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This was supposed to be my time to relax.

A fucking vacation. The kind where you sip fruity drinks with tiny umbrellas and forget that deadlines exist. But my brain refused to shut down, cycling through all the work piling up back home like a hamster on an espresso binge.

I adjusted my sunglasses and dug my toes deeper into the golden sand, trying to trick my body into relaxation while my mind spiraled through every unfinished project I’d abandoned.

The sun beat down on my skin, warming me to the bone, but the heat couldn’t melt the knot of tension lodged between my shoulder blades.

Five days. I’d been here five days, and I still kept reaching for my phone every ten minutes, muscle memory searching for the device I’d locked in the hotel safe on day one. That’s how pathetic I’d become.

Somewhere back home, my inbox was hemorrhaging requests. My team was probably drowning. My mother had likely called three times to ask if I’d be back in time for my cousin’s baby shower—which, of course, I’d already said I would miss.

I exhaled slowly, watching the turquoise waves lap against the shoreline.

The resort sprawled behind me, white buildings gleaming in the sunlight, palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze.

Paradise, according to the travel agent.

A place where stress melted away and worries dissolved like sugar in hot coffee.

What a crock of shit.

I’d lain in this same spot for three hours, and the only thing dissolving was my patience. My shoulders ached from trying to force them to unclench. My jaw hurt from the grinding of teeth I couldn’t seem to stop.

“Another drink, ma’am?” A shadow fell across my lounger, and I glanced up to see the cabana boy, all tanned limbs and practiced smile, balancing a tray of garishly colored concoctions.

I looked at my half-empty glass, condensation beading on the outside, the remnants of my third—or was it fourth?

—cocktail of the day. Mango and pineapple and enough rum to make my lips tingle.

The alcohol buzzed pleasantly through my veins, but even it couldn’t quiet the constant chatter in my head.

“Maybe later,” I said, stretching my arms overhead until something in my spine popped. “I think I’ll take a walk first.”

He nodded, professional smile never faltering, and moved on to the next sunbather.

I stood, brushing sand from my thighs, feeling the grains stick to my sunscreen-slick skin.

My red bikini, purchased specifically for this trip, felt foreign on my body.

I was more accustomed to button-ups and pencil skirts, armor for boardroom battles.

Fuck. Even on vacation, I couldn’t stop thinking in war metaphors.

I grabbed my beach wrap, a flimsy thing with bright hibiscus flowers that had seemed so vacation-appropriate in the shop, and tied it around my waist. My legs—warming up toward that deep bronze that was closer to my natural skin tone rather than the sickly yellow I’d been thanks to my cave—stretched out beneath me, unsteady for a moment from the combination of alcohol and inactivity.

The resort grounds were manicured to perfection.

Not a palm frond out of place. Not a pebble disturbing the carefully raked sand pathways.

It was beautiful, but in the same way a stock photo was beautiful—perfect, sterile, devoid of character.

I followed one of these paths, away from the crowded beachfront, desperate for something real to look at.

The maintained grounds gave way to wilder growth as I walked.

Ferns unfurled in vibrant green spirals.

Flowers I couldn’t name burst from within dense foliage in explosions of red and yellow.

Birds called to each other overhead, their songs nothing like the gentle ambient music piped through the resort’s speakers.

This was better. Less controlled. My breathing slowed as I wandered deeper into the island’s natural landscape, away from the artifice of relaxation and toward something that didn’t feel like it was trying so damn hard to be peaceful.

The path narrowed, then became little more than a game trail winding between increasingly dense vegetation.

I should have turned back. The rational part of my brain—the part that made me so good at my job—told me to stay where it was safe, where my cell phone would work if needed, where other humans could hear me if I called for help.

But the rum in my system and the restlessness in my bones pushed me forward.

Sweat beaded on my forehead and upper lip as the humidity thickened beneath the canopy. My beach sandals, never intended for actual walking, rubbed against my heels. I welcomed the discomfort. It felt honest, at least.

That’s when I saw it.

A shimmer in the air, just beyond a break in the trees. Not heat rising from sun-baked ground. Not light filtering through leaves. This was different—a ripple, like someone had dropped a stone into the fabric of reality itself.

I froze, blinking hard, certain the alcohol was playing tricks on my vision.

The shimmer remained, hovering about six feet off the ground, a vertical oval of …

nothing. No, not nothing. Something. The air within the ripple seemed both more and less substantial than the air around it, as if it were both incredibly dense and completely empty at the same time.

I should have run. I should have turned around and headed straight back to my lounger, ordered another drink, and forgotten I ever saw anything.

Instead, I stepped closer, curiosity overriding self-preservation.

The shimmer pulsed, almost imperceptibly, a gentle rhythm like a heartbeat. I reached out a hand, not quite touching it, feeling a strange coolness emanating from the anomaly. No heat. No sound. Just that impossible ripple, defying everything I knew about how the world was supposed to work.

“What the hell are you?” I whispered, the words barely audible even to my own ears.

As if in response, the shimmer expanded slightly, its edges softening, becoming less defined. I leaned closer, my face inches from the phenomenon, trying to see what lay beyond it. There was something there—a darkness, a depth that shouldn’t exist in open air.

My foot moved forward of its own accord, sandal toeing the ground just beneath the ripple. One more step and I’d be directly beneath it.

One more step.

The instant my body crossed the threshold, the world collapsed.

There’s no other way to describe it. Reality folded in on itself, compressing around me with crushing force. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t think. My entire being was squeezed through a space too small to contain it, every molecule of my body screaming in protest.

