Chapter 1
As I stood in line, waiting to be punished for the sins of my people, I remembered something the old folks back home always said: There’s no great gain without great pain.
I don’t think this is what they had in mind.
But maybe I should start at the beginning. Or close enough.
The scientists had warned us for decades. Change, or die. But we didn’t listen. We were too busy scrolling, shopping, screwing, pretending the floodwaters weren’t rising and the air wasn’t getting harder to breathe. We called it progress. We called it freedom. We didn’t call it what it was: extinction.
By the time we understood how far we’d fallen, it was too late. But while most of us clung to denial like a life raft, the brilliant ones got to work. Secret government funding. Underground labs. A plan B.
And fifty years ago, they pulled back the curtain.
A habitable planet. Just two years away.
Not just some barren rock. This one had air, water, forests. A second chance. Humanity wept. Hugged strangers. Reposted memes about fate and faith and fresh starts.
Then came the catch.
It wasn’t empty.
They looked... like us. Only not. Taller. Broader. Skin darker, eyes brighter. The males especially—built like gods, furred like beasts, staring through you like they could see all the rot inside and weren’t impressed. But otherwise? Two legs, five fingers, same basic plumbing. Familiar enough to ignite a thousand conspiracy theories about shared origins. Or divine design.
Didn’t matter. They didn’t want us.
They’d survived their own environmental collapse centuries ago. Controlled their population. Cleaned their planet. Earned their paradise. They saw us for what we were: the disease they’d already cured.
So they said no.
We didn’t take that well.
Desperation makes monsters of us all. We attacked. They defended. It wasn’t even close. We were fleas with nukes. They were gods with lasers. They swatted us down and sent us crawling home.
Eighteen years ago, they broke our back. Destroyed our ships. Grounded our space program. Quarantined us on our dying world. Left us to choke on our own mistakes.
And we deserved it.
But then... came the virus.
It was supposed to be subtle. Surgical. A slow-burn vengeance. Our scientists engineered a pathogen that infected their women—targeting the embryos developing as female. Male babies? Fine. Female embryos? Dead in the womb. The virus didn’t touch us. Our women could still bear children. But theirs... couldn’t. Not daughters.
No daughters meant no future. They’d tried creating female embryos from maternal DNA alone, but no womb—organic or synthetic—could carry them to term. Their women had the potential. Ours had the solution.
It was genocide. Beautifully veiled, scientifically justified, tragically effective.
Until it wasn’t.
Instead of submission, we bred rage. An entire generation of young alien males raised in mourning, with no mates, no sisters, no daughters. Just fury. And when they came of age, they did what young men do best.
They fought.
And they won.
Again.
Here’s the punchline: we created the army that destroyed us—again.
But irony has a twisted sense of humor. Because while we were parasites, we were also the only hope left for their species. Human women could carry their daughters. We could breed what they no longer could.
And so, five years ago, they returned. Not with weapons this time, but with a deal.
A one-way ticket off our dying world.
Not for all of us. Not even most. Just a select few. The healthy. The fertile. The beautiful. The brave.
Volunteers.
Every woman on Earth scrambled for the chance. A clean planet. Healthy children. A new future. But we didn’t know the price. We didn’t understand the rules. We weren’t being offered salvation.
We were being sentenced.
Because while they needed us… they still hated us.
Which is how I ended up here. Lined up with nine other women. Wearing nothing but protocol silks that clung like sin. Standing in front of a crowd that wanted our blood as much as they wanted our wombs. A trial, they called it. A cleansing. A reintroduction to their culture.
I call it what it was: a reckoning.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let me take you back—to the gray, choked streets of Earth. To the recruitment center where it all began. To the moment I signed away my old life for a chance at something new.
Something dangerous.
Something mine.
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“Streep”
I looked around at the other women standing near me in the enormous room to see if anyone else understood the single word uttered by the tall alien in front of us. Everyone seemed as confused as me.
“Streep!” He moved over to the woman nearest him and without warning yanked her shirt up and off, eliciting a shriek as she tried to cover her suddenly exposed breasts. He moved to her waist to do the same thing to her pants, but she backed up into the woman behind her and out of his reach. He growled and reached for her arm, twisting it around and behind her, forcing her to bend forward. His large hand swung down and smacked her clothed ass with a crack that made her screech. He let her go and looked up at the stunned group.
“Streep!” Suddenly his meaning became crystal clear and five hundred women moved as quickly as they could to strip off their tired-looking clothing. About half the women tried to cover their breasts with one hand and their pubic region with the other; the rest of us figured it didn’t matter.
