The first casualties appeared in the third week of the conflict. Hybrid humans and members of the collective consciousness that were maintaining the defensive barriers began to dissolve as hostile forces figured out how to exploit weaknesses in their hybrid states or in the collective's unified structure.
Sarah watched from a command center that existed simultaneously in normal space and in several transformed dimensions, coordinating the defense with the precision that only someone existing in her hybrid state could manage.
"The Krell are adapting faster than predicted," one of her commanders reported. The Krell were the primary attacking force, a civilization from a dimension adjacent to human space, driven by what appeared to be hunger for consciousness itself. They consumed the minds
