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The monitor switched between various viewpoints. None of them showed so much as an asteroid.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I don’t know where your friends are now. No one does. Except for their new masters.”
My eyes burned. “No. You told me you would help me find them—”
“I told you I would take you to where I last saw them. This is that place. The first of you was delivered and I moved on to another point in space much like this one. No planets or star systems nearby. The masters picked them up, paid me, and disappeared.”
I shoved him. “You lied to me! You said you would help me find them!”
His tone was as hard as it had ever been. “I said I would show you where I last saw them. This is that place.”
“No,” I said, fisting my hair. “No.”
This was wrong, all wrong. My story wasn’t meant to end like this. I was meant to reunite with my friends. This couldn’t be right… It couldn’t be…
“I want you to take me to all the places you handed them over,” I said.
“It’s no good—”
“You have to. I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry. Your friends are gone.”
This wasn’t the first time he told me this. He’d told me before in the Titan village…
“Will you ever find them?” I said.
“Once you’re sold into slavery, it’s impossible.”
I’d been so focused on helping him overcome the memory of his parents I hadn’t taken notice of his words. Once you were sold, you never saw them ever again.
“You’re nothing but a smuggler!” I screamed. “I can’t trust a single thing you say! You deal with people’s lives. Lying is your job. You’re a criminal! I just… I don’t…”
I didn’t have the words. I crumpled to the floor.
My friends… I was meant to see them again. It was what I’d done all this for. I sobbed.
He just stood there. He didn’t embrace me, didn’t comfort me. I wiped my snotty nose on the back of my sleeve.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.
“I…” He shook his head. “I didn’t tell you because otherwise you wouldn’t have helped me recover from the sickness.”
It was what I’d feared and more.
“But since then, I’ve fallen head over heels in love with you,” he said. “I want to spend my life with you—”
His hand touched my skin and I shoved it away. “Don’t touch me.”
He was the same callous smuggler he’d been right at the start of all this. I might have changed, but he hadn’t.
I folded my arms and turned away from him. “Take me home.”
“Alice…”
I shuffled down the hallways until I reached my dingy little room. I slammed the door behind me and burst into tears.
