Consciousness returned in fits and starts. At first Julia couldn’t move. A prisoner in her own body, she just lay there and went with the ebb and flow until she became more aware. She still lay on her back, the dirt cold under her. At least, she knew it was cold, but where normally she’d be shivering and curling up, trying to conserve as much heat as possible, it didn’t bother her. She recognized the low temperature and dismissed it as irrelevant.
Finally, she could open her eyes. The insides of the lids scratched across the surface of her eyes, and she winced at the sound. Loud. Loud. Too loud. In fact, everything was loud, from her breathing to the steady, slow beat of her heart. The sound fascinated her as she listened to it. One beat, then the next. The next. She frowned. The time bet
