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Prologue

Something is tugging on my ear. "Slimer," I groan, "it's too early. I'll feed you soon."

I try to brush away the sensation, but my arm doesn't move. A sharp pain bites into the skin at the nape of my neck. My eyes fly open. "Slimer!" I scold.

But I'm not in my bed being woken by my surly green macaw. I blink, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling above me. It's laced with thick tangled wires and red blinking lights. I shiver, my body registering the frigid air. "Wha—" I croak.

"Remain still," a robotic voice says by my ear. I start to turn my head, but the hot pinch of pain in my neck increases so I freeze.

I try to swallow, my heart beginning to race in my chest. I'm having a nightmare. I hate nightmares. I never fall back asleep afterward, and I'm no good to my patients when I'm a cranky mess.

I dig my fingernails into my palms, willing myself to wake up.

It doesn't work. The wires don't disappear. The cold sensation doesn't dissipate.

A beep sounds in my eardrum, then the voice says, seemingly directly inside of my skull, "Translation implant procedure successful."

The pressure at my earlobe and nape vanishes. The wires above me rustle, then I'm tilted upward. Blinking rapidly, I have a moment to scan the wide room around me—metal robot arms gliding through the air, huddled shapes on narrow beds, some of them moaning, and a large, purple-skinned man with four arms standing by the wall, his eyes hard and glittering on mine.

I open my mouth to scream, my brain officially done with this terrible dream, when another pinch of pain hits my thigh and I'm out.

WHENI wake again, I'm curled up in a ball on the floor of a cage. Blinking rapidly, absently absorbing the fact that my body is covered in goosebumps, I work to fight off both my confusion and the wave of nausea building in my stomach. The nausea is a familiar, sick feeling, usually brought on when I fly in airplanes. But that doesn't make sense. They don't cage people on airplanes.

Thick metal bars enclose me like I'm a monkey in a zoo. Am I at a zoo? No . . . I'm . . .

Someone moans. My earlier lassitude is gone in an instant. I try to scramble to my feet only to slam my head against the low bars above me.

I cry out, stumbling to my knees.

Blinking rapidly, I rub the back of my head and look around.

It's dark, really dark, and I can barely see into the space beyond the bars. I'm in a narrow room. There's a floor drain in the center of the space, black and streaked with something I can't make out. The holes leading into the darkness below the drain are very wide. Shivering, I turn my head to look into the cages on either side of me—I'm in the center of a row. Shapes huddle in each of the cages, dark and still.

"Hello?" I rasp.

The shape on my left stirs. "Shhh," a feminine voice murmurs. "They get mad when we talk."

"They?"

The shape doesn't answer me.

Wrapping my arms around my knees, I shiver again. Glancing down, I realize I'm wearing a black jersey dress. A dress . . .

My memory stirs. I'd gone out to the bar after my shift. Miriam begged me. She's determined to get me back in the saddle after my breakup with Dr. Dickhead. I rub my forehead, racking my brain for the scattered flashbacks. I packed the dress in my backpack before I biked to work that morning, then showered at the hospital and changed into it. Then I walked to the bar.

But Miriam texted, said she was running late. I sat at the bar, ordered a Lemon Drop, and someone sat beside me. The music was loud. I had a hard time hearing them.

Pain radiates from my forehead. I rub my nose against my knee, trying to ignore it so I can focus on the memory.

A man . . .

But there's a fog hazing my thoughts. I can't remember exactly what happened. I think I talked to a man. I answered a text from Miriam, and he handed me another Lemon Drop. We chatted for a while, shouting in the loud space of the noisy bar. I can't remember his face, or what we talked about.

Then, nothing more.

My feet are bare, I note absently. Swift horror hits me and, my heart in my throat, I duck my head to look inside my dress. I'm still wearing my panties and bra. I exhale. I don't think I've been assaulted.

The thought is barely reassuring. There's a huge gap in my memory between talking to the stranger at the bar and waking in a cage. On an airplane. Or a zoo.

Have I been . . . kidnapped? Am I being trafficked? Am I stolen? Oh God, my brain battles between absolute terror and hysterical giddiness as I remember the scene in that Sandra Bullock movie with Harry Potter and Magic Mike. But I'm not in a gold, glittery jumpsuit, so I know it's not a dream.

Brightness explodes across my vision as the lights come on. For a moment, I can't see past the dots, then everything comes into focus—the rows of cages, the women, and the three purple-skinned, four-armed men stepping to the center of the room. Their faces are grim.

My nausea grows. I don't think I'm on an airplane at all.

TWOweeks later. Maybe? It's hard to track time when you're in a cage on an alien spaceship. But if I count the number of times the lights flashed and the purple guys inspected us, two weeks is probably accurate.

I think I'm in shock. I don't know how else to explain my acceptance of this situation. I should be screaming my head off. But I watched one of the women in the row across from me start doing that, and the purple aliens killed her—poked a baton into her cage, touched her skin with the glowing blue tip, and then she didn't scream anymore. Electrically-induced ventricular fibrillation. They tilted her cage, the bottom dropped out, and her body swirled down the open drain in the floor.

After that, no one screamed.

They feed us what tastes and looks like protein bars and fill small bowls with water a couple of times a day. Once every few days, they blast hoses at us to rinse the cages because, yep, no toilets. Those days are the worst and also the best.

