Chapter 2

“It’ll be fine,” Derek says. “It’s just a short trip. People do it all the time.”

I haven’t been feeling fine about it since I realized getting to our bright new future involved a trip through the middle of another country—one I know almost nothing about beyond the strange rumors. I even searched the web for info a few days ago, not that it told me much.

In a few hours, we will be in our new home in a new city, and my fears will be no more than a fleeting memory, soon forgotten. Because, as Derek pointed out, the high-speed land shuttle safely ferries people from Sarendon to Chancely via Andromeda every day.

We are standing on the platform. Our luggage has already been taken—I packed all my worldly possessions into a container and watched it leave this morning at the ass-end of dawn.

Derek sighs and rubs his hands up and down my arms.

“Do you want this, Isla?”

Tears prick the back of my eyes. Do I? “I’m just nervous.”

“How did you think we were going to get there?”

Those simple words are delivered with a hint of exasperation. I don’t think he is purposely gaslighting me. No, he is genuinely baffled by my sudden cold feet.

“I’ll be fine,” I say.

His smile is encouraging. He’s good to me, patient. He also unwittingly makes me feel naive when I really don’t think I am.

“Good,” he says. “I want to do this with you, Isla: to start again. Chancely is amazing. We have an apartment overlooking the river, right in the heart of it all. I’m excited about my new placement. And I know that once you settle in, you’ll find work that suits you and you’ll make new friends.”

I nod. At this point, I can do little else. I’ve burned all my bridges. Our apartment has been handed back to the rental agency. New tenants are moving in next week. If I turn around and go back now, I’ll have to beg to sleep over on a friend’s couch until I sort myself out. Wait for all my luggage and stuff to return—mope about, thinking about Derek starting his bright future without me, while I’m alone and wishing things were different.

Or I can just get on the high-speed shuttle with the hundreds of other people who make this trip every single day.

When I nod at him, his smile tells me that he’s relieved, and he leans down to kiss me. Brief, but full of promise.

“You’ve got a ton of books on your app. Read one; the trip will be over before you know it, I promise.”

Inside the shuttle, the seats are plush, and the carriage is spacious. We are facing each other, a table between us and a window beside us, to my left. I make myself comfortable, battling the butterflies in my stomach as the other passengers embark and find their seats.

And then we’re pulling out, and it’s too late to call an abort.

Derek gets a message from work and opens up his computer to deal with the matter, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

On the other side of the carriage, across the aisle from us, are four young women. All have long, lustrous hair, perfect manicures, and full makeup. They’re wearing clingy dresses like they’re on their way to a party—I feel conservative next to them in jeans and a sweater. When the server comes around to take food and drink orders, they request champagne.

I order a soda, and Derek orders a coffee.

I should read as he suggested, but I find myself staring out the window, watching the familiar city landmarks pass by as we approach the bridge that will take us across the glistening waters of the Lumen Sea. The shuttle turns northward, offering me a view of the back carriages snaking behind, along with a final view of Sarendon.

The dome. Wow. I’ve never seen the dome before other than on the viewer. I feel strangely vulnerable to be outside it. The shuttle has a protective force field that keeps it safe from the meteors that rain down on our planet every day, and the reason we never take to the skies outside the domes. And the reason we have to take a shuttle across the sea and through a foreign country before we reconnect with our lands again on the other side of the world.

The geography of our planet is as strange as the delineations between Andromeda and us. Something you’re aware of and yet don’t understand until you see it from the other side.

So lonely. A glistening dome around which is nothing but scorched earth from the endless meteor strikes.

That final image of the city is snatched away as the shuttle bears east, and my vision is filled with a vast, endless sea.

We’re over deep water.

The four girls sitting opposite raise their glasses and cheer.

I turn back to Derek, taking comfort from how relaxed he appears as he focuses on his work, from the girls laughing and chatting without a seeming care in the world. Our carriage probably holds another thirty people, and not one of them is freaking out. I didn’t count the full number of carriages, but I read it typically ferries several hundred people, and I don’t see any signs of panic setting in amongst my fellow travelers.

The shuttle curves again, leaving the sea behind, and another land mass and a forest swallow our shuttle up.

Andromeda.

Not the galaxy—although there is also one of those—but a country, a people, an unknown.

Barbaric people who are nothing like us.

Those rumors, though.

Speculation is more likely. You know, like when people claim to have seen the Yeti. They even have compelling images and eyewitness accounts, and while a few crazies lap it up, most people don’t.

Andromeda is a bit like that. We share the same planet, and we’re told that Andromedans are vastly different from us, and yet none have ever been seen.

Maybe this is all some government conspiracy; maybe the forested landmass is a secret military base. I mean, there has got to be a reason why they don’t suffer from the constant and unpredictable meteor showers that force our people to hide inside a dome.

Maybe it’s full of yetis.

