I almost bailed in Denver, where we had to transfer to a different bus. But my seatmate chose another victim, and I was left to myself again.
Denver was also where I bought and loaded a vid upgrade for my epaper reader. For one thing, I figured if I was going to be successful at this hiding business, I would need to keep up with what the news was saying. But even more than keeping abreast of my Most Wanted status, I decided earbuds would serve as a solid deterrent to any other chatty types I met along the way.
It turned out I was the top of the vidnews stories, too. Well, at least most of the time. The third day, the big story was the Station 21 wedding between Cav and Natalie, topping off the Bride Games season as a resounding success.
But that brought the talking heads on the news right back around to me. Apparently, when she had done her initial interview with Vos Klavoii, the Games Administrator, Natalie had said on interplanetary television, “I wish I had thought to run, too.”
When I heard that, it was all I could do not to groan aloud.
I clicked from there into a vid interview with several young women excoriating me for having run. And from there, I went down the rabbit hole, reading and watching all the articles and vids I could find.
The current president of the United States had publicly chastised me for being willing to start what he called “an interplanetary incident” and a “diplomatic nightmare for the entire planet.”
That made my stomach hurt. Setting off an interplanetary disagreement had never been my plan. I didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s life. But I never wanted to get married. I wasn’t one of those little girls who planned her perfect wedding. For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to be a doctor. And most of all, I did not want to be under anyone else’s control again—not now, not ever.
My breaking point, at least when it came to consuming news about myself as Earth’s most famous Runaway Bride, came when one popular news personality asked what I assumed were rhetorical questions. “Why would Amelia Rivers run away? Why not go to the Bride Games and simply refuse all her suitors? Why not marry someone else for the requisite five years and then get divorced? Why go on the run at all when there are so many other options?”
Part of me wished I could just reach through the epaper screen and slap him across the face. Not that doing so would have been productive, but it might have made me feel a little better. I turned my face to the window and stared out at the blur of the passing landscape from behind my ridiculous glasses.
I couldn’t quit thinking about those questions. I imagined myself answering all those questions and more.
Why not marry someone else and get divorced after five years?
Because the idea of a loveless marriage horrified me. In fact, the idea of any marriage at all horrified me.
Besides, everyone knew that about half those fake marriages—the ones designed to keep a woman firmly on Earth—ended up being investigated by the Khanavai-Earth commission. And the penalties of being caught out were harsh.
I certainly didn’t want to go to prison for my imaginary fake loveless marriage.
Of course, there’s no telling what would happen to me if I were caught now.
In retrospect, maybe a fake marriage would have been a better idea.
But I had been too busy going to med school, finishing my residency, getting the rest of my work done to become first a doctor, and then a surgeon.
And a five-year marriage didn’t protect anyone. There were plenty of stories about divorced women being dragged off to the Bride Games. No woman was safe until she was past easy childbearing age.
Why not go through the Bride Games and reject all the suitors?
That answer seemed obvious to me. I’d read the studies. The Khanavai might say they scented their mates—whatever the hell that meant—but statistically, women with skills that might be useful to the Khanavai were chosen as brides almost ten times as often as those who did not have similar skills.
Hell, even Natalie what’s-her-face was studying biochemistry, according to all the stories I’d read. She was smart and accomplished and would be an asset to the whole damn planet of Khanav Prime.
There was no way I would go through the Bride Games and not be inundated with Khanavai suitors. Once that happened, it seemed there was no way out. Less than one percent of women who were chosen by Khanavai warriors turned down the offer to become their “mates.”
God. I even hated the word they used for their partners, their wives. Mates. Yuck. It was animalistic and degrading.
I didn’t know what kind of coercion the Khanavai were using, but when even someone as obviously staunchly opposed to an alien match like Natalie ended up married to one of them—in a giant, televised show of a ceremony, no less—there was something weird going on.
Ultimately, I did not trust the aliens. I didn’t believe that they had shown up to protect us from the Alveron Horde with no ulterior motives, I didn’t believe that their magical mate-scenting abilities were real, and I definitely did not believe that every bride who left with them went of her own free will.
My mother had always said I had a suspicious mind. It made me a good doctor, adept at sorting through all the clues a patient could offer and then figuring out what was wrong with them.
That same suspicious mind also made me a horrible choice for the Bride Lottery.
Of course I ran.
I would rather be a fugitive for the rest of my life than end up stranded on another planet