I had said that every woman was vying for the chance to get off our planet. Obviously, not every woman could. The aliens had strict limits. Every six months, one of their ships would show up randomly across our planet, leading to a hysteria in the region. Thousands of women flocked to the recruitment centers knowing that only about one in ten would be selected.
Detailed and graphic descriptions of the exams they went through were recounted by the rejected women, often laced with bitterness towards the ones who were selected. The aliens didn’t share exactly what criteria they were using, so no one knew why one woman would be chosen and the other nine rejected.
The aliens didn’t share anything, in fact. They never spoke our language except for the odd word like “streep”. Only the few of our people who interacted with them daily spoke any part of their language. The details of exactly what would happen to us if we were picked was a closely guarded secret. Not even the women who walked out at the very end could remember what it was that made them reject the offer, and it was clear that their memories had been tampered with.
We stood in the cold room for another few minutes before a door opened and a handful of alien males walked in. Most were a lot taller than us; they all had a lot more hair all over their bodies, and some had the oddest colored eyes that I couldn’t decide were scary or captivating. Without a word, they moved among the women, firmly pulling down hands trying to cover breasts. One woman resisted, and when he gripped one of her arms firmly her hand swung up to slap his face. The sound echoed across the room in the sudden stillness.
Once again the speed at which the alien moved was astonishing. He dropped to one knee, dragged the stunned woman over the other knee, managed to pin both of her hands to the middle of her back, and smacked her bare ass with his hand. The sound reverberated around the room. He smacked and he smacked, and it didn’t take a xenobiologist to read the anger on his face. She screeched and she screamed and she tried to apologize. Eventually he dumped her on the floor. He stood up and said something in his language, and though none of us understood the words, we all got the meaning clearly.
Defiance will be punished -- harshly.
Now, one thing I haven’t been clear about yet is that we were all there as volunteers. No one had to stay. The doors weren’t locked; no one had taken away our clothes. Any one of us – or all of us – could have walked out the door right then. And fourteen women did just that. But four hundred and eighty six did not, including the woman who had just been beaten.
Did I mention that we were desperate to get off our planet?
Every woman who remained held her hands at her side, some balled into fists, some holding back sobs, as the males resumed their inspections. Large hands cupped breasts. Strong fingers tweaked nipples whose owners bit back squeals more or less successfully. A few women even let out soft moans of arousal. The touches moved down from the breasts, over stomachs, to between our legs. Noises of protest were quickly stopped with a cold glare. More women picked up their clothes and fled.
The alien standing in front of me looked down at me in the eye as he cupped my mound. I made no noise until he slipped a finger between my folds and very deliberately pushed it up inside. Then I let out a squeak of protest, but mindful of the brutality I’d just witnessed, made no move to prevent him. He continued to stare at me, almost daring me, until he seemed to grow bored and moved on.
A thought occurred to me. We women were considerably smaller than these large, hairy aliens. How would we bear such large children? I had to believe that they would have figured that out – if only for the fact that the long round-trip to our planet meant we weren’t exactly disposable. So I was reassured, sort of. Truth was, I was taller and broader than most of the women here. I had hated that all my life. I was never delicate or graceful – not that grace had any place in the life of simple survival that we all lived these days. About the only benefit to being graceful was if you could catch a man’s eye and come under his protection. Which I had not. My hair was also more reddish than most, something that made me stand out too much for my own good. I know that our people used to be all colors and sizes because I saw pictures in the library once of people who looked nothing like us, who had hair of all different colors, and who were much taller than us. Between the diseases, the century-long food shortage, and the complete cloud cover over the entire planet that filtered out any direct sun, we were universally pale with light brown to blonde hair, and a lot shorter than we used to be.
There were always the odd exceptions, like me.
Finally the male who had ordered us to strip said something to the other males. They all pulled back and silently filed out of the room. He picked up a sheaf of papers and began calling out names. Each woman would exit the room as her name was called. Finally I heard mine – kind of.
“Lee-na”
I looked around for Lina but no one moved. “Lee-na”
I gathered my courage and spoke up, hoping my guess was right. “Lay-eena" I pronounced carefully. He furrowed his brow.
“Lee-na” he repeated with emphasis.
“No, Lay-eena" I repeated. My name was Leina, and he was going to pronounce it right or I wouldn’t answer to it. We stared at each other for a moment.
“Lay-eena!” he snapped, and followed it with some gibberish. I didn’t know what the hell he’d said, but he’d pronounced my name right and he sounded annoyed, so I scurried out the door.
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Dear Reader,
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining me on this journey. Your time means everything. If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider leaving a comment — it’s the kind of support that keeps me going! I’ve been working on five new books since January, and I can’t wait to share them with you. More stories are coming — stay close.
With love,
Call Me Anny
