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The bedroom door was closed. It was always closed, locked from the inside. Harry and Sarah glared at each other one last time before rearranging their faces into parental smiles. Not that Oliver would see them. Still, they had to try. They’d been trying for fourteen months.
Sarah rapped on the door. “Oliver, darling, won’t you come down for breakfast?”
“No, thank you,” Oliver called. “Can Mattie bring me the tray?”
Tilda stands at a crossroads just outside of town. It’s a place where worlds meet, and the perfect place to create a new person. The crescent moon glimmers through the oaks bent thick along the roadside. The cold-burning stars in the sky hold a sort of magic if you know how to swim in their light. Tilda spits in the dirt, turns a tight circle, and recites the incantation she learned as a child.
Alvin fidgeted in the austere metal elevator, flanked by two security guards in sunglasses. He felt a little out of place, so he produced his own pair of sunglasses and put them on.
“Take those off,” barked one of the guards. Alvin put them away again.
We put my body double together in June Lee’s basement. Her mom was one of those chill Asian moms who liked having an artsy-fartsy daughter she could brag about at Bible study. She was already pushing the whole portfolio-for-college-apps deal, so she didn’t mind staying out of the basement to avoid contaminating our radiant artist auras humming at the frequency of the Big Bang.
There wasn’t a lot of me left after the war.
I was in a skipship on my way to being deployed when the Drinzit attacked, and I got sucked into a hole in the ship’s wall before the patch system kicked in. My comrades put what was left of me in cryo, and we retreated to Known Space.
I heard you’re returning to our world again. What do you want here exactly, Orhija? The Earth is dying slowly. It’s losing its sheen and glow. The blackness of the soil that you used to say was as beautiful as mine has changed since you left. It’s redder than black. The air is tense and heavy with smoke. I doubt you can survive it.
Post-flight debrief.
Subject: Michael Ackine, of the Astronomic Endeavors cargo ship, Zephyr One.
Introductory notes: Mr. Ackine is the only survivor of the Zephyr’s maiden voyage. Z-One landed safely, five Earth days overdue and two kilometers from target. Mr. Ackine is not a pilot, and has stated he did not land the ship himself.
As her head hit the pillow, Yadira felt exhausted and relieved. Exhausted, because she’d worked on a very large collage almost the whole day straight. Her shoulder blades ached from hunching over her worktable, and, despite scrubbing, she still had ink under her nails. Relieved, because she felt like she’d left it all out on the field, rather than still vibrating with artistic energy.
The men knew before she did. Before this boy, before sophomore year, before even her twelfth birthday, they had jostled her on the sidewalk and hooted from cars, searching for something just past her skin. But now, with her panties stripped off and the boy’s eyes on her, Jackie felt a strange prickling. A warning pacing behind her ribs. A mouth about to drip.
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