1. Amanda

Chapter 1

Amanda

A job shouldn't cause a girl's death.

But when I needed the capital to start my own tea shop, an old high school friend offered to loan me the cash. In exchange, he needed a bookkeeper to work in his office for a few months. All I had to do was add the expenses and income to a spreadsheet, and he'd take care of the rest.

That's when I learned my old friend, Tito, might be seen as a savvy businessman in the community, but he skirted around the law.

It hadn't taken me more than a week after starting the job to discover that Tito kept two sets of books. One for himself, the other for the IRS.

I had no choice but to abandon my business dream and run.

See, I'd tipped off the cops.

Tito found out someone squealed, though he didn't yet know that person was me .

If I didn't escape his grasp and flee the city, I'd wind up in the river with a cement block tied to my ankle. Fortunately, I was fleeing tonight.

At the end of the day, I grabbed my purse from my desk and locked the drawer, trying to act nonchalant.

"See you Monday?" I said to Dimitri, the accountant with a desk in the same office as me. Today was Friday. If my luck held out, I'd be halfway to Seattle before Sunday was through.

Dimitri didn't look up from his computer. "Yup."

I flashed him a smile and hurried toward the door.

Before I could reach it, it crashed open, the metal panel clanging when it hit the far wall. Three robocops swarmed in, their metal bodies reflecting the late-day sunlight leaking in through the hazy curtain covering the room's only window.

AI robocops had been introduced by a billionaire entrepreneur about a year ago, and they now ran city police protection units all over the world. They were relatively cheap to buy, they didn't need a lot of maintenance, and they worked every day of the week. No weekends off or vacation days for them.

Crime had fallen to almost nothing. Who'd challenge a robot who could outrun, outthink, and outsmart you before you could finish committing the crime?

The big question was: why were they inside Tito's accounting office?

As I reeled away from them, a red dot appeared on my chest, generated by the lead robocop's eyes.

"Target identified," it said in a mechanical voice.

Damn. I should've headed for Seattle last night.

I backed into my desk. "Are you here to . . . solicit a donation for the fallen robocop fund?" I blubbered, my hands lifting. Growing up in foster care in a big city meant I'd learned how to defend myself quickly. I'd taken every self-defense class offered at the YMCA, but none of the classes showed us how to defend ourselves against robocops.

Dimitri's rolling chair screeched backward across the plastic pad, and he dumped himself off it, scooting beneath his desk.

The robocops swarmed all over me. I kicked out and shoved my palm into the face of the closest cop, but I might as well hit a brick wall. They knocked me backward. My feet went up into the air. The computer toppled off the desk, and they pinned me to my tidy green blotter. When my cup full of pens started to tilt, silly me grabbed it and clutched it to my chest.

"Please," I said. "I didn't do anything wrong." I had a tea shop to open. Customers to serve.

And I hadn't had the chance to fall in love.

Something pricked my arm and . . .

"Wake," a cheery voice said by my ear. "Your new life is about to begin."

What new life? Had I somehow escaped Tito and was on my way to witness protection? They'd helped me set up a new tea shop. I just didn't remember all the fine details.

Wait.

Tito did not employ robocops. And if the robocops were going to arrest him, they wouldn't come after me. They'd carefully extract me and hold me in a safe place until I could testify. That, I'd remember.

"Wake," the voice said again, more insistent this time.

"I'm awake," I croaked. "Who are you?"

"Some would say I'm a god."

Um . . . no.

Opening my eyes, I found a clear glass panel above me, close enough I'd hit my nose on it if I lifted my head.

This wasn't witness protection. There was no pretty tea shop in sight.

Walls outside the glass tube held flashing lights. Long cylinders like mine marched away to my right.

Vague memories flashed through my mind. The robocops throwing me into the back of a van that sped away. Traveling for days, them periodically drugging me until they took me to . . .

No way.

My brain kept insisting I'd seen the spaceship destined for Mars sitting on a launch platform. I'd seen that ship on TV.

I was not an astronaut.

I vaguely remembered the robocop leaping over the high, barbed wire fence surrounding the ship and taking me inside. It placed me inside a glass pod that looked too much like this one.

"Let me out." Determined to claw my way through the glass, I tried to lift my arms, but they remained dead weights at my sides. My legs refused to move. My ragged breathing steamed up the glass.

The panel overhead slid to the side. I yelped as mechanical limbs reached in and slid hooks beneath my arms. They lifted me out of the cylinder and carried me across a big open room. Women dressed in short white nighties like mine lay inside each of the tubes I passed. On the left wall, a clear glass panel looked out into outer space.

Hold on. Outer space?

"No!" I shrieked as the robotic arms swept me through an open doorway and into a long hall. Peering back, my jaw dropped. The other women were being lifted and funneled along a track behind me.

"Fuckin' A," one of them bellowed. "What's going on?"

Someone else whimpered.

Their cries of dismay echoed around me.

"Talia? Talia!"

"What's happening, Maggie?" Two women with long black hair strained their fingers toward each other, but they couldn't reach. They looked so alike; they must be sisters.

A woman at the end of the line with curly blonde hair stared forward with dazed eyes, completely out of it.

The roboarms took us down the hall and placed us inside individual pods like the first. The lid closed above me, and a circular door by my feet jerked to the side. I screamed as the cylinder plunged down a chute and projected out into space.

"No, please," I wailed. My arms, free from the drugs or whatever had held me in place, worked when I asked. I raked my fingers along the glass overhead.

As my tiny space pod soared toward a planet made up of purple, green, and gold, my vision wavered.

Everything caught up to me, and I . . .

I woke when the space pod impacted with something hard. It bobbed. The top popped off above me, and pale lavender water started pouring inside.

Since I couldn't swim, I was going to drown.

I lifted my head and stared through the glass. On a distant shore, a naked, blue-skinned male leaped into the water.

He started swimming this way.

Blue skin . . . An alien?

Was he going to kill or rescue me?