Chapter 1

Chapter One

Nina

I ’ve been abducted by aliens. As absolutely insane as that statement sounds, I don’t doubt the truth of it for a second. I’m staring at an alien this very second. And the alien is staring right back at me.

He’s an ugly motherfucker, with green pustule skin. Although he’s at least six feet tall, the alien’s head appears too small for his body. His bug-like eyes sit deep in his face, and his entire head is wide across his forehead and narrow at his chin, like he’s wearing an upside-down butternut squash on top of his neck.

A nerve in my neck twinges, but I don’t lower my head onto the bench to which I’ve been strapped. If this is a staring competition, there’s no fucking way I’m letting him win. The last time I let someone take away my autonomy I was twelve and my parents had just been killed.

Ever since, I haven’t let anyone tell me what to do when I didn’t want their advice, and this situation is no different. I might have been abducted from Earth. I might be tied to an operating table in a spaceship presumably hurtling through outer space faster than the speed of light. I might be completely at their mercy. But there’s no way I’m complying with my captors’ commands, even if it means I’m stuck in the universe’s most petty staring competition with an alien of a species that, for all I know, never blinks.

He's sitting in some sort of hammock-chair contraption that’s hanging from the ceiling by ropes. He propels himself toward me, and the hammock-chair glides effortlessly closer, following overhead lines that remind me of a Sydney tram.

Behind him is a sterile-looking workbench, with trays of unrecognizable equipment. A strong disinfectant smell permeates the room, leaving a thick coating on my tongue and up my nose.

There’s nothing I can do to stop him coming closer, but I’m sure as hell going to scream loud enough to burst his eardrums if he tries touching me. I haven’t had a good tantrum since primary school, but that doesn’t mean I won’t have one now. I draw air into my lungs in preparation, but the bench I’m tied to starts shaking. And then the whole-ass ship is shaking, and the alien’s stupid hammock-chair shakes itself right by me, forcing the alien and I to finally break eye contact as he fails to catch hold of my bench.

Rapidly I blink, my eyes stinging and watering. The ship lurches sideways. There’s a crash somewhere behind me, and I can only hope the motherfucker was thrown to the ground and broke his neck. Finally, a mechanical siren wails .

If my hands were free, I’d clutch my ears. Instead, I thrash against my bindings, my heart racing. I know an evacuation alarm when I hear one.

“Get me out of here!” I yell, the ropes around my wrists and ankles chafing something nasty.

As if in answer to my demand, the door glides open and two more green aliens hurry into the laboratory. One’s got a couple of straps around his bulbous middle with what I can only presume are guns hanging down the outer sides of his legs. Both their mouths are moving, but I can’t hear anything they’re saying over the deafening wail of their ship’s siren.

“Untie me, fuckwits! Don’t you dare think you can?—"

Grabbing at my binds they cut me loose. Surprised, I shut my mouth.

Everything’s shaking so much that I accidentally roll right off the bench, but I roll away from the two new aliens, so that’s fine with me. As fast as I can, I crawl toward the open door.

I’ve got no plan for where I’m going. I’m just getting the hell away from that table of operating instruments.

Unfortunately, the floor is absolutely perfectly smooth. There’s nothing for me to gain traction against, and my hands and feet slide out from under me, right as the first alien grabs hold of the back of my sweater. The collar digs painfully into my throat. I gag as I’m pulled into a sitting position.

I try swiping at the one who’s choking me, only for the gravity to switch off. The momentum of him pulling and me struggling sends us both floating to the ceiling.

His bug eyes widen. The other two aren’t far behind. The one with the weapons draws them both as if he can fight off an invisible attacker.

“Stay away from me!” I kick at nothing, trying to propel myself away from them. It’s actually easier swimming through the air than it was trying to crawl over that unnaturally smooth floor.

I think all four of us are screaming abuse at someone else. I can barely hear my own shouts inside my head. My ears are ringing, and I feel like I’ve been standing in the mosh pit of a rock concert that’s lasted an entire year.

Making a grab for the doorframe, my fingers just brush it as gravity kicks back in. We’re thrown to the floor. The air’s knocked out of me, and there’s a flash of bright light as one gun goes off. With a sickening pop that I’m going to remember for the rest of my life, the first alien hits the floor. His chest pustules burst.

