This seemed to be a habit, waking up in an unfamiliar place. I groggily came out of whatever Corran had done to me, whatever he’d jabbed into me. I stretched, and I was pleasantly surprised I could move freely. They hadn’t chained me up. But instead of the floor, I lay in bed. The only piece of furniture in the room.
I stood up on shaky legs, my head swimming from whatever ran through my body. Looking around the room, I was shocked to see that there was an opening in the wall, unattended.
It felt like a trick. But I was done being stuck in small rooms and needed air and open space to shake this claustrophobic feeling gripping me.
I clung to that thread of hope I’d find a way out of this mess and pressed forward in hurried steps out of the room. Light illuminated my passage along a long hallway, walls made of black like the previous ship I’d been in with Corran. But this was different. Loftier and wider, and I had no doubt I was in over my head because this had to be their main vessel they’d used to come to Earth. But why were we hiding in here?
My steps quickened as panic clawed across my chest with the notion that we weren’t hiding in here at all, and I couldn’t… wouldn’t even think about that possibility.
No windows graced the walls, and at the end of the corridor, two doors slid open upon my approach.
I flinched in response, but when my gaze swept inside, I shuddered on the spot, my mouth dropping open.
A long room spread out before me… the room that I had seen when I was first brought on. Now that I was lucid, I could see that it was a Bridge room on a spaceship to be precise. A darkened window stretched over the far wall with two seats facing the window, reminding me of the captain’s chair in science fiction movies. A four seater bench lined the long side of the area, while monitors and numerous controls covered the opposite wall.
Corran stepped out from the shadowy corner, holding some kind of tool that resembled a wrench and looked up to find me. He smiled.
“How are you feeling?” He set the metal tool on a seat and strode toward me. Dressed in black pants and a V-neck shirt with long sleeves, I noted the golden insignia over his heart of two golden circles overlapping… the middle section was black and reminded me of an eclipse.
“What did you inject in me? Where are we?”
A corner of his mouth curled upward as he pushed his glasses to sit on top of his head. His caramel eyes smiled at me with a cheekiness I wasn’t expecting. “A little something to help you breathe outside of The Brig. Our environmental systems are down, and oxygen was only available in the holding room.”
“That’s why you locked me in there?” I raised my voice. “Then why the hell didn’t you just tell me, and why did you jam a needle in my neck?”
“Because you would have panicked.” He remained so calm, still smirking, while I burned up on the inside, tangled in a mix of anger and frustration.
“I did panic! You came at me with a syringe.”
“Oxygen levels were running low and I needed more time to fix up the regulators. Plus it gave me the perfect chance to trial the throat ring.” He studied me like a specimen. “How are you feeling?”
My hand instinctively reached for my neck, half expecting to find a collar. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a small device that looks like a ring and sits in your throat esophagus. The ring gives you oxygen and eliminates other gases you inhale. Now, you can walk around the ship freely.”
I blinked hard, and my brain stuttered for a while. “Y-you operated on me?”
He took a gulp of his coffee before setting it aside like it tasted bad. “It’s a non intrusive quick implant. Either that or you would have died.”
He reached out and took my hand in his, his face softening, but I pulled free from his grasp. I kept swallowing, convinced I felt the ring in my throat now. My lungs seemed to close up and I couldn’t take enough air into them.
“I don’t want your alien technology inside me.”
His lips pursed. “Come with me.” He marched past me and down the short hallway, then turned right through a set of doors that slid open at his approach.
I stood in the doorway, scanning the white room, the long table and chairs located in the middle, and eyed the panel of buttons on the rear wall. Everything looked pristine and almost too clinical.
“Take a seat,” he commanded.
“No thanks. I don’t want another injection.”
“Sit!” he boomed and crossed the room before jabbing the control panel.
Seconds later, the whole wall seemed to vibrate, and I held my breath, unsure what was going on. But in a heartbeat the bottom half jutted out of the wall and a whole kitchen counter with cabinets and appliances appeared.
Corran pressed a button on the coffee machine and reached for the ground beans.
“This is a kitchen? And why do you have human stuff in here?” I stepped into the room and slid into a chair, watching him make two cups of coffee.
When he returned and placed a cup in front of me, he sat across from me. “I ordered them and set up this whole kitchen for you with foods you enjoy.”
“Why would you think I’d ever come into your spaceship?” I picked up my mug and inhaled the nutty aroma before sipping it.
“You ask a lot of questions. And Reaver SC is a space cruiser.”
I didn’t know where to begin because my head spun with everything of late.
“You’re safe now,” he murmured. “That’s what matters.”
“Stop saying that.”
Something behind his eyes shifted. Gone was the smile and patience.
But I’d had enough of being shoved here and there without explanation.
“Our compound on Earth was compromised and the Khonsu found you. They were coming to take you as theirs, so we left in our ship.”
“And where are we now? I want to see my friends.”
