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What the hell was that?
Well, she would never find out, because even if he showed up at the pub another night, she wouldn’t be here. She would finish her flat-hunting tasks in Brinsmingam on Monday and Tuesday and, as she had just decided, she would take only day shifts for the rest of the week. Then it was bye, William’s Pub and Kettonbury, and hello again, Brinsmingam.
If they somehow ran into each other once more, he was not going to talk to her anyway. Not after she had turned him downandpushed him towards grabby Mandy. Those two things would probably be the only reason why he might remember Emilia after he whored away in the coming days.
Emilia, on the other hand, couldn’t get him out of her head until the very end of her shift. Her thoughts kept drifting towards the handsome stranger even after she bid her colleagues goodnight and exited the pub out back, where her battered old car awaited.
As if conjured by her thoughts, he appeared literally out of thin air several steps in front of her. Between her and her car.
“I’m sorry, pumpkin. I really need you aboard my spaceship.”
Then he pointed a gun-like device at Emilia.
Bright light blinded her.
CHAPTER 2
SEEING SOME STARS
Emilia groaned as her head threatened to split in the middle. She pinched the area between her eyes where most of the pain was concentrated.
Had she once again spent too many hours browsing for flats and a new job on the laptop? That would explain why she had fallen asleep on the couch again. She’d better get up and go to her room, before her mother found her and gave her another lecture about the body’s need for quality sleep.
Emilia opened her eyes and reached for the couch’s back cushion to help get herself vertical.
Her left hand got a hold of thin air. At the same time, her slightly burning eyes registered there was neither a cushion nor a backrest to her left.
The uncomfortable surface she was lying on was not the couch in her parents’ living room. It was no couch at all, for that matter, but something like an… operating table?
What. The. Hell.
Her gaze slid from the surface under her waitress-uniform-clad body to her surroundings.
Rounded metal walls the color of silver in every direction she looked. A flat metal floor of a darker gray color. Unrecognizable devices by the operating table of various sizes but with the same sci-fi movie design. A semi-transparent ceiling revealing an endless sea of stars slowly flying by. A–
Wait, what?
Emilia stared at the view over her head.
And stared.
Then stared some more.
There was no denying it: there was a black sky above her, and the stars were moving across it. Or she was the one doing the moving.
Her ears distinguished a slight hum, like the sound of an engine running.
She was moving, all right. She was on some means of transport with a direct view towards the night sky. Through a ceiling that was made of what, glass?
“Wake up, Emi,” she chastised herself out loud.
Given the semi-large room she found herself in, she expected the echo to repeat her words to her, but there was no echo whatsoever.
She also expected to wake up, but several pinches later did not make this strange place dissolve around her.
Where the hell am I?
She lowered her bare feet to the surprisingly warm metal floor. She was going to get some answers.
