Page 39 of Accidentally Abducted

Then there's nothing but blue light and the bizarre sensation of being everywhere and nowhere at once.

When reality reasserts itself, I'm standing in my living room, exactly where I was when this all started, same apartment, but everything's slightly off. The TV is showing some reality show I don't recognize instead of that British baking program. The pizza I left on the coffee table has a suspicious greenish tint to it now. And there's a stack of missed calls and texts on my phone that's been charging on the side table.

The air hits me immediately, stale, slightly musty, with that faint hint of microwave popcorn that always lingers in my apartment building's hallways. After three days of breathing the ship's perfectly regulated atmosphere, the ordinariness of Earth air feels like an assault on my senses.

Three days have definitely passed. The experiment was real. All of it was real.

The evidence is in the small communicator clutched in my palm. And the container of gemstones in my pocket. And the hollow ache in my chest where our empathic bond is already beginning to fade.

I stand there for a long moment, the silence of my apartment crushing after days of Zeph's presence, his voice, his movements, the subtle hum of the ship that I hadn't even realized I'd gotten used to.

"Well," I say to the empty room, because talking to myself is still my brand, apparently. "That just happened."

My own voice sounds wrong somehow, too flat, too ordinary after days of Zeph's formal, melodic speech patterns. I move to sit on the couch, but my legs give out halfway there, and I end up on the floor, staring at the communicator in my hand.

For emergencies only, he said. Not casual communication.

But what constitutes an emergency, really? Is having your heart torn out of your chest and left in another star system an emergency? Is realizing that your crappy apartment and meaningless job and empty life are unbearable now that you know what else exists an emergency?

I close my fingers around the communicator, tempted to activate it immediately, to send a signal that saysI need you, come back, this isn't right.

Instead, I carefully place it on my coffee table and check my phone. According to the display, it's Friday night, exactly three days since I was abducted. The screen is filled with increasingly concerned text messages and missed calls from my coworkers and even a couple friends who noticed I'd completely vanished.

There's a particularly angry text from my manager that makes it clear I no longer have a job at the coffee shop. Three days of no-shows with zero communication was apparentlythe final straw after my "consistently mediocre attitude toward customer satisfaction."

The crushing reality of it all makes me want to scream. Or cry. Or both. Three days that changed my entire life, and all I have to show for it is an alien communicator, a pocket full of gemstones, and an empty apartment that feels even smaller and more pathetic than it did before.

Instead, I pick up the communicator again, running my thumb over its smooth surface, feeling the faint vibration that suggests it's more than just a stone. With my other hand, I touch my chest, searching for that empathic connection that was so vivid just minutes ago.

It's there, but faint, a ghost of what it was, a bare impression rather than the vivid link we shared. And it's fading even as I focus on it, like a dream slipping away upon waking. I close my eyes, trying desperately to hold onto it, to reach through whatever vast distance now separates us. For a moment, I think I feel something, a flicker of warmth, an echo of that golden glow, but it slips through my mental fingers like water, leaving nothing but the cold emptiness of its absence.

"Come back," I whisper, though I know he can't hear me. "Please come back."

There's no response, of course. Just the quiet of my apartment and the dull ache of loss that feels too big for my body to contain.

I curl up on the floor, clutching the communicator to my chest, and finally let the tears come.

Chapter Twelve

Zeph

The blue light fades, leaving nothing but empty space where Jake stood moments ago. I remain frozen, hand still outstretched toward the void he occupied, as if by sheer force of will I might call him back. The transportation cycle has completed. He is gone.

The ship's environmental systems, still calibrated to accommodate a human occupant, maintain a temperature several degrees warmer than Nereidan standard. A temperature that now serves no purpose but to remind me of his absence.

"Transport cycle complete. Human subject successfully returned to origin coordinates," the ship announces, its toneless voice echoing in the suddenly too-large room.

Subject. As if Jake Morrison could ever be reduced to such a clinical term.

I lower my hand slowly, aware of the uncharacteristic tremor in my fingers. My bioluminescence has dimmed to almost nothing, a physical manifestation of the hollow sensation spreading through my chest. The empathic bond still exists, I can feel it, a gossamer thread stretched to breaking, but the distance renders it a pale echo of what we shared.

Protocol dictates immediate documentation following subject departure. A comprehensive summary of all observations, metrics, and conclusions. I should be at my workstation, compiling data, preparing my recommendation for the Council.

Instead, I find myself standing in the exact spot where Jake vanished, unable to move, unable to process the simple fact of his absence.

Three days. Three days that have somehow reconfigured my entire perception of existence.

"Researcher Zeph'hai," the ship prompts after what must be several minutes of my inaction. "Departure documentation sequence has not been initiated. Do you require assistance?"

---