Akemi settled in to watch, and the only thing she missed was a bucket of popcorn.
And while she watched, Akemi also sorted through a list of alien names and faces. Any Rik who had refused to surrender were being searched out and arrested. There were quite a few Rik in human bodies scattered through the galaxy, and if they didn’t voluntarily come in, human and Spo forces were allowed to arrest them. Akemi focused on one face, listed merely as, “Sage.” He looked vaguely familiar to her. One of the Rik on Mars maybe? She made a mental note to check and went back to watching the catalog.
Such fun.
The End.
NOTE TO READERS
Thank you for reading Manipulate. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Look for another adventure in 2014!
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Thanks again for reading!
ALSO BY CORRIE GARRETT
The Aspen Experiments
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Corrie was born and raised in Austin, Texas, but now lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband and three kids. She enjoys fan-girling about her favorite web and TV shows on Tumblr, reading, and occasionally obsessing about Rubik's cubes.
She's currently working on her final Alien Cadet novel and plotting the second novel in the Aspen series.
For news and information about Corrie and upcoming releases, please visit: http://corriegarrett.wordpress.com/
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Captivate (Book 2 of the Alien Cadets)
Excerpt
The escape pods burst out of Akemi's skin like boils, and smoke roiled through her halls, blinding her view from the cameras.
She frantically monitored water systems and airlocks, trying to isolate the fire from the few people still aboard; but so much of the spacestation had been damaged in the initial explosion that her options were limited. Most of the station’s protections were automatic, so there was little she could do but watch and wait. The station’s heat censors (which usually would tell her where people were located, by body heat) were overloaded with fire, and told her nothing. The video monitors were obscured by smoke, so all she had were the escape pod records of how many aliens and people were aboard each pod as they blasted off. So far there were 21 of 22 pods away, and nearly 150 souls accounted for. But the souls she cared the most about, her sister Nat and Nat's boyfriend, Sam, were still on the space station.
She knew because she had a direct link to their computerized glasses, and from the tiny camera embedded in the frame she could see that they were both still stumbling through the smoke filled halls.
She couldn’t see much else, but she knew they were getting near the engine room, where the computer that housed her brain was located. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of Nat’s ashy face when Sam glanced at her, but that was all she could see. Now she heard Sam’s hacking cough over the whine of warping plastic and the wail of alarms.
Are you breathing through your shirt? Stay low.
Akemi put the words in the heads-up display on Sam's glasses where they transparently overlaid his vision.
“I know, I am low,” he said. But she saw him crouch lower still and put a hand on Nat’s back to push her lower as well. “We’re almost there. Don’t let the last pod go,” he added.
Akemi wouldn’t. Half her attention was on that last escape pod. There were four people on board already, she wasn’t sure who, and they were pounding on the release button. It was like a fingernail on a chalkboard – release, release, release – pinging each time they whacked the button. But the pod wasn’t going anywhere yet, she’d put an override hold on it. Whoever was inside surely thought it was broken, and must be panicking.
Unfortunately there wasn’t a computer display in the pod, so Akemi couldn’t explain to them why it wasn’t responding. She felt bad for their undoubted terror, but there were two more people to get on that escape pod (three counting her), and there was no way she was letting it go without them. And, not to be selfish, but she didn’t want to die here either.
*******
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Postlogue
Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Postlogue
NOTE TO READERS
ALSO BY CORRIE GARRETT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Captivate (Book 2 of the Alien Cadets) Excerpt
Manipulate (Alien Cadets) Page 26