biddle said, “I will be back to check on you soon.”

Once I was alone, I turned my eyes back upward. The purple sparkles above were actually glinting faces of beautiful violet geodes growing from a rocky ceiling, catching filtered rays of stark-white sunlight through enormous, arched windows lining the upper walls opposite me. I reached down on either side of me and cautiously pushed to ease myself into a slightly-sitting position. My strength was feeble, and I was only able to elevate myself a few inches before falling back against the pillows, but it was enough to enable me to see the room in its entirety.

It was a vast, massive room, larger than a high school gymnasium or even a football field. The walls were made entirely of the same rock as the ceiling, a dusty chocolate-brown color with smooth bulges and mild crevices. Hospital-style cots like mine were lined up in two rows from one side to the other and placed equal measures apart, most with free-standing IV poles beside them. To my surprise, at least twelve of the beds in the row across from me were occupied. None of the patients were moving, but I heard the soft grumbles of someone snoring nearby. I didn’t know for sure, but I had a feeling they were other survivors from the Conquest crash.

Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I slowly turned my head. When I did, I was rendered completely speechless.

What approached me was not a man at all, but an alien. An A’li-uud. Standing well over six feet tall with long strands of colorless white hair rippling down his back and skin of such a pale azure he looked like a frost-covered blueberry, he moved toward me with dancer-like grace and ninja-like stealth. His footfalls were silent, despite the thickly-soled knee-high boots he wore. His pants were rather harem in style and the color of raw bamboo, but they didn’t swish or whoosh as he walked. He wore no shirt, allowing me a view of his ripe, fissured abdomen with ridges profound enough to rival a superhero’s. And his eyes… They were as white as his hair with only a hair-thin circle to indicate where his iris ended and his sclera began, and they were pinned so intently on me that I felt hot, penetrating vulnerability in my belly.

As he drew near, I finally ripped my eyes away from his and noticed he had odd bandages the color of Captain Biddle’s uniform wrapped around both hands and up to each elbow. When he finally came to a stop beside me, he noticed my stare and followed my gaze.

“I have burns,” he said. He spoke English, but his words sounded strange. They were clipped short at the ends as if he was finished with each word before it was complete. The final syllables drifted from between his thin lips like breaths. He raised both hands before him, showing me. “Not as severe as yours, I am told. I imagine your skin is more delicate than mine.”

I didn’t know what to say. All of a sudden, I’d forgotten how to speak. My tongue tripped over several responses, my lips fumbling clumsily for enunciations, but nothing remotely like English came out. He didn’t seem to mind. On the contrary, he watched my mouth closely with an expression of fascination on his finely featured face. When the silence became too lengthy and awkwardness began to set in, I forced myself to expel anything I could manage.

“Who are you?” I asked in a raspy whisper.

He tilted his head so slightly it was practically imperceptible. Then, his thin, sculpted lips parted, and he growled, “I am Lokos, War Chief of Montemba. You belong to me.”