Starborn Soulmate

My name is Sienna Agosti. When I was just ten years old, something happened that changed my whole life. My best friend, Marni, and I were taken—abducted by beings not of this world, and we never saw it coming.

It was during the summer while we were away at camp. Her parents and my grandparents would send us to their church camp called Cedar Ridge Bible Camp for the entire summer. It was set deep in the forests of Michigan, where we could go fishing, swimming, foraging, and enjoy the natural surroundings.

We had been foraging that day for our Wild Harvest Survival Badge. We were determined this year to obtain them all and collect the prize. The prize was a handmade quilt by the pastor’s wife showcasing scenes from the Old Testament. We were only five items away from our target before having to head back to camp for dinner.

That evening, the night sky had opened up, and the crickets were silent.

I was sitting on the splintered dock behind the campground, my sneakers hooked over the edge, my toes skimming the lake’s ink-dark skin. The moon’s reflection was a broken coin on the water—shivering whenever I breathed too hard. Somewhere beyond the pines, a counselor’s voice carried, thin as thread. “Curfew! Ten minutes!”

Marni lay back beside me, hair spilled like dark ribbon over the boards. “They never catch us,” she said, grinning up at the sky. “We’re shadows.”

“We’re going to get grounded,” I whispered, but I didn’t move. The dock smelled like sap and sun-bleached wood. The air was cool enough to raise goosebumps on my legs, the kind my grandmother would scold me about—always a sweater, Sienna. A lady plans for the weather.

Marni bumped my shoulder with hers. “Live a little.”

Living a little with Marni meant sneaking extra cinnamon rolls, skipping chapel, bathing in the lake after lights-out, and coming back with wet hair that betrayed us every time. Living a little felt dangerous and silly and delicious, and it was the single place in my life where the rules eased, where my grandparents’ voices softened in my head, and the edges of the world didn’t cut.

“There,” Marni said, pointing. “Shooting star. Make a wish.”

I followed her gaze. It wasn’t a star. Or if it was, it had ideas above its station. The light didn’t streak; it hovered. A bead of brightness, steady and too close, like someone holding a flashlight from inside the sky.

“Marni,” I said.

“I see it.” She was already sitting up. Her grin fell away, slow as a curtain.

The dense trees parted, a column of shimmering light descending from the sky. The air bent and rippled around us. Before I could process what was happening, a flash of orange and yellow burst across the clearing, and shapes began to materialize. First shadows. Then silhouettes. Then bodies solidifying on the forest floor, only yards from us.

They arranged themselves, the way magnets jump to a line. My breath snagged. The crickets still hadn’t started again. Even the frogs had gone quiet. I could hear the faint slap of water against the dock’s crossbeams and, impossibly, the tiny sound my fingers made as I curled them into my palms.

“Drones?” Marni whispered. “The government?”

One of the lights shivered—no, descended, like a spider on silk. The bead became an eye, and the eye found us.

I stood without knowing I’d done it. “We should go.”

Their skin was scaled, their height the size of grown men, their hands tipped with long, black claws. They may have arrived with thunder, but their silence was louder than any storm—a silent promise of the unknown. When their glowing yellow eyes locked onto us, fear clawed deeper into my chest.

Marni recovered faster than I did. She screamed for me to run. And just like something out of a bad sci-fi movie, they produced what looked like ray guns. A crackling beam shot from the barrel, but instead of light, it carried a sleek metallic dart that hissed through the air. Its tip pulsed with an eerie electric-blue glow as it streaked toward me.

The instant it pricked my skin, pain bloomed. Before I could flinch, a cold serum surged into my veins, freezing my muscles in place. My limbs turned to stone, useless, as I collapsed onto the forest floor. A whisper caught in my throat, smothered by the paralysis. Numbness spread like ice, locking me inside my own body.

A heartbeat later, I heard the sickening thud of Marni hitting the ground. My heart clenched. I had prayed she would make it back to camp. Panic surged, but I forced myself to breathe. In the stillness, I prayed silently to God—pleading for protection, for deliverance from this nightmare. My lips couldn’t form the words, but I clung to them in my mind like a lifeline.

