I left the greenhouse, following the flash to another area, and into a sealed room. The lights flickered on but in this space, it was only a warm yellow glow. At least ten big white capsules filled the room. Glass computer panels lined the walls.

“What is this place?”

“This is the medical station.” The voice chimed from above me. “Where you will find technology to enable us to better communicate.”

“Great.” I glanced around. “But, if we’re going to communicate, I’m need to call you something.”

“If you must call me something, you may call me Commander.”

I stifled a laugh. Yep, I’d already picked up on several cues my mystery friend had some real delusions of grandeur. “Not calling you Commander. Give me a name.”

The silence in the room seemed to swell.

“Very well. You may call me Maccamilencia.”

“Excellent. Macca for short.” I smiled again. “So, where’s this communication technology?”

A pod lid cracked open.

I strode over and looked inside. The inside of the pod looked like a tanning bed full of rows of wires. “There’s nothing in here.”

“You must enter the pod to receive the technology.”

I inched away from the pod. “What do you mean ‘receive’?”

“A cochlear implant. The adjustment will enable us to communicate discretely anywhere on the ship.”

“You want to implant something in my head?” I backed up.

“It is necessary—”

“Necessary to implant alien technology inside my actual head?” I turned for the door.

The room sizzled with deafening silence, then the door breezed opened. The lights flicked off.

The medical station plunged into darkness.

“Very well.” Macca’s voice grew chiller than the blackness. “I hear humans harvest spring lamb at three months. You’ll find these farms equally generous.”

Horrific images flashed from times I’d seen documentaries on abattoirs. My stomach heaved. I gagged onto the floor, grabbing onto the edge of a pod.

Perspective.

Implant verses breading farm.

I straightened slowly, wiping my mouth on my wrist. “Fine, implant me.”

The only indication of unconsciousness was the sudden return to consciousness. I burst upright, forehead smacking into the opening lid of the pod. Pain shuddered into my skull.

“All done.” The voice rang in my left ear.

I clamped my hand over the ear. Oh, god, that was a weird sensation. Voices in my head…

“You must return to your room immediately. Lights will soon be on.”

I scooted out of the pod. My ribs ached at the memory of the cattle prod in my side. Were there worse punishments for sneaking out of your room?

I slinked down halls under Macca’s instruction, and slipped back into the cabin. The bolt thunked closed.

“What now?”

The lights flickered on and the door unbolted, signaling morning.

I grabbed my chest and backed into a wall, heart pounding.

“Now do exactly as I say.”

I changed into the clean white jumpsuit provided every other day, as instructed, then made my way as usual into the dining area, and sat at a free seat with a waiting bowl.

“Be mindful that while the guards cannot understand you, they can see everything you do on surveillance.”

I picked up the spoon and glanced at the doors. That would be right. The guards didn’t come in here unless there was a problem. It only made sense they watched on cameras. The women around me dug into their slop, chewing the gelatinous muck.

“Do not touch your ear when I speak to you.”

I dropped my hand from the side of my head.

“Eat while you can.”

I swallowed a big spoonful, gulping water in-between to get the sticky stuff down.

“In exactly eight of your human minutes, I will place the surveillance footage on a loop, and you must address your fellow humans. Any who you are not able to convince to follow you, will be left behind.”

My spoon clattered into the bowl.

I was actually supposed to lead passengers off the ship— now ?

The woman opposite me looked up. I met her gaze, but didn’t say anything. The guards discouraged talking.

They discouraged the heck out of it with their cattle prods. We’d learned fast.

But this woman smiled.

Her friendly brown eyes crinkled. This girl looked about seventeen. A decade younger than me. That was an extra decade of producing meat babies if she didn’t follow.

“The escape craft has the capacity to evacuate this entire wing of two-hundred passengers, but we won’t have time to convince any who resist.”

Escape craft. That’s how we were getting out.

“Stand up and talk now, you don’t have long.”

“Listen up.” I sprang to my feet, chair clattering to the floor. “The cameras are down; the guards can’t see us for the next few minutes. If you want to get the fuck out of here with me, you all better do what I say.”

Jesus, I sounded like Macca.

All eyes turned to me. Staring. Stunned. Mostly giving me, the look people give deranged patients.

“If it weren’t true the guards would be busting in here right now and lancing me with their prods, but look, they’re not.” I pointed at the door. “Because they can’t see this. This is the only chance we get.”

Every head turned to the door then back to me.

“Tell them to line up on the other side of the dining hall.”

