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I know! You can’t feel pain in a dream. I pinched myself.
I felt it.
Oh no…
I pinched myself again. Harder this time.
I felt that too.
The room spun as I realized everything Maisie told me was true.
I was on a spaceship heading to my new ‘master.’
This sure wasn’t part of my plans for Hazel’s hen night.
I grabbed Maisie by her shoulders. “Tell me how to get out of here. There must be an exit, a way out. Something.”
Maisie shook her head. “There’s no escape. You have to go back to sleep—”
“There must be a way back home,” I said. “There has to be.”
Instead of grasping at the woman, I wrapped my arms around her and bawled like a baby.
“Please,” I said. “Please help me get out of here.”
It felt good to hug another human being. Even if she was working with the mysterious ‘them.’
I pulled back and she too had tears in her eyes. “There might be a way, but you must be careful. If they catch you and they discover I helped you…”
And that was when she told me the two-part plan to aid my escape. First, she would swipe a translator strip from the captain’s room and then use it so I could work a craft in the shuttle bay.
It’d worked perfectly until I had second thoughts in the shuttle at the moment of the launch—
A tray clattered on the table as a member of the crew eyed me with suspicion and raised his bowl. I ladled the stew into it and, still not taking his eyes off me, he backed away to a nearby table, joining the others with the same expression on their faces.
“Don’t worry about them none,” Maisie said. “Except for me, they’ve never seen an abductee free to roam the ship.”
“They sure look pissed,” I said.
They glared at me not with anger but hunger… The kind only a female companion could provide.
Well, not this female!
“Are they dangerous?” I said.
Maisie looked at me and then glanced away. “Only if they’re in a bad mood. Which is why we made one of their favorite meals. I’ve never known a good stew to end up with an argument.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I grumbled under my breath.
I got back to chopping more vegetables. Maisie kept a close eye on me and altered my posture so I could do it faster. I’d never been much of a cook.
Maisie leaned in close. “Did he tell you about his little… problem?”
I glanced at the crew, covered my mouth, and whispered back: “His sickness?”
Maisie nodded. “The rest of the crew can’t know about it. If they did, they’d take action. And that’s the last thing we want. As strict as he is, Nighteko is fair. And he has a streak of honor in him that not many of the others possess.” She sidled up to me. “Don’t tell him I said that. He doesn’t need a bigger head.”
I considered telling Maisie the truth—that the crew not only knew Nighteko was sick, but they were causing it in the first place. But I didn’t want to worry her. She was better off not knowing.
