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“It’s simple,” Alice said. “Put me in a pod and wake me up as soon as we get away from here.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the Changelings are determined to give me a new crew… Them!”
Alice’s mouth flapped open and shut. “I can’t get in the pod. You might never be able to let me out again.”
“No.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
I had no idea. And time was running short. We needed to come up with something.
“Why don’t you fight the Changelings as soon as we take off?” she said.
“They’ll send a message back to their base. Then we have to deal with their fighters. Their warbirds will tear us apart. We’ll never escape.”
Alice checked over her shoulder. She eyed the pods lined up in long rows. “We couldn’t do that anyway. What about everybody else? What about all the other women in here? What about the women that will be abducted in the future?”
“They have to fend for themselves,” I said. I ran a finger over her cheek. “They’re not you.”
She slapped my hand away. “They are me! Don’t you see? They are me before you fell in love with me. Before we bonded. Every one of these women is me. And every single one deserves to be free, to find true love the same way I did. But back on Earth.”
Her words shook me to the core. They are all me.
“If we’re not going to help them and everyone else in town, I might as well get in the pod,” Alice said.
The Changeling soldiers stamped their boots and saluted. “Sir!”
We were out of time. And we still didn’t have a plan.
“It’s up to you now,” Alice said, drifting toward the empty pod. “Find a way to save us. All of us.”
She climbed in the pod and laid down. “I love you.”
The lid slid into place. She kissed her fingertips and placed them to the lid. Then she lay back as the pod prepared her for interstellar travel.
“Captain,” Rogers said. “The men are yours. They’ll be keeping a close eye on things for us. We don’t want a repeat of what happened with your old crew, do we?”
I wasn’t listening to him. I heard only her voice echoing in my mind.
They are all me.
Inside each pod was a frozen figure. A life not lived. A bond someone wouldn’t be paired with. I had always thought of alien species as the same as any other merchandise I transported, but they weren’t. They could feel, they could breathe…
They could love.
They could be intelligent, passionate, courageous… and as sexy as hell.
This whole time, I didn’t think of them as living creatures, but things to be owned by richer beings. They were products.
Like me.
But I had been a Titan once. I grew up in a proud village on planet Tordal. They forced me into slavery. They force me to believe I was merchandise, that I was a product that could be bought and sold and never free.
Rogers was looking at me expectantly. “Well, do you?”
