Mating Rights (15 page)

“It does that sometimes,”
Samara said. “I was feeling around, thinking about how much I wanted to go
home, and a picture of our apartment came onto the wall. I think it picks up
your thoughts and displays them.”

“Maybe to make us feel
more at home,” Cyndy said.

“That’s the craziest
shit I’ve ever heard,” Jasmine said. But she noticed no one else dared touch
the wall. She thought about the Smoky Mountains in fall and touched the wall.
The metal reflected a mountain range covered in changing trees.

“Shit!” she said,
dropping her hands. “Okay. I’m freaking out now.”

“I think we’ve been
asleep or something and transferred in here. Like the put people in stasis in
scifi movies. It’s the only explanation. I just chopped my hair off and look.
It’s to my shoulders. It takes my hair months to grow this much,” Cyndy said,
fingering her sleek black hair.

She touched her own
hair, but it seemed only slighter longer. It was hard to tell with her extreme
curls anyway. Six months could go by and she’d hardly notice a change. Jasmine
thought about her last conscious memory before waking up. They’d seen lights
over Cyndy’s house. Could something as insane as alien abduction be real? Cyndy
and Samara had always been nuts about scifi movies and books. Jasmine preferred
her entertainment more grounded in reality. This situation was a stretch for
her to grasp.

“Has anyone in here
actually seen an alien?” Jasmine asked the crowd.

A few of the women
nodded.

“What did they look
like?” Samara asked.

A young Korean woman
stepped forward. “I’m Mai, from San Diego. I stopped at the beach to watch the
sunset. No one was around, and then I heard this strange whining sound and a
light flashed. I remember being on a table. Needles. And huge black eyes in a
gray face looking down at me and then I was somehow in here.”

“I—I remember seeing a
gray, egghead with black eyes,” Samara whispered.

Jasmine shuddered.

The floor shuddered.

Every woman in the room
screamed, including Jasmine. Mass hysteria was a powerful thing.

She’d never considered
herself a coward by a long shot, but she felt like she was going to piss her
drawers.

“I hate to admit this,
but I’m scared,” Samara muttered to her cousin. Jasmine nodded, feeling a quake
building inside her body that made her jaw teeth chatter.

The room shook. It was
obvious to everyone that they were inside something that was moving. And
whatever they were inside was stopping.

Where were they being
taken, and why?

Just as the “craft”
seemed to settle, hisses drew the women’s attention to the ceiling. Jutting
from the perimeter of the ceiling were small silver nozzles emitting puffs of
scentless gas. Someone in the crowd screamed, igniting a panic.

“They’re poisoning us!”
a woman screamed.

“I don’t want to die,”
someone else yelled.

Jasmine didn’t want to
believe they were being gassed to death. Why would they be taken from home and
transported somewhere only to be killed? Bodies jostled her, pushing past to
pound on the walls of the enormous round room. The cloud of gas continued to
waft down to them, making her head suddenly spin as her oxygen levels
decreased. The gas felt thick in her lungs. She tried covering her mouth, but
she had no choice but to inhale the fumes. The wall flashed with scenes of
earth, desert, night sky, apartments and more. The flashing lights, screams,
and pounding feet and fists made bile burn the back of her throat as the dizzy
spell increased.

“Jasmine.” Samara
grabbed her elbow and slumped to the floor. She tried to catch her, but her
arms felt too heavy to work. Jasmine’s vision narrowed to a pinpoint of light
and winked out.

SUPER READERS NEEDED!

Do you love my futuristic romances? Fantasy Romance?
Or interracial love? I hope so. I’m looking for Super Readers to review Advance
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left a review for one of my books in the past. If you’re interested in
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