Not directly. I have only wisps of memory that float in and out of my consciousness.
But the family remembers me. I’m their beloved dog, Honey, who disappeared after six months of living with them.
“We don’t know how you snuck on board the yacht,” Helen Horvath says. “The police found your pawprints on the dock after the yacht sank, and we were so worried about you.”
“Joy was heartbroken,” Helen’s boyfriend says.
Joy. That’s the name of the girl who loves me.
For the Horvaths, the last week has been about mourning the loss of their beloved pet and hoping against hope that she had somehow survived.
For me, they’ve been about fighting for survival while trying to find out who I am.
Now the Horvaths’ pet dog has come home again, and it’s a time for celebration.
I’m given a bath and examined by a private vet who comes to the house. Ms. Horvath is desperate to know what happened to me and to explain my injuries. Did I run away? Was I in a fight? Was I hit by a car?
The vet sees the wounds healing from my fight in the forest, and he takes them as evidence I’ve been a stray, perhaps even fought with one of the coyotes that live in the canyons above Malibu. When it’s determined that I’m free of rabies or other diseases and safe to be around children, I’m brought back into the center of family life.
After dinner that night, I relax with the family on a roof deck overlooking the ocean. Joy is curled up next to me, snuggling while she plays on her phone.
“Look how happy she is,” Ms. Horvath says, smiling at her daughter.
Helen Horvath is one of the richest women in the world. She could afford an unlimited number of dogs, but her daughter bonded with one special dog, a dog who seemed more intelligent than any other, a dog who was unique and irreplaceable.
“I told you everything happens for a reason,” her boyfriend says.
I lie on the deck and feel the cool wood planks on my belly. General Rupani said I lived with the Horvath family for six months, but I have no real memory of that. I look around at the family I don’t know, and I feel a pang of sorrow, missing Chance and wondering if he’s okay.
“Can you hear me, She-Nine?”
I snap up, startled by General Rupani’s voice in my head, broadcasting from a mile away in the command center.
“I hear you.”
“You’re inside the house?”
“I’m here, and I’ve been cleared by the vet to interact with the family.”
Joy takes the tiara off her head and tries to put it on mine. “Now you’re a princess, too,” she says.
“It’s a little hard to talk right now,” I tell the general.
“What are you doing exactly?”
Joy adjusts the tiara, then she dances around me, bowing deeply as if she’s meeting royalty.
“I guess I’m bonding,” I say.
“Tonight,” the general says. “That’s when you’ll finish your mission.”