“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Space. I’m in freaking space in a spaceship.”
“Cruiser,” he corrected me.
“Reaver SC is small and only has energy shields if we encounter enemy ships, but since we’re on an exploration mission, we don’t have weapons. We’re also lacking entertainment on board such as a biosphere to replicate your botanical gardens, or a bar, but we’re fast.”
“What?” I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying and I rubbed my eyes but it was useless. “Where are we going?”
“Veon. We have to return home.”
I jerked toward him, a shiver slithering down my flesh. “Are you kidding me? You just kidnapped me from Earth and now you are taking me to your home planet?”
“We told you before. You’re already ours.”
I was on my feet pacing and didn’t recall getting off the chair, but I wrapped my arms around my middle, barely able to breath. I kept prodding my throat with my tongue to feel for the ring. How could they have done this?
“You didn’t even ask me,” I mumbled.
“We had no time,” he explained.
Fury raged through my veins that these three Vepar pushed and pulled me in every direction at their own accord, never what I wanted. “So what now?” I began. “You put me to sleep for years until we arrive there, and I’ll wake up an old woman because I wasted my life here. I might as well have died at the hands of the enemies.” I gasped for air, and the walls seemed to close in around me.
“I’ll take us just under a month to reach home. We use a rift in spacetime,” Corran explained as if I ought to understand what he was talking about.
I blinked fast and glanced back outside the window. “I don’t know much about science, but I’m pretty sure no one can move faster than the speed of light.”
“Our technology might challenge that theory. Long ago we discovered two entangled black holes. Our scientists found an anomaly and…” He tapped his chin as if finding the easiest way to explain what I already didn’t quite understand. “They found a way to separate these two black holes, and that space in between turned out to be a wormhole, which allows anyone with the right vessel to take a shortcut through the universe.”
“Shortcut?”
“Space and time can be bent. One of Earth’s great geniuses, Albert Einstein was correct,” Corran’s words sped up in his excitement to tell me this explanation. “A wormhole is a tunnel that joins distant locations in space or even two universes through space time curvature. And one our scientists discovered one that from our world to your universe.”
“So, that’s how you’ve watched us for so long before you invaded.”
“Invaded is a very harsh word.” He picked up his black framed glasses and slipped them back on his face.
“Where’s Thane and Derrial?”
“Sleeping. We’ve been traveling nonstop for the past two weeks and are nearing the wormhole. If you’d like, I could put you to sleep for the next two weeks?”
I slumped back into the seat, my head hurting from the influx of information, and yet I couldn’t stop staring out into space, both terrified and lost.
At least this time he asked me if I wanted something done to me. Maybe sleeping wasn’t such a bad idea as it would stop me from stressing constantly, but what if I woke up with something else operated on me?
“No sleep. I prefer to experience the next two weeks on the ship.”
No matter what Corran said, him and the other two had indeed kidnapped me and now I was about to be taken to an alien planet, so I needed my eyes wide and to be alert.
Terror washed over me, sending another chill down my back. I looked outside once more into the endless universe.
Would I ever see Earth again?