It was like being trapped in warm ice. She could feel a presence moving through her like a chill in the blood. It felt as if slimy hands were fingering her flesh from the inside. Enmeshed in a cocoon of passivity, she could only sit in paralyzed terror as an alien presence took over her body.

Once, in the refugee camps, five older boys had held her down and taken turns raping her. She had been only eight. This alien violation brought it all back—the shame, the humiliation, the helplessness. Anger surged up inside her. She hurled her rage against the alien presence inside her. It was all she had left to fight with.

Then a wave of unadulterated pleasure swept aside her rage as easily as though it were a feather in a breeze. She drifted in a warm sea of euphoria, divorced from her body. Nothing mattered anymore. She drifted happily into unconsciousness.

Juna awoke. She was half buried in a pile of moist leaves. Two aliens slept in piles of leaves on the other side of the room. She remembered the cold presence investigating her body from the inside, and she shivered despite the humid warmth of the tree.

Then she remembered the wash of pleasure that had wiped away her resistance. She sat, shivering, naked, and terrified by how easily the aliens had taken her over. And she had enjoyed it.

She had to leave. Better to die, starving and lost in the jungle, than to remain here and endure more violations like that.

She gathered what she could: a flint knife, a water gourd, a small net, and a braided coil of stout cord, and placed them in one of the aliens’ shoulder bags. Then she collected all the food she could find and put it in another bag. Slinging them both over her shoulder, she began the long climb out of the tree.