With gloved hands, she patted her torso, arms, legs for wounds. There was no sound but a light ringing in her ears as she removed her left glove, gently touching a fingertip to a familiar scar at the base of her skull.
Surrounded by sprawling, tricentennial oaks, massive branches twisting as leafless arteries across the sky, she stood gingerly in a small clearing, tiny puffs of condensing breath at her lips. She checked her pockets. Empty.
Something less than a memory began to form.
Cracks in the road, faded yellow lines dividing a route traveled by few, jaundiced stripes worn ragged by disrepair and intermittent truck traffic. The oppressive weight of a satchel packed with importance, with ordnance, she couldn’t quite recall. A critical duct. The black magnetic strip of a keycard.
She stumbled into the adjacent grove and dunked cupped hands into the hollowed knot of a tree, breaking a thin sheet of ice and collecting glorious, chilled water into her palms. The woman drank deeply and contemplated again the mystery of her circumstance.
A hint of orange decorated the horizon to the east, and she turned toward it without thinking. In a sky filled with smoke, the false morning captured the sum of her attention, and her legs barreled forward without her mind’s consent.
With every automatic step, her dread gained strength. As the oaks grew thinner, a glimpse of brimstone emerged in the distance. Beneath her trodding feet, the path turned to asphalt. The warped pavement undulated from the fallen leaves in muscular cords, twisting upon itself and flexing with the frozen ground.
A thawed circumference marked the entry to new territory, and with every step, the blacktop beneath her boots grew softer. She passed through smoldering gates. She trudged past burning buildings. Her feet pulled at the molten tar as she remembered precise coordinates and began to run.
Exposed skin bubbled before reaching the crater, and as she spread her arms and dove, she still couldn’t quite remember her name.