I snort a laugh.

Derek lifts his head and raises a brow. “Someone is feeling better.”

“Yeah.” I smile and rummage in my backpack for my reader so I can do what I should have done from the start: lose myself in a book. A server arrives with a fresh bottle of bubbles for the girls—I envy their abandon.

“Good,” he replies, going back to his work.

As I sit in my comfortable seat, watching trees zip past the window—so fast, they are nothing but a blur—listening to the girls laughing and talking in low whispers before they fall into laughter again, I realize this is all a bit of a non-event.

There is no angry horde waiting to attack us. I mean, how would they even go about it? This is a fast shuttle. If they really are a barbaric people, a few rocks and wooden arrows are unlikely to trouble us.

I skim through book options on my reader, relieved that it’s still working. I’ve gone through three of them in as many years—me and electronics don’t get along so well. Finding it hard to decide what I’m in the mood for, my mind circles back to those rumors in the article I read a few days ago when I looked up Andromeda. It wasn’t even an official news article; just some shady site I’d stumbled upon.

Rumors of them taking people that I give about as much credence to as I do alien abductions.

“Nothing grabbing your attention?” Derek asks, finding me gazing out the window. The drinks service comes around, takes our empties away, and brings me a fresh glass of water.

I smile. “I’ll probably never come through here again.”

He glances out the window. “There’s nothing to see but trees, and they’re passing too fast for the eyes to focus.” Then he smiles at me and snaps his computer shut.

Did I mention that Derek is handsome? He really is the full package—well, other than his aversion to going down on me, but the rest of his D game is on point, so I can’t really complain.

“It’s been a while since they stopped a shuttle. I think you’re fairly safe, and even so, there are rules.”

I frown. My stomach takes a slow, unpleasant tumble even as I tell myself he’s going to laugh and make some crack about my face being a picture.

He doesn’t.

Now that I think about it, Derek’s not really one for jokes or playfulness in general.

Derek is a pretty serious guy for the most part.

Why do I only now think about this?

“Rules?” My laugh is nervous. “What are you talking about? It’s just…” He’s messing with me; I know he is. This is the moment where I uncover his deviant sense of humor. “Do they stop shuttles?”

He shrugs. “Sure, but you’re with me.” His eyes lower to the engagement ring on my finger. “You’re wearing my ring. Even if they did stop us, they wouldn’t bother you.”

I really don’t think he’s joking. Not even Levi could hold a poker face this long. I stare down at my ring. “I don’t understand.”

“They’re not allowed to take married women, nor those committed and engaged. It’s one of the reasons I proposed before we left.”

I remember to shut my mouth. That takes the luster out of the proposal, doesn’t it?

“Single women? Well, they’re fair game.” He makes a scoffing sound and glances toward the opposite side of the carriage, where the four girls are making good headway into the second bottle of bubbles. “I’m amazed at how many women come on these trips hoping the shuttle gets stopped.”

I didn’t sleep well last night, and it feels like my brain is turning over too slowly for this conversation. “How would they even stop the shuttle?”

“Oh, they have ways. It’s electric. Just need to apply a suppressor to the track. They raid the shuttle, take any unallocated women, and then the shuttle moves on.”

“That’s ludicrous,” I say. I’m having an out-of-body experience. My ears start to ring. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“What have you got to be nervous about?” Derek says. “They’re looking for single women.” His laugh is dark. “More than a few women in this carriage are definitely looking to be part of their next little batch of sluts or breeders or whatever the hell they do with them.”

Derek always has had a thing about how I dress. Modesty is his byword. He’s never liked me showing too much skin. Our first and only real argument happened the last time I went out with my friends and came home drunk. I wasn’t particularly with it at the time, so I told myself I’d imagined him calling me that name. The skirt and top had disappeared the next day when I got up, and he said they had been ruined and he’d put them in the trash.

Now, I think I might be sick as I consider everything in the light of what he just said.

I don’t want to be here, and I definitely don’t want to be with Derek, who thinks I’m a slut when I go out with my friends, who only asks me to marry him so I don’t get abducted by barbarians in the unlikely, yet possible, scenario of the shuttle being raided.

Maybe I should applaud the noble sacrifice he’s made to protect my virtue when the hordes attack.

I’ve just sold everything and left everyone I’ve ever known to move to the other side of the planet with this man.

As I glance around the carriage with newly opened eyes, I take in another group of women who are dressed like they’re ready to go out to a nightclub. “How did I not know about this?”

“That’s a good question,” he says. “How did you not know about this? I thought everybody knew.”

“I thought it was a conspiracy theory.” I’m still convinced it’s a conspiracy theory. I’m still waiting for him to laugh—desperately.

“You really have lived a sheltered life,” he muses.

