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I turned Alice to face me. “Alice, look at me.”
She wouldn’t.
I raised her chin with my finger. Tears were already streaming down her face.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No, it’s not okay,” Alice said, wrapping her arms around me tightly.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back before you know it. Then you’ll complain about how I’m under your feet all the time.”
She shook her head and buried her face in my chest. “No, I won’t. Not ever.”
“I’m going to my hearing. Whatever happens, I’ll come straight back to you.”
“You promise?”
I said, “I promise.”
I leaned down and kissed her on the lips. I could taste her tears. I wished I could have done more with her, wished I could bond with her one last time before I went away for… I had no idea how long.
Alice stepped aside and let the Enforcer cuff me.
“I’ll wait for you!” Alice said.
I followed the Enforcers onto the giant ship. Turning my back on her was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I hoped I would see her again. I wished I would be back within a matter of hours.
I clutched my memories of her close, to keep me company during the long lonely nights ahead. It was all I needed to keep me warm and bring a smile to my face.
Soon, my love, I will return to you.
I promise.
9
ALICE
Slipping back into my usual humdrum life was easier than I expected. My apartment seemed so much quieter now. And smaller. It was almost stifling.
My home office was a small nondescript space with no artwork on the walls—I didn’t want the distractions. I even pulled the blind down to block the nice view of the park. And still, I couldn’t focus enough to write my latest novel.
I wrote a brilliant half-sentence. I knew it was going to be great. I’d written it fifty times. I just couldn’t figure out how it ended.
You would have thought my recent real-life adventures would have given me all the inspiration I needed. I’d been abducted, chased, survived, fought, got abducted again, and then took out my own slave masters. And, of course, I fell in love with the most handsome male I’ve ever set eyes upon.
I reached for the thin chain around my wrist but found it wasn’t there. I kept forgetting. A force of habit. I’d traded it on Tordal for a tiny meal. Some other creature was probably wearing it now.
I thought about my friends and where they had ended up. Were they going on unprecedented adventures as I had? Or were they floating through space in their pods, to live forever in the vacuum of space? Or were they on their way home?
After I returned to New York, I called each of my friends’ parents, telling them the same story I told the fake Changeling police officers in the colony. I suffered from amnesia, I said. It was all a mystery. They nodded understandingly and never for a second thought I was lying.
I felt terrible. They had never treated me with anything but kindness, and yet here I was, lying to their faces. But the fact I had turned up unexpectedly did give them some hope, and perhaps that was the best thing I could gift them with.
After all, their daughters returning was still a possibility, right?
I wondered if I would ever see them again. I still reached for my cell every few minutes, checking to see what shenanigans they’d gotten up to in our group chat.
Nothing.
