"Stop," Henry told himself. "Think for a second." He'd been following the images and sensations of what he thought he was seeing and feeling without questioning how it was possible. It wasn't possible. He should be dashed against the rocks on the beach. He had to be, unless something happened with contradicted every physical law there was. How likely was that?

Henry turned to the girl, who looked up at him with those beautiful, innocent eyes. He had to know. He reared back with his right hand and drove his fist squarely between those eyes.

The girl wasn't there. Now he knew that she had never been. His mind had been playing tricks on him, powerful tricks which had the power to take his breath away and convince him of things that weren't real. He had to take back control. Whatever was happening, he had to come back to reality. He had to.

The harder he tried, the less focused, the less real his surrounding seemed. They, too, were an illusion, and the more he was convinced, the more he realized they were unreal, the fuzzier they appeared to him, until all was just a white haze. He felt nothing now. There was no breeze, no warmth of sunlight. Nothing now...as, he told himself an to his great relief, it should be.

And that was when he heard the very real sound of a voice...calling to him as from a distance of a thousand miles:

"Sir? Sir? Can you hear me? We're going to get you out of here...Can you understand what I'm saying?"...