And now I feel both naive and stupid. A glance at my watch tells me we’re at the halfway point. I can get through this. I don’t need to experience the shuttle being raided, and which I can’t believe would be pleasant no matter how some of my fellow passengers are partying like this is the trip of a lifetime.

This was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime for me, too; one that would change my life. Now I’m scrabbling at contingency plans in my head, working out what I’m going to do next, because Chancely and Derek are no longer feeling like somewhere I want to be.

“We didn’t need to get engaged,” I say quietly, wishing he hadn’t asked me to marry him. I wish he’d just told me he was making a clean break and that I wasn’t part of it. I’d have moped for a bit, then I’d have done what I always do and picked myself up. “You didn’t need to give me a ring.”

“I wanted to,” he says. “Hey. Relax.” He reaches across and takes my hand, squeezing it lightly. “It’s been months since the last raid. You’d be amazed how many whores do this trip every week, just hoping to be snagged from their insipid little lives.” His snort is derisive. His words are ugly.

Months?

I don’t know him.

I don’t want his hand, but I don’t push it away because I’m feeling scared and lost. I burned the last of my savings on a new wardrobe for this trip, and pushing him away would make me stupider than I already feel.

“Why would anybody want to be snagged?” It’s not really a question, just my mouth opening and spewing a question to distract myself from this looming relationship disaster even as my brain continues to scramble over my options.

His smile is indulgent. “You’re different. I’ve always known you were different. You don’t have the harshness that some women do.” His eyes turn a little flinty, and I know that he’s thinking about his ex-wife. There was a time when I hated that she had a hold on him. Now, I’m thinking she can have him. “They delude themselves into thinking it’s some kind of fantasy where a rough man swoops in and saves them from their troubles. This isn’t a civilized place. To call it barbaric is kind. But it’s not primitive people living in sweet rustic villages. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

How does he even know this? My hand slips from his, but he doesn’t even notice as he warms to his subject. His job? The one he has with the government, that he tells me nothing about?

It must be.

“They possess the larger part of the world, but the population is smaller than ours, and scattered. Sometimes I think they just like fucking with us. You know, taking people because they can. Nobody likes to admit it. But a black market has been thriving for a very long time.”

I feel cold. I’m a little clammy. I wish I could open the window, but they’re all hermetically sealed.

He hooks his finger in his collar and adjusts it roughly. “They’re better than us.” He lowers his hand to the table and stares out the window at the rushing trees. “More advanced in ways we don’t like to admit. But they’re still animals. Or maybe it’s just that they’re in tune with their animal side. I don’t know. I’ve met a few of them. They’re arrogant.” He shrugs. “We’re arrogant too, I suppose.” His lips tug up on one side. “They don’t have the same guiding principles and certainly don’t treat women with the same respect as we do.”

I don’t know how to process any of this. I feel like I’m in a pit being buried alive, and I can’t manage to claw myself out.

I still want to believe he’s joking, but I know he’s not. He’s really not.

I wish I’d stayed on the platform and let him go on alone, which feels overly dramatic in the face of the relaxed atmosphere in the carriage.

He takes my hand again and pulls it to his lips. I feel strangely detached.

“You’re worrying about nothing, Isla. One, the chances of them stopping this shuttle is actually minuscule. Two, you’re with me. Three, you’re wearing my ring.” He glances down at the ring in question and fiddles with it on my finger before putting my hand back on the table. “Besides, they’ll have plenty of willing options to choose from. And the clincher is, they really don’t want to piss our government off. While they have certain advantages, we’ve got agreements in place. Every single woman on the shuttle needs to sign a disclaimer.” His eyes slide to the side. “Whether they’re married or not. You can’t board without rescinding full responsibility and stating that you won’t hold the government accountable.”

“I didn’t have to.” I frown. That’s not something I would forget.

“I passed you the tablet and told you to sign. You were on that chat app with your friend and barely looked up.” His smile is indulgent like my lack of interest in what was happening only amuses him. He likes taking care of me, and I always thought I liked it too.

“Are you nuts? Why didn’t you explain to me what I was signing?”

“You like me handling things,” he says, like this is all the reason he needs.

Why is it suddenly so hot in here? Why do I feel like I can’t breathe?

He pushes my water toward me. I take a drink. God, I can’t even look at the forest anymore.

“It’ll be fine,” he says. “Your ex was an asshole who never did a damn thing for you. You like me taking care of you, and so I do. Because it makes you fucking happy.”

Does he really believe those words, or is he too arrogant to care?

The sudden silence as the air conditioning cuts out is accompanied by a sharp deceleration that throws me forward in the seat.

The girls on the table across from us squeal and give each other high-fives.

Derek curses.

The blur of green flashing by the window solidifies into trees and forest as we come to a juddering stop.

The tiny hairs at the back of my neck rise.

I guess this means the not-so-primitive primitives who like to fuck with the government are about to commence a raid.