What if he never returned to me?
“Clint?” I said, panic growing.
I reached forward and prodded him.
“Can you hear me?”
His eyes continued their rapid REM dance.
All hope lost, I threw myself forward and wrapped my arms around him.
“Please, no. Please come back to me.”
The tears rained from my eyes and slid down my cheeks.
I couldn’t believe this was happening.
Our story couldn’t end like this.
This didn’t happen.
Except they did… in real life.
This was no comic book story.
Things like this happened all the time.
“Clint…”
He needed to return to me, needed to live his life happily with me.
“My, my, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes?”
I spun at the voice.
Liam stood in the doorway, leaning against it with his shoulder, one ankle crossed over the other.
While I’d been distracted by Clint’s procedure, I hadn’t noticed him drawing nearer.
And now we were in real trouble.
I wiped the tears from my eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to claim my prize. You.”
He marched toward me.
I was frozen to the spot in fear as he snapped his hand around my arm.
“And now, you will be mine.”
I tugged against his hand but he was too strong.
“Don’t do this! Please! I don’t want to be with you!”
He laughed—an ugly chuckle at the back of his throat.
“Since when did what you want matter? You’re coming with me to the Shadow Realm and you’re going to carry out the greatest duty in the empire.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I knew I wanted no part in it.
“You’re going to be a breeder, my girl. After I fill you with my seed, my brothers will take their turn with you, one after another, until you spawn us a new generation of Shadow. Then you will be bred again. And again. And again.”
My shock morphed into horror.
“Liam would never do that!”
Liam leaned in close.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not Liam, isn’t it? My name is Sar.”
His skin peeled back, revealing a replica of Clint, who remained fast asleep on the chair, his eyes still darting side to side beneath their lids.
“W-What are you g-going to do with h-him?” I said.
“He’s a vegetable now. He’s of no danger.”
Sar raised his head.
“Computer,” he said, mimicking Clint’s voice. “Toss the creature in the medical chair out the airlock when we ascend into space, along with the rest of the trash.”
“No!” I screamed.
I bolted for Clint’s sleeping form but Sar held me in an iron grip.
“Let him serve out his death, Breeder. You have a date with destiny.”
He dragged me from the medical bay.
I kicked and screamed and wailed but there was no getting free.
Clint slipped from view as I was dragged from him and our perfect future together.
Ras
I felt the change come over me the moment I lay back on the chair.
A needle pricked me on the back of the neck and I drifted into a long and seamless sleep.
I was only vaguely aware of the arms that danced in my vision, moving side to side, making tiny incisions where I couldn’t see.
It was unnerving, lying there and seeing what was happening without being able to do a thing about it.
But I trusted Computer.
He might have been a disembodied voice and made of wires and circuit boards, but he was also programmed to obey me and every command I made.
Then the arms faded completely as my eyes shut and I sank into the comfortable leather pads of the chair.
I could hear Isabella shuffling her feet the way she always did when she was nervous.
I could even hear her breathing.
Being locked off from my other senses made those that were still working incredibly sensitive.
I heard the whir of the robotic arms that shifted independently over me, and the slight strain of the leather chair when I did move.
I faded into a dream world brought on not by exhaustion—although I was certainly that—but by the tiny gentle probes of each laser that shot into my brain, making tiny, minuscule changes that nonetheless, with each tiny assault, lulled me into a deeper and deeper sleep.
And I was gone.
Gone from this world and transported into another, more distant and ethereal place of sleep.
I was back inside my mind again.
My heart leaped into my throat at the thought I might end up trapped in here like I almost had been before.
The swirling mist danced hypnotically like writhing snakes, only they were charming me and not the other way around.
I felt those tiny probing stings in my head, and at each slight prod, the lasers affected the shape and movement of the mist, whipping them like a lion tamer so they did as they were told.
Each time they did, the mist morphed, fought back, and morphed once more, carving out a memory that was already there to be found but previously unseen.
It was a figure, but unlike one I had ever seen before.
He was tall, with fearsome eyes and blue curls of wrinkles on either side of his eyes.
He was heavily muscled with twin horns jutting from his head that stood tall and proud.
He was an alien.
“Get out there and fight the Shadow! They’re intent on claiming your mate. Are you going to stand by and let them have her?”
He wasn’t speaking directly to me.
His voice boomed over the dozen or more horned aliens surrounding me.
They rushed forward, and I found myself moving with them, toward a huge assault course.
I dropped to my stomach and crawled through mud beneath a latticework of ropes above my head.
I clutched a strange futuristic plasma rifle in my arms and sawed through the mud one inch at a time.
I emerged on the other side and didn’t bother to wipe the mud from my face.
I was already hurling myself forward onto the next section.
A series of huge metal containers.
I might have been confused by what their purpose was, but the memory version of me knew exactly what he was doing.
“Get a move on, M’rora!” the big horned alien bellowed at me.
I bent down, grabbed the metal container in my hands, and raised it above my
