“It’s amazing,” I breathe, kneeling on the pavement. “Looks so real.”
“Adorable, isn’t he?” Mrs. Dawson smiles down at her hologram dog. “When Jack died, I didn’t know what to do with myself. But now…” Holo-Jack stands on his back legs and barks at me. I can almost feel the warmth
“I don’t see why we need to have it around, Paulson,” Merrik grumbled. “Damn bug gives me the crawls.”
The sergeant stomped his boot hard against the tunnel floor. The wet thud echoed up and down the cavernous hollow, touching off ripples along the scattered patches of bioluminescent algae.
“Shut it. You want
Green light emanates from my skin, illuminating the deep-sea darkness. Flicking my scuba fins, I swim deeper into the underwater cave and scan the walls for any hint of scarlet.
“Can’t make that light any brighter, can you?” Gino’s voice echoes in my comm.
I scowl. “You know I can’t control it.”
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A glowing array of dashboard lights illuminated the cockpit. Halpin summoned the viewscreen, swinging the decaying majesty of the dying star into sharp focus. Withered and blue, it shuddered in its death-throes, belching red rings of cosmic flame into the inky void.
“Hello at last.”
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The sulfurous stench of rotting vegetation stung Zach’s sinuses as he ran through the marshland of the planet Hecate. With each stride, the mud slurped around his boots.
Gonna sink if I pause for even a second.
“The powersuits were a good call, Z.” Tetsuo’s voice was calm and steady, despite the exertion.
With each vacuous word the Duchess uttered, another bit of Kaori’s hope evaporated into a bitter almond scent. Was this entire planet ungraced with a family worthy of a Tisshe’s services?
Months of agonizing and futile interviews had exposed the inadequacy of the royals and bureaucrats. Today, the babbling Duchess kneeling at
“Don’t worry,” Ben whispered to himself. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”
He crept down the path beside his childhood home, breathing a heady, floral scent into his lungs. He stopped under an arbor covered with the red blooms of a climbing rose.
The backyard was packed. Dozens of relatives and friends gathered
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he flower, if indeed it could be called a flower, looked like nothing on Earth.
Iris squinted at the purplish inkblot staining the vast green landscape of her garden shrubbery. It seemed to have bloomed overnight in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable hedgerow.
Without her glasses to aid her, Iris struggled
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“Earth to Echo.”
Electricity courses through Echo as Darbo’s deep voice prods her consciousness. She stirs, blinking out at the spaceship’s main chamber.
My jail cell.
Darbo stands by the main control panel, pressing the button that shoots shock waves across Echo’s incorporeal form. Nearby, his daughter Delilah crunches on star-puffs
Sandra watched the passenger ship enter Delphi’s atmosphere like a shooting star. In the morning, she would leave with it, and her future would end.
She leaned against the windowsill and looked down at her luggage. Five bags. I don’t need keepsakes. Memories will be enough. They’ll have to be.
Run.
The pull made Noyer strain against her ankle cuff. The purple bruising beneath it twinged comfortingly.
She was safe. The ocean couldn’t drown her yet, so she listened to its thrum through the story of an old stormer.
“It was a glorious city, and they broke it,” he was saying.
I jolted awake, throwing the sheets off me as a familiar prickle crept across the back of my neck. Not again.
My bedside clock glowed.
2:00 AM.
I sucked in a shaky breath and let it out, then tapped the homing button strapped to my wrist. Hopefully, the Control Team would find me
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