Chapter 11

It’s only my second day in Andromeda, yet it feels much longer. It hardly seems possible that only yesterday I was standing with Derek on the platform waiting to board the shuttle, questioning my life choices and my decision to pack everything up, wrestling with that inner instinct that told me getting on the shuttle was a bad idea before overcoming those fears and boarding.

And wasn’t that the biggest mistake of my life? Looking back, I can see many crossroads where I might have made different choices and never have ended up here.

Seb is short with me as we ride through the forest. I don’t know why.

Well, fuck him. Fuck all of them. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.

But when I ask myself where home is, nowhere distinctive comes to mind. My parents moved around a lot, and no particular house stands out.

But what I wouldn’t give to have that stupid lump of rock my grandpa gave to me, to look at it, feel it, and run my fingers over it.

Obsidian.

Why do I want it? What are possessions even about? Possessions seem so pointless compared to our fragile human lives.

He is still married. I know he is. I know that Seb wasn’t lying about Derek, although he has been conservative with the rest of the truth… until he wasn’t. But even his revelations in the medical room this morning pose more questions than they answer.

Recent events awaken me to many lies. “Why don’t you have a dome?”

When Seb grunts behind me, I realize I’ve said that out loud.

I frown. “There are no meteor strikes here, are there?”

“Nope.”

“And outside my dome?”

“Not your dome anymore, princess. But in answer to your question, also no.”

My stomach clenches. And there it is. “We’re just one big world,” he’d said this morning while I sat on the examination bed. “Not even an ‘us and them’… More the next stage.”

The next stage of what?

I keep that question to myself and drink more metallic-tasting water from the canteen. For super-advanced people, you’d think they’d find their way to developing a better container.

And horses. Really, what is that about? I’d be happy if I never rode one again.

But those lies. The lies that have dictated my version of reality.

“Why do they have domes?”

“Protection,” he says.

“But from what? You said there weren’t even meteor strikes.”

“There aren’t. The domes are stage one.”

There he goes with stages again. “How many stages are there?”

“Six.”

“And what stage are we at now?”

“Five.”

Why does that make me uneasy?

“Stages of what?”

“Assimilation.”

I need to stop asking questions.

I can’t believe he used to be a professional hockey player. I mean, also, I kind of can. His nose has a bump near the top that tells me it has been broken, and I get the impression hockey is a physical game. But it’s just so weirdly ordinary when, now, he… I don’t know what he is now, other than he looks like—carries himself like—a futuristic soldier… “What did Ash used to be?”

He chuckles. “That’s your next burning question?”

It’s the first sign I’ve seen of the nice version of Seb in a while, and I’ve missed it, which makes me worry about my mental wellbeing.

I don’t care about Ash or what he used to be. He’s an asshole.

He’s also the reason Seb hasn’t fucked me yet.

“He was the CEO of his own tech company…. Very successful from what I understand.”

A professional athlete and a successful CEO are not exactly ordinary, now that I think about it.

Neither is Derek.

“And Noah?”

He huffs out a breath, like me asking him this is a step too far. “Military. Came in real handy.”

The unease is creeping again.

“Why are we being assimilated? To what end? What does assimilation even mean?”

He says nothing.

“How much longer are we going to be in the forest?”

“To be determined.”

“How can you not know?”

He chuckles again. It has a low, husky sound. I’ve known him for just over twenty-four hours, yet I still like that sound. I don’t like him, though, do I? I don’t know what I think of him. I don’t want to think of anything.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he’s going to fuck me tonight. Only, I know that’s not his decision. It’s Ash’s. I’ve gone from not wanting to know anything to wanting to know everything. Just get all the shocks over with. “Will they assimilate the whole dome? Will everybody have to do this? My parents?”

“Yes.”

I take a sharp intake of breath. “Will I see them again? Afterward?”

“That depends. Possibly.”

“Have you seen yours?”

“No.”

I don’t like these answers. They’re answers, but they’re also not. “But you said you’d been here for five years.”

“Like I said yesterday, my best advice is to worry about what’s happening to you right now, and look no further than that.”

So much easier said than done. The questions and his answers, such as they are, serve as a distraction from what’s happening to me. I still don’t feel right, despite Seb checking me. It’s like I’m sitting off at a tangent to everything, askew from reality; like I don’t know what real is anymore. My nipples are hard and pebbled. I’ve reached an almost painful stage of arousal between my legs. I’m soaking there. Whenever we stop for a break, I do my best to wipe the evidence away, but there is something very wrong with me.

I don’t believe it was an aphrodisiac he gave me; not anymore. It wouldn’t last this long, would it? No, that’s not possible. I’ve still got a headache, but I haven’t taken the ibuprofen in my pocket, out of sheer stubbornness.

Whatever this is, whether I’ve picked up some weird bug, or something else, I want to face it with a clear head.

I’m in denial, I realize, despite everything I saw yesterday and this morning. Deluding myself that I’m something special because he hasn’t taken me yet, that he won’t, that Derek and his government connections will send a SWAT team in here to save me, and soon I’ll be home and getting counseling and the good kind of drugs that make you forget.

It’s only when we arrive at another boxy concrete base surrounded by forest that I realize that tension has permeated the whole group throughout the day. The way the stops had been brief, their alertness as they watched the forest, and the way no one touched any of the women. And I only notice it now because the moment we are enclosed in the walls, one tension lifts, and a different kind takes its place.