Tears pricked the inside of her eyelids as she remembered the slow, painful deaths of the others. Catherine, the tall, elegant pilot, had died in the crash. The rest—Hiro, Yanni, and Shana—had died of anaphylactic shock when their filters failed. Oliver had been the last to go. She had been holding him in her lap when the first symptoms struck her. She remembered the agony of her own itching eyes and swelling throat before she blacked out. It was a terrible way to go.

Juna opened her eyes. Her skin was the grey of wet clay instead of its familiar dark brown. Fleshy red spurs protruded from the insides of her arms just above the wrist. They looked swollen and angry, as though they should hurt, but they didn’t.

A slight breeze pfeyed over her scalp. It felt oddly cool. Juna pried her claws from the branch and ran a hand over the top of her head, and sighed with regret. Her hair was gone too.

The branch swayed in a sudden gust of wind. Her stomach tightened, and her claws dug into the branch until her fingers ached. Her skin flared orange again as a fresh burst of fear blossomed in her stomach.

Juna took a deep breath and let it out. If she lost control, she would never get out of this tree alive. She fought back her panic. As it subsided, her hands faded to pale green. The strange color changes seemed related to shifts in her emotional state. So much for mah jongg and poker, Juna thought to herself with a nervous laugh. She shook her head. She had to get down to the ground before she fell apart completely. Focus on getting down, she told herself. Worry about everything else later.

Juna inched carefully backward over the shredded remains of the leathery sack she had clawed her way out of. How had she wound up inside it? At last her groping feet found the trunk. She turned to face it, fighting a sudden surge of terror as the tree swayed in a fresh breeze.