Page 2 of Treasured By the Alien Rogue

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.

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