And no one talks. If they catch you talking, you don't eat that day. And while protein bars get old fast, the lack of any food at all, on top of the cold temperature, the hard floor, and the lack of any privacy, makes everything almost unbearable.

I stopped trying to speak to my cellmates after the second day. No one tries to speak to me.

Now, two weeks into our outer space journey to who knows where, the woman in the cage on my left is almost catatonic. She stopped eating two days ago. She's tucked into a corner of her cage, and she doesn't move.

I want to whisper to her, to encourage her to stay strong. But I don't want to get in trouble. And, at this point, I'm not sure anything I could say would make her feel better.

I'm in a situation so far removed from reality, I have no place of reference for my nursing skills. I don't know if I should be monitoring the health of the women around me, with no ability to render aid if someone is hurt or sick, or if I should be keeping myself safe so when we reach our destination, I can help the survivors. If any of us survive.

They teach you triage skills in school, but you never want to be in a position to use them. Especially if the injuries and care you're judging weigh against self-preservation.

It's soul-killing.

At this point, the only reason I'm not in my own corner, staring at the drain in the floor and shivering, is that I'm angry.

Twenty-six women have been abducted by these purple aliens, twenty-seven if we count the one who didn't make it, and my mind can only think about the possibilities awaiting us for brief moments at a time. Are we going to be slaves? Drudges? Are they going to sell us to brothels where we'll be raped? Are we food? If I dwell on any of these outcomes for too long, I can feel the hysteria building, so I force myself to stop.

I don't know what's going to happen. None of us know. And instead of making our situation slightly more bearable with, perhaps, some information or some kind words, the purple aliens taunt us.

Sometimes they drop the protein bars just outside of our cages so we have to stretch across the ground to reach them. Sometimes, when they spray water to rinse the cages, they aim the hoses at us, blasting our skin until we're forced to huddle against the far bars, faces turned away. Sometimes, when the hold is dark and we're sleeping, they flicker the lights.

It's torture, plain and simple. And I'm so frustratingly angry with the entire situation, I'm on the edge of screaming myself to oblivion.

But I can't scream. Because if I make a peep, I'm dead. So I follow the rules.

I resort to deep, loathing glares when the purple aliens move through the hold. I keep my jaw locked when they make me crawl for my food.

But I don't know how much more of this I can take.

ONCE we arrive at our destination, however, I wish I could turn back time to when I was sitting in a cage and worrying about the future. Now, I'm standing on an auction block, naked and shivering, as a robotic voice announces over unseen speakers, "Terran female of breeding age. Class 7 status; no Federal identification. Healthcare experience. Twenty thousand Federal silvers."

I can't see who's bidding on me. I'm in an empty room lined with mirrors. And my reflection mocks me with its patheticness. I'm pale and covered in bruises, my collarbones standing in sharp relief, and my hazel eyes shine with fear. My dark chestnut hair is limp, hanging over my face in a dark mantle.

I should lift my chin, show these alien bastards I'm not going to be a pliant captive, but I can't. My fear is consuming me. My pulse flutters at my wrists, seemingly trying to push its way out of my skin to give my heart a break from its rapid pumping. Acid pools in my mouth.

I don't know what happened to the other women in the hold with me. The purple guys drugged us, I think, in that last round of protein bars, and when I woke, I was alone on this pedestal. When I stood up, the lights came on and the voice got to work.

It's not speaking English. I can tell by the slight delay between the noise and the words that rattle in my brain. There's an implant in my ear, talking to me. Talking into me, its voice inside of my skull.

Silence echoes for several minutes. My breaths are so loud in my ears, I almost don't hear the clanking noise behind me. Movement catches my eyes in the mirror. My mouth drops open in a silent scream as a robotic arm lowers from the ceiling behind me. It's thick and metallic, with an open pincer grip.

I spin, my balance wobbling, but quicker than I can react, the pincer encircles my neck and holds me immobile. Pressure and pain at my right shoulder makes me gasp, but I can't turn my head to see what's happening. Black spots float across my vision. My knees knock, and I think I'm going to faint.

Then the pincers release and I stagger off the pedestal, my knees hitting the cold floor hard. I drop my hands to brace myself, air sawing in and out of my lungs. Through the curtain of my hair, I watch the robot arm retract to the ceiling again. My shoulder hurts, but I can't make myself look at it.

In the next moment, a section of the mirrored wall whooshes open to reveal a doorway. It's dark before a figure steps into view. My heart rate, already dangerously fast, rabbits even faster. The black spots in my vision grow. The clinical part of my brain, apparently still functioning, whispers I need to slow my breaths. I need to calm down. The animal part of my brain ignores this impossible advice.

Lurking in the doorway, a cruel smirk on his thin lips, a short, pink-skinned man watches me. His eyes are red and filled with something I can't identify. Satisfaction? He's wearing all black and I'm no expert on alien fashion, but the style looks fancy. His arms are crossed. A pair of dark shadows pokes from his hairline—horns?

He's carrying a familiar metal prod in his hand. I know that prod. It causes pain, or it kills. I focus on it instead of the devilish visage still staring at me. It wavers in his hand, seeming to grow larger and larger. It's a snake, stretching to reach me.

The man rasps, "Hello, little Terran. Ready to make all my dreams come true?"

The black overwhelms me, and I hit the deck.

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