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They were never going to let us go. Our fate had already been written into the script.
Us escaping wasn’t what the Changeling audience wanted.
Failure was the order of the day.
And we had to be the ones to pay the price.
Shrapnel from the second explosion stabbed me in the back. My blood ran in hot rivulets from the wounds.
Already, the ship’s core was rupturing. Any second now it would explode. At least it was a quick way to go. At least I was in my darling love’s embracing arms.
I brushed her hair back from her face.
“I love you,” I whispered in her ear.
Her body was so warm and soft, I wished I could enjoy it one last time.
“I will love you until the end of time,” I said.
“I love you, my Titan,” she said.
It broke my heart to hear the tears in her voice.
We kissed as the ship’s core erupted in a fiery ball and tore through my body.
I heard a distant volley of what sounded like blaster pistol fire but dismissed it. No one was coming for us. No one was coming to save us.
Maddy screamed. I feared it would be the sound I’d hear forever in my afterlife.
The fire raged and consumed us both.
6
MADDY
My ears rang and my vision was blurry. Concerned green faces pass in and out of view. My skin was numb and felt nothing. Not even the object I was lying on. I might have been floating on a cloud. My tongue could have been made from plastic and I couldn’t taste a thing.
My senses were in revolt. They didn’t know what was happening.
I faded in and out of consciousness. Images and sounds were stitched together like a patchwork quilt.
None of it made sense.
Chax shouted. His words were indistinct and fuzzy. A warning?
A man with green skin and a white mask over his mouth bent over me and lowered an alien device to my skin. I tried to fight and force him away but it was no use. My arms might as well have belonged to someone else.
Darkness swept over me. I made out nothing but the soft skin of Chax and the flames as they wrapped around him like a wreath. He threw his head back in agony and screamed.
I shot up in bed, the trail of the scream dying on my lips. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and felt like I was going to be sick.
I leaned over the side of the bed and was surprised to find a bucket already there. Thankfully, it was empty otherwise it really would have shoved me over the edge.
My eyes felt heavy. I could barely keep them open. I tossed the bedsheets aside. I was wearing a hospital gown—a real one this time—and not the sheer negligee the Changelings had dressed me in.
I lowered my feet over the side of the bed. The soles of my feet felt the sterile ice of the metal floor. At least my sense of feeling had come back. But there, along my left leg, I saw something.
A thick scab. White cream had been smeared over it. Medicine? I thought back to the surgeon who’d bent over me with his device. He’d been working on my leg, hadn’t he? I didn’t touch it. My skin around the wound was red and tender like I’d been severely burnt—
