Two of the three spotlights switched off, plunging Red and Blondie into darkness. I could hear their sobs, but this time from relief instead of fear. A good person would have been happy for both. I looked up at my light, the only one still on, and swallowed.

I could hear movement and whispers in the darkness on all sides. The deep, guttural words from the audience overpowered the softer clipped lilt of the glamazons. I strained to listen to the voices as they retreated, trying to separate them in my memory. One of those voices belonged to the man who had just bought me.

My stomach twisted as reality slapped me in the face. I couldn't settle on how to look at what had just happened. On the bright side, I wasn't going back to the Room. I wouldn't spend the unbearably frigid nights curled up on the floor, huddled beneath the remnants of a cocktail dress to keep warm. There were no more bowls of gray slop waiting in my future. No more glamazons with their steely fingers and judgmental glares.

Could anything that waited for me on the planet be worse than what had already happened? I didn't know. I didn't want to find out.

Red’s and Blondie's quite sobs faded into the distance. Obviously, they had made their decision. The hell they knew in the Room was better than the one they didn't know. I closed my eyes and forced myself to take deep breaths. The last thing I wanted was for the blues to see me panic. Focus on the bright side. Wherever I was going, it wasn't here.

As if to prove my point for me, Blue Prime grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me away from my spotlight. The invisible shock fence that kept me from touching Red must have come down after the lights went out. If I had known, I could have grabbed Red. It would only have taken a few seconds to hug her and tell her that this would work out.

I planted my feet against the stage and twisted my wrist. It didn't budge from Blue Prime's iron grip, but it got my point across. The glamazon stopped, her azure eyes blazing as she looked at me.

"You could have let us touch one another," I screamed in her face as if she could understand me. "This didn't have to be so scary!"

My blood raged in my veins. Never in my life had I been as pissed at one person as I was with Blue Prime. Now that it was over, now that I knew in my gut that she couldn't scare me anymore, I couldn't hold my anger back.

Blue 3 stepped in between us, wrapping an arm around my shoulder as she turned to face Blue Prime. She said something in their language with a biting edge that translated fine. In my days in the Room, I had never heard any of the glamazons speak to the head blue that way. Her words were always absolute. But this time, Blue Prime lowered her head and backed away, clearing our path to the hallway.

Something about the auction must have shifted the balance of power between the blues. Was that why Blue 3 and New Blue had taken such good care of me? No, that couldn't be right. Blue Prime's nastiness made no sense if their position in the company was tied to how well their human makeover project performed.

Blue 3 slipped her arm around mine and led me back down the hall. Dozens of questions buzzed around my brain. I would have given anything for the chance to ask just one of them. Nothing on this planet made sense and nobody could explain it to me.

I stopped halfway down the hall, turning to look at her. "I know you don't understand me, but you helped me. At least, I think you helped me. Thank you." I bowed my head and hoped that was a gesture of gratitude for them.

The smile on her lips let me know that she understood, but a change in her body language caught my attention. This wasn't her usual warm, wide smile. It was close-lipped. Chilling. Nothing like the Blue 3 who had been with me in the bathroom. I hadn't noticed in the dim light backstage. Was that why Blue Prime backed off?

I started walking again without prompting. Even if I could speak the alien's language, Blue 3 wouldn't have answered my questions. I'd already gotten her what she wanted. My questions were officially someone else’s problem. Might as well make the best of it.

The glamazon finally stopped in front of one of the wooden doors. She hesitated as if she wanted to tell me something. What could she say? Thanks for getting me a promotion? Even if she could get the message across to me somehow, why would I care? Blue 3 seemed to rethink trying to communicate. Instead, she shrugged and pushed the door open.

Everywhere in the building I had been was nicer and better maintained than the Room where the glamazons kept us. But the room on the other side of the door put everything I'd seen so far to shame. The walls and floors of the room had been stained deep burgundy. Cushions provided the only furnishings in the room, but the sheer variety made up the difference. There were dozens of them, teal and wine, embroidered and silken, arranged in clusters on the floor and against the walls.

Gold sconces bolted to the walls bathed the room in a warm light. A cool breeze from the balcony swept through the open window, billowing the pale blue curtains that separated it from the rest of the room. It wasn't a large room, about the size of my freshman dorm, but the atmosphere was better than any room I'd ever been in. Even my bedroom at home didn't come close.

My name is Ella Browne.

I stepped into the room, feeling the smooth floor beneath my bare feet. Blue 3 shut the door behind me. Maybe the fact that the closest thing I had to a friend in this place had left without saying goodbye should have made me feel something. But I couldn't take my eyes away from the window and the sliver of the world I could see beyond it.

Ella Browne.

The few windows in the Room had been too high to look through. The ship that brought me to the planet didn't have any windows at all. This was going to be my home, maybe for the rest of my life, and I hadn't even seen it yet.

The building where they kept us was the tallest in the area, but it was only a few stories high. Most of them were wide and round, like medieval towers. From the outside, the one I was in sort of looked like an office park building except a road flanked the building instead of an endless parking lot.

The cars on the road, if you can call a hovering box with no wheels a car, zipped along at speeds that would have gotten anyone on Earth's license pulled with no hope of getting it back.

Two moons hovered in the sky over the planet, each bathing the black ocean and gray shores in silver light. Lights from a larger section of the city twinkled on the other side of the bay. The buildings on that side were larger than the ones on my side of the water. A few were easily four or five times the size of the one I was in, but most were only twice the size. Mansions? All of them had a tower at the center, capped with a gleaming silver dome.

I couldn’t see any bridges connecting the neighborhood to the city across the bay. Every now and then, one of the car . . . pod . . . things would approach the end of the road beside the shore and pause for a second. A gust of wind and light shot out from undercarriages as the pods rose into the air, hovering ten feet off the ground before continuing their paths over the black water.

Flying cars. Of course, they have flying cars.

Between the huge homes and towers of the city, I could just barely see rolling sand dunes pressed against a backdrop of a thousand stars. In that moment, staring at the twinkling lights in the buildings and the sky, I forgot to be afraid. I had always loved the flat grass and thick oak trees back home, but their humble appeal fell flat in comparison.

The door slid open behind me, but I couldn't turn around. All I could do was stare at the city and wonder which of those pale towers would be my new home.