Colors I’d never seen before—colors that couldn’t exist—flashed behind my eyelids. My ears popped painfully, pressure building and releasing in waves. My skin felt like it was being simultaneously frozen and burned, nerve endings firing in confused panic.

And then—WHUMP.

I hit the ground hard, the impact driving whatever air remained in my lungs out in one painful burst. For several seconds, all I could do was lie there, stunned, my brain struggling to process what had just happened.

Gradually, sensation returned. Damp soil beneath my palms. Humid air filling my lungs. The distant sound of …something …chirping? No, not chirping. Nothing so familiar. This was a higher pitch, more mechanical, like metal scraping against metal but somehow organic.

I forced my eyes open.

The beach was gone. The resort was gone. Earth was gone.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, my hands sinking into ground that felt wrong—spongier than soil should be, with a strange elasticity that made my skin crawl.

Between my splayed fingers, tiny filaments pulsed with bioluminescent light, a network of glowing veins running through the ground like a living circuit board.

“No,” I whispered, the word catching in my throat. “No, no, no.”

I scrambled to my feet, swaying as my equilibrium struggled to adjust. Above me, massive trees stretched toward a sky that was absolutely, undeniably not the sky I knew.

It was darker, tinged with violet hues, yet still somehow daylight.

Stars—or what I assumed were stars—were visible despite the light, pinpricks of blue and green rather than white.

The trees themselves were wrong. Their trunks twisted in impossible geometries, bark rippling with slow, deliberate movement like breathing.

The leaves—if you could call them leaves—were deep purple, almost black at the edges, and they hung in clusters that seemed to track my movement, turning slightly as I staggered backward.

My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat so forceful it felt like it might crack bone. Sweat broke out across my forehead, down my back, my body’s panic response kicking into overdrive.

This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. I’m dreaming. I passed out from the heat. Food poisoning. Something.

But the ground beneath my feet felt too solid. The air I gulped down was too thick, too sweet, coating my tongue with a flavor like overripe fruit. And the sounds—the alien cacophony of life forms I couldn’t begin to comprehend—were too varied, too complex to be products of my imagination.

I turned in a slow circle, searching desperately for the shimmer, the ripple, the way back. Nothing. Just more jungle in every direction, vegetation that defied categorization, colors that hurt to look at.

BZZZZZZZZT.

I froze, the sound cutting through my panic like a blade. It came from behind me, close enough that I could feel the vibration in my teeth, a frequency that set my nerves on edge.

Slowly—so, so slowly—I turned.

And found myself face-to-face with an insect.

No, not an insect. Insects weren’t the size of dinner plates. Insects didn’t have crystalline wings that refracted light into impossible spectra. Insects didn’t have what appeared to be fucking eyestalks that tracked independently of each other, focusing and unfocusing as they examined me.

We stared at each other, the creature and I, in a moment of mutual assessment. Its mandibles—six of them, arranged in a circular pattern—clicked together in what might have been curiosity or hunger or aggression.

I swallowed hard.

The creature’s wings twitched, vibrating faster.

And then it lunged.

I screamed, a primal sound torn from deep in my chest, and flung myself backward. My arms pinwheeled wildly, smacking at the air as if I could somehow beat back this nightmare with bare hands. The creature dodged easily, its movements fluid and precise, clearly evolved for aerial combat.

I spun around, desperate to put distance between us, and promptly tripped over an exposed root—except it wasn’t a root. It moved, curling away from my foot like a tentacle, and I crashed headlong into what I thought was a tree.

The tree moved.

I screamed again as the trunk—no, the limb—shifted beneath my hands, bark sliding against bark with a sound like grinding stones. Something slithered down from above, a sinuous appendage that might have been a branch or a vine or something else entirely, reaching for me with deliberate purpose.

Pure instinct took over. I ran.

I crashed through the alien undergrowth, branches—or what I hoped were branches—whipping past my face.

Ferns twice my height unfurled as I approached, their fronds curling away to reveal pulsing centers that emitted clouds of iridescent spores.

I held my breath as I plunged through, praying whatever they released wasn’t toxic to human lungs.

The giant insect followed, its buzz growing and fading as it darted through the canopy above me, tracking my panicked flight with predatory patience.

Something howled in the distance—a long, low sound that started in a register I could hear and descended into one I could only feel as vibration in my chest. Whatever made that noise was big. Bigger than the insect. Bigger than me.

I ran faster, my lungs burning, the uneven ground treacherous beneath my feet.

My beach sandals, now slick with alien dew, slipped with every step.

My beach wrap had long since been torn away, leaving me in nothing but my bikini, skin exposed to whatever invisible dangers lurked in this impossible place.

I didn’t see the dropoff until it was too late.

One moment I was running, the next there was nothing beneath my leading foot but empty air. My stomach lurched as I pitched forward, a startled yelp escaping my lips. Then I was falling, tumbling down a steep incline, my body bouncing against roots and rocks and things I couldn’t name.

Pain exploded across my shoulder, my hip, my head as I rolled. Dirt and debris filled my mouth, bitter and strange. I clawed at the ground, trying to slow my descent, but it was useless.

After what felt like an eternity, I landed in a heap at the bottom of the ravine, splayed out like a broken doll. For a moment, all I could do was lie there, every part of me throbbing in protest, staring up at the alien sky with its impossible colors and unfamiliar stars.

I inhaled deeply, tasting blood where I’d bitten my tongue.

I exhaled slowly, feeling the press of strange soil against my back.

“I hate this vacation.”