I cleared my throat, dictating Macca’s instructions. People began to rise out of their seats, thank god. Not all though.

Some remained fixed in place.

Wide eyed.

Probably too shocked and shaken to make a decision. I grabbed the woman next to me who’d stayed seated by the arm, and dragged her up.

They assembled in front of the small door at the back of the dining hall. My heart did gymnastics.

The door shimmied open.02

I went through first, half expecting a reptile faced alien to burst out and stop us. The hallway stretched empty ahead.

“Hurry.”

“Come on.” I charged down the hall. Hundreds of footsteps thundered behind me.

I glanced back. The door closed itself. Oh, fuck . There were still dozens of women who’d refused to follow.

“I won’t be able to keep them out much longer, Leila, hurry.”

Maybe it was that it was the first time Macca had used my name, but it gave me the fuel to bark orders like a general.

We burst into a huge hanger.

My knees lost strength. The entire floor was eaten up by a silver spaceship. A fucking spaceship within a spaceship.

The escape raft.

Silver plates covered the entire enormous surface reminding me of a fly’s eye.

A ramp lowered underneath the ship and connected to the ground.

“Get in,” I yelled, urging everyone up the ramp.

“Not you yet, Leila.”

I froze. The last passenger entered the escape raft. “What is it?”

The ramp retracted.

I stumbled backwards out of its path, inhaling a lungful of metallic tasting air.

“Did you think you would leave without me?”

“You’re not up there?” The hatch closed, leaving me alone in the hanger.

“If I were, I would not have required your assistance.”

I turned full circle, arms numbing. The heating wasn’t what it was in the rest of the ship down here. “You’d have left us.”

“Nonsense, I would’ve conserve as many humans as practical.”

I shook my head. That had to be the coldest reassurance I’d ever heard.

“Hurry, Leila, it’s time to reciprocate, and rescue me.”

I followed Macca’s directions to a small storage room not all that far from the hanger. Shelves lined the walls along with a dust covered medical pod. “Where the hell are you?”

“The pod.”

Releasing air hissed through the room.

My spine tingled. I inched closer, and the lid lifted.

A little girl lay inside. Eyes peacefully closed. Hands folded neatly over a toy on her stomach. Wearing a sweet white dress, her hair braided…

No fucking way.

Macca was a little kid?

Well, that’d explain the narcissism.

“Faster, they’re coming.”

There wasn’t time to question how an unconscious little girl was communicating in my head. I reached for Macca.

“First put the sphere somewhere safe.”

I glanced at the toy clutched in the child’s hands. A blue sphere smaller than a tennis ball. I pried the girl’s fingers from the ball and stuffed it down the collar of my jumpsuit and into my cleavage, then scooped up Macca.

“Okay, which way?”

“Left. But faster. They’ve broken through the doors.”

I jogged harder, adjusting the girl over my shoulder, and gave a little prayer of thanks for Neil, my former boot camp instructor, for all the running with tires.

“Hide in the room on the left.”

I darted left into a room scattered with tables, and pressed my back to the wall. Footsteps thundered past, then away.

“Where are they going? The hanger is in the other direction,” I whispered.

“I reconfigured the ships map to buy us time.”

“You’re pretty clever for a seven-year-old.” I peered down the hallway. “But then you are an alien…”

I started down the hall, then rounded the corner, gaze connecting with a cold slitted one.

Fuck .

My pulse boomed.

“You didn’t warn me about this one.”

The alien’s head tilted.

“You have the element of surprise. Fight him.”

What the actual—

The alien marched toward me. I inched back. The prod in his claw flashed.

“Macca, you’ve grossly overestimated my military training…”

The alien drew closer. Close enough to see the red of his pupils. The overbite of its baby-eating alligator jaw.

I eased Macca down and propped her against the wall.

“I’m unarmed.” I held up my hands. The aliens might not understand English but they’d get hands up means surrender, right?

The alien reached me, raising the prod.

Nope.

My arm darted out, catching a cold scaly wrist. I twisted, jerking the muscled body over my shoulder, and slammed him into the floor. I moved again, catching the prod, and turned it, then jammed the end through the unarmored yellow patch of flesh on the alien’s jowls.

Blue blood spurted in an arc.

I leaped back, heart making a deep drumming thud through my whole body.

“What the—” I stumbled. “How did I do that?”

“An additional upgrade during your adjustment.”

I spun to Macca. Additional what nows?

“No time. Get to the escape craft.”

I bent on twitching knees, and scooped up what had to be the single most frightening child in the entire universe.