I gasp, and my lungs mercifully fill.

There’s no liquid in his pustules. Rather, they seem to have been filled with some sort of gas. It’s got a fog-like quality and stinks like a swamp that a herd of cows has drowned in. Suddenly I wish I was still winded, and I cover my nose and mouth with cupped hands, holding my breath.

For a moment, everything is completely still and silent as I stare at his popped chest.

He’s not the first dead body I’ve seen. In fact, some might say I’ve seen more than my fair share of bodies. But most of those were the bodies of people who’d died natural, peaceful deaths. I’d watched as their life had slowly faded from their eyes and as their breathing had calmed until their chests were still. Then I’d noted the time on my clipboard and offered their family a shoulder to cry on.

My captor’s death wasn’t anything like peaceful.

The rational side of me, the side where my nursing and healthcare brain lives, knows I’m going into shock. The other part of me, the part that’s still a twelve-year-old girl whose whole heart has been smashed to pieces, wants to laugh in the face of the dead alien because surely this means I won the staring contest.

Fuck him! I hope he rots in hell.

The remaining two aliens are still yelling at each other as they callously step over the body of their dead companion and yank me to my feet. I’m frogmarched from the room, my bare feet slipping and sliding over the smooth floor. The only reason I don’t face-plant is because they’re holding my hands so tightly behind me that the strain on my shoulders is keeping me upright.

They’re not wearing shoes either. Or clothes for that matter. The bottom of their feet are covered in more pustules that act as suction cups and keep them from slipping.

The corridor is long and relatively narrow, its floor, walls and ceiling made of the same smooth material. There’s nothing for me to grab hold of, and so there’s no way I can pull myself from their grip. The best that can be said about this whole situation is that the one with the weapons has sheathed his guns, clearly having learned his lesson about not playing with firearms during an emergency evacuation.

Because surely we’re evacuating, right? The ship tips dangerously to one side, as if the stabilizers are struggling to keep it straight, and suddenly I’m thinking of how when a car crashes, there’s always a chance it’ll catch fire or explode.

One more green alien joins us as we reach a door about halfway down the corridor. They push me inside first, and I realize I’m being forced into a smaller ship that’s somehow connected to the original ship. There are only four hammock-chairs hanging from the ceiling, and even though there are four of us, I’m not given one. Instead, I’m forced to kneel in a corner as they click buttons. The door begins to close, and with a jolt that moves my entire body, I realize they haven’t brought the other Human women with us.

“You can’t just leave them!” I scream, my voice breaking with the force of my horror.

The door clicks shut, the siren falls silent, and there’s a hiss of air, presumably as the door vacuum seals closed.

“What are you doing?” I scramble to my feet and almost end up doing the splits as my legs shoot out in opposite directions. “You can’t leave them!”

I know for an absolute fact that I wasn’t the only Human they abducted. I saw five others, unconscious and locked in cages. I don’t know why I’m awake and they aren’t. I don’t know why I was strapped to an operating table and they weren’t. I don’t know why I’m being rescued and they’re not. (If you can even call this a rescue.)

I didn’t recognise any of the other Humans; we’d never met. But that doesn’t matter. They need immediate life-saving attention, and that makes them my responsibility.

“I’m going to kill you!” I scream, grabbing hold of the empty hammock-chair to pull myself upright .

My panic is visceral. I’m going to be sick. My whole body is shaking, and it’s got nothing to do with the ship spinning out of control.

An alien glides their hammock-chair toward me and strikes me across the face. I’m thrown backward. My head hits the wall.

Everything blurs. I feel hot blood rush out of my nose and into my mouth, but I can’t stop fighting for the other women, not while they’re unconscious and imprisoned and completely defenseless.

“Please!” I beg, then spit out a mouthful of blood. “You can’t leave them.” I grab one of my captors, and my fingers sink into the hot skin of his arm. It’s like trying to grasp a handful of bubble wrap. “Don’t do it. Don’t?—"

He strikes me again. Like a doll, I’m thrown across the escape pod. Darkness consumes me.