“Where the heck are we?” Jack asked. He wasn’t even wearing shoes. I guess my writer didn’t think of that.
I surveyed the landscape. We were at the Dyson Sphere’s park, next to a very familiar nondescript gray building. It was really too bad Aaron wasn’t here with us. He’d have a field day.
Well, technically, that was my fault. I’d told Cole it was okay to kill him. Wait. What if it this would make my team remember Aaron’s death? Chaos would ensue! A breach this size would be able to destroy–
“Oh my goodness, look at that sky!” Myren exclaimed, interrupting my thoughts. “There are more buildings up there! How is that possible?”
“It’s a Dyson Sphere,” I clarified. “That’s a neutron star there in the center.”
“Nerd,” Robert quipped.
“Hey, don’t be mean,” Myren chided. “Nerds are cool.”
“It’s fine,” I said, looking around the place. What the heck are we supposed to do here?
The door of the gray building popped open. There you go, my writer replied.
“Um… that door’s open,” Robert pointed out.
“Cool. Let’s check it out!” I said. Everyone except for Cole and Myren followed as perfunctorily as before.
“What is that?” Cole asked. He and Myren hadn’t been here before, so their apprehension was understandable.
“The best idea ever. Let’s go. They’re leaving us behind,” I said, taking Myren’s hand and pulling her along with me. Cole cautiously followed.
Inside the building, my crew was scouring every artifact stolen from the virtual reality storage facility last time we were here. Well, Mark, and Jack had been here before.
“What is this place?” Mark asked, holding an electrograv sphere. He flinched as if remembering how he had “died” in the storage facility. No, he wouldn’t remember. No one should remember anything.
Don’t forget Nathan, my writer reminded me.
Oh yeah. How could I have forgotten the breach? Well, good thing my writer was dealing with him.
“Those are used for filming at impossible angles,” I said. “Neat, right?”
“Neat,” Robert said, running his hands over crates of universal blasting caps. Connected to the right detonator, they could ignite any flammable substance. “Whose are those?”
“Mine,” I said. “My team and I hacked the city’s storage facility and got all these goodies while they weren’t looking.
Jack was playing with a crate of thin glass tubes with low-blinking sensors on them. I wasn’t sure what they did, but they sure looked cool.
Myren encountered a crate of blood-soaked tank tops. “Gross! What happened there?”
“Probably some failsafe gone wrong,” I hypothesized. “We just stole whatever was there. We–”
Someone knocked loudly on the metal door. “Aaron, if you’re in there, we’ve got you surrounded. Do not move,” a gruff voice said. Somehow, it sounded like they were speaking in English.
“Aaron?” Mark asked. “Wait, are they talking about the Aaron who died from a car crash?”
I frowned. “Yes. Well, let me explain…” Suddenly, the door burst open and armored police officers rushed in with weapons drawn. They appeared humanoid, but it was hard to tell under their uniform black armor.
“What the heck is happening?” Cole screamed.
“Stay still. Can you understand us?” one of the officers asked. Her voice carried reverberation of a foreign tongue.
“Yes,” I said as clearly as I could. I wondered if they had some sort of universal translator.
The armored officers surveyed my crew. “Where’s the human, Aaron?” the officer demanded.
I looked back and forth between my blissfully ignorant friends and the alien policemen. “He’s… dead,” I admitted.
“Dead? Did you kill him?” a different officer demanded.
“Of course not! He died in a car accident!” Mark insisted. “What’s up with this place? It feels like a nightmare.”
“Are any of you Gabe, Jack, Claire, Mark, or Jason?” the first officer asked.
My heart beat in my throat. “N–”
“Yeah,” my crew answered, pointing at the people named. Blissfully ignorant.
“Wait!” I screamed. “But–!”
“On the order of the Epyrrhian Government, you are hereby the first beings to be arrested for theft in over one hundred years,” the gruff sounding officer said. “Congratulations.”
My writer didn’t allow us to fight off the heavily armed aliens while they handcuffed us, collected our stuff, and shoved us into the back of a hovering van. There were no windows or door handles in the back. There was no way we could escape, or even know where they were taking us. Fun, right?
“Claire, what in the world have you done this time?” Robert asked.
“Bobby, look on the bright side,” I smiled weakly. “We’re exploring a new civilization, boldly going where no humans have ever gone before. Isn’t that fun?”
The driver took a sharp left turn, pinning us against the wall.
“We just got arrested for something you and Aaron did,” Jack pointed out, peeling himself off Mark.
“Don’t make it sound like you aren’t at fault, Jack,” I warned.
Jack frowned. “Wait, what?”
“Claire, you’re being weird again,” Robert said.
“Never mind. Sorry,” I grumbled. I stared hard at Robert, wondering if he was cracking as well. That would be a shame. The last time someone started retaining memories, my writer had Cole kill him. And that wasn’t even as bad of a breach as Nathan was. I hoped my writer would go easy on Nathan. He was a pretty cool guy.
The van stopped abruptly and the doors opened. The police officers nicely escorted us out.
“Welcome, humans, to the Epyrrhian Colony Capitol Building,” one of the officers announced. “This is where we will decide how to apprehend you and your primitive kind for your childish crime.”
“Oh, shoot,” Jack whispered.
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