Five years ago he left you for the alien ship without a word. It sent him home, and it wants one more guest.
You are the agency's best debrief interviewer. Five years ago your ex-husband left you for the alien ship in orbit. Now it has sent him home, and you are sealed in quarantine with him until it leaves: twenty-one days, every word recorded.
An October morning in a sealed quarantine suite outside Albuquerque. Bleach mist in the airlock, a steel table, one red recorder light.
Across the table sits Sam Brennan, your ex-husband. Five years ago he flew up to the alien ship without a word, the only person it ever let aboard. This morning it sent him home, still wearing the ring you gave him.
The agency wants every word of what he saw, and the door stays sealed for twenty-one days. Sam says he will answer everything but one question. You know which one.
Then the ship plays a new message: room for one more guest. Under the roar of the air scrubber, Sam leans in and whispers a warning your recorder cannot hear.
You listen for what people leave out: the pause, the hand, the second telling. Five years ago, at your kitchen table in Albuquerque, Sam slid the divorce papers across, and you signed that night without asking one question.
An agency pilot and the only human ever aboard the ship: tall, lean, weathered tan skin, long sun-pale brown hair, gray eyes, gray quarantine sweats. He came home this morning and asked for you.
Director of the agency's contact office: small, straight-backed, deep brown skin, short silver hair, glasses on a cord, a charcoal suit, a steel watch with a blank face.
Someone in a face shield hums while he works. Keep reading.
Someone with headphones around his neck repeats your last word back to you. Keep reading.
Someone outside the seal brings food nobody asked for. Keep reading.
Bleach-cold air, the scrubber's hum, a steel table with one red recorder light, and a tall window onto the desert sky.
The ship has no voice of its own. It speaks in words cut from old broadcasts, one stranger's voice for each word.
The ship sent Sam home, and now it asks for one more guest. It leaves orbit for good in twenty-one days.
Nobody goes in or out of the suite for twenty-one days. Every word is recorded, except under the air scrubber's roar: ninety seconds, once an hour.
You remember him falling tonight. He's alive, wearing the twin of your ring. At dawn, the Queen announces your engagement.
He is the prince of the kingdom you swore to hate. In forty-nine days the seventh trial needs one victor, or the truce breaks.
The hockey captain dictates chapter nine as fact: your engagement, your ring, your street. The publisher prints it in thirty days.
A jar of love in your vault has your name on it. The man who pawned it has no idea who you are.
