Nikki shot up from the mattress with a violent, agonizing jolt.
She tore a massive gasp of air into her lungs, her chest heaving as if she had just breached the surface of a frozen ocean.
Her hands flew immediately to her throat, her fingers desperately clawing at the skin, expecting to feel the crushed cartilage and the splintered bone.
She was breathing. She was alive.
The air filling her lungs wasn't thick with the taste of ash and burning rubber. It smelled of rose, clean linen, and the faint, ever-present scent of rain.
Nikki's eyes darted wildly around the room. The towering, apocalyptic ruins of New York were gone. She was back in her bedroom. The morning light was still filtering softly through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Just as she was trying to grasp her head around everything, she felt pain.