He was on his feet, shaking his head. “You know that’s not possible.”
Just hearing the words left me shaking, and my throat thickened, but then I fingered my neck, wondering if I’d choke on the ring inside me.
“Let me show you something that might answer your questions.”
I climbed to my feet and took my cup of coffee with me, cradling it in my hands because each time I inhaled it’s aroma, it reminded me of home.
In the narrow hallway, we passed several doors, and he stopped outside one. He tapped something into the keypad and the door zipped upward, vanishing into the wall.
“This is your cabin.”
I peered inside to find a bed that looked like mine back home along with a bedside table, lamp, and even a bookshelf filled with books.
“The Mess Hall is stocked with all kinds of food for you, but come, I need to show you something in the Bridge.”
I tracked after him into the main control room, closer to the enormous black window. Corran pointed to it. “What do you see?”
“Blackness,” I retorted.
“Look again and closer,” he insisted.
So I turned and stared into the eerie darkness, when I caught something blinking in the distance… tiny and far, but I leaned closer, squinting.
“This might help.” Corran suggested and hit a button, the lights in the room fading.
The view outside of me changed, came to life, became so much more than I first thought. Outside the window, a pitch-black curtain draped over the sky all around us. No, not the sky… couldn’t be when the blinking stars around us made shapes against the dark backdrop.
“Are…” Oh, shit. “Are we…” I glanced at him as he nodded, a tight smile pulling at his lips.
I should have known better than to think I could trust them in any way, but this… Fuck. “We’re in space!”
Even before Corran answered, my knees wobbled and I collapsed into one of the seats looking out at the endless world ahead of us.
“It’s beautiful isn't it?”
Words left me, and all I could do was gape at the expanse of the universe, caught up in the breadth of it, the sheer explosion of… space. I couldn’t move my mouth to speak, instead I felt trapped as if I was frozen underwater, my world moving in slow motion.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Space. I’m in freaking space in a spaceship.”
“Cruiser,” he corrected me.
“Reaver SC is small and only has energy shields if we encounter enemy ships, but since we’re on an exploration mission, we don’t have weapons. We’re also lacking entertainment on board such as a biosphere to replicate your botanical gardens, or a bar, but we’re fast.”
“What?” I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying and I rubbed my eyes but it was useless. “Where are we going?”
“Veon. We have to return home.”
I jerked toward him, a shiver slithering down my flesh. “Are you kidding me? You just kidnapped me from Earth and now you are taking me to your home planet?”
“We told you before. You’re already ours.”
I was on my feet pacing and didn’t recall getting off the chair, but I wrapped my arms around my middle, barely able to breath. I kept prodding my throat with my tongue to feel for the ring. How could they have done this?
“You didn’t even ask me,” I mumbled.
“We had no time,” he explained.
Fury raged through my veins that these three Vepar pushed and pulled me in every direction at their own accord, never what I wanted. “So what now?” I began. “You put me to sleep for years until we arrive there, and I’ll wake up an old woman because I wasted my life here. I might as well have died at the hands of the enemies.” I gasped for air, and the walls seemed to close in around me.
“It’ll take us just under a month to reach home. We use a rift in spacetime,” Corran explained as if I ought to understand what he was talking about.
I blinked fast and glanced back outside the window. “I don’t know much about science, but I’m pretty sure no one can move faster than the speed of light.”
“Our technology might challenge that theory. Long ago we discovered two entangled black holes. Our scientists found an anomaly and…” He tapped his chin as if finding the easiest way to explain what I already didn’t quite understand. “They found a way to separate these two black holes, and that space in between turned out to be a wormhole, which allows anyone with the right vessel to take a shortcut through the universe.”
“Shortcut?”
“Space and time can be bent. One of Earth’s great geniuses, Albert Einstein was correct,” Corran’s words sped up in his excitement to tell me this explanation. “A wormhole is a tunnel that joins distant locations in space or even two universes through space time curvature. And one of our scientists discovered one that goes from our world to your universe.”
“So, that’s how you’ve watched us for so long before you invaded.”
“Invaded is a very harsh word.” He picked up his black framed glasses and slipped them back on his face.
“Where’s Thane and Derrial?”
“Sleeping. We’ve been traveling nonstop for the past two weeks and are nearing the wormhole. If you’d like, I could put you to sleep for the next two weeks?”
I slumped back into the seat, my head hurting from the influx of information, and yet I couldn’t stop staring out into space, both terrified and lost.
At least this time he asked me if I wanted something done to me. Maybe sleeping wasn’t such a bad idea as it would stop me from stressing constantly, but what if I woke up with something else operated on me?
“No sleep. I prefer to experience the next two weeks on the ship.”
No matter what Corran said, him and the other two had indeed kidnapped me and now I was about to be taken to an alien planet, so I needed my eyes wide and to be alert.
Terror washed over me, sending another chill down my back. I looked outside once more into the endless universe.
Would I ever see Earth again?