One of the creatures lifted me with ease, slinging me over its shoulder like a ragdoll. A chorus of sharp, chittering clicks filled the air—not the chatter of squirrels, but alien voices, disturbingly familiar in rhythm. They carried us back into the shadows of the forest, toward the place where they had appeared.

Light enveloped us. My body flickered in and out of existence, as though caught between two realities. Their heavy boots vanished and reappeared with nauseating speed, like time itself couldn’t decide where to place them. My stomach twisted as we shifted—transported somewhere I couldn’t comprehend.

The world solidified when I was dropped onto a cold metal table. The chill sank through my clothes, raising goosebumps along my arms. I had watched enough old sci-fi thrillers with my grandfather to recognize the scene: a nightmare come to life. My pulse thundered in my ears, but I forced myself to stay calm. Panic wouldn’t help me now.

A ring of white lights brightened above me—too clean, too quiet. The room smelled like hot metal and something sharp, the way the air in our church gym smelled after they stripped the floors. Restraints slid from the table’s edges and kissed my wrists and ankles—no roughness, only a steady pressure that told me I wouldn’t be moving even if the numbness let me.

A hovering orb drifted into view, its surface rippling with tiny lenses that clicked like beetle legs. A cool beam traced over my forehead and down my throat. The beam didn’t burn; it felt like carbonated water fizzing over skin. The orb chimed in crisp intervals—three notes, pause; three notes, pause—like a machine trying to hum a lullaby.

They pressed a cuff around my bicep; it tightened and released with a quiet hiss. A strip of something adhesive touched the inside of my elbow, and there was the briefest sting—more pressure than pain—followed by warmth that spread like tea in cold porcelain. One of them tapped a panel and orange glyphs blossomed in the air, layered over a faint outline of a body that could have been mine. The lines turned green, then blue. Satisfied, they clicked softly to each other, heads tilting in small, birdlike motions.

A fine mist drifted from the ceiling and settled across my chest and arms, a chill prickling after it like the lake in April. The mist dried into a thin, waxy seal; when the overhead light shifted, I saw it catch like frost. Purple squares—cool and pulsing—were pressed to each temple. They thrummed in time with the three-note chime, and a weightless dizziness tugged at the back of my eyes. I concentrated on counting: one-two-three, pause; one-two-three, pause. Counting felt like keeping.

I turned my head as far as the restraint allowed. On a nearby tray, tools rested in perfect rows: rods with glass tips that glowed faintly, a spiral of white tubing, a stack of translucent patches that clung to themselves like dragonfly wings. Nothing looked dirty. Nothing looked kind.

As my vision steadied, I caught the tiniest sound to my right—not a voice, not a word, only a breath catching and scraping free. Another table. A shape on it under the lights. For an instant, I knew the tilt of that head, the stubborn line of that chin. Marni. The orb passed between us, and the shape blurred; the machine’s chime lifted a half tone as if to shush my recognition. I swallowed air that tasted like metal and prayers.

As my vision cleared, I got my first real look at them. I had been right about the scales—only they were nothing like the fish or reptiles I’d seen at the zoo. Their skin was the sickly Prussian blue of my grandmother’s sitting room, more dinosaur than man. Their eyes were worse: bulging, yellow, reptilian, their irises flickering orange in the overhead lights. And when they muttered in their clicking tongue, their shark-like teeth flashed—thin, serrated, and too many to count. My heart pounded so hard it hurt when one of them pressed a clawed hand against my stomach. I thought He could rip me apart right now, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him.

More hands emerged from the shadows—cold, relentless, tearing at my clothes with ease. I wanted to scream, to fight back, to beg them to stop, but my throat was locked by the serum. No sound escaped me. Only silence, broken by their eerie chittering.

Tears blurred my vision. A metallic orb hovered over me, lights flickering as it scanned my body with steady, mechanical beeps. The aliens clustered around a green screen, their voices low and urgent. My tears fell faster, streaming down my face unchecked. My heart hammered too loudly, too frantically, and still I could do nothing.

I thought of Marni. Where was she in this place? Was she still alive? The thought of her being alone—or worse—was unbearable.

Two more aliens arrived, bringing with them a floating, oval coffin. Buttons lined its rim. With a hiss, the lid opened. They lifted me into the coffin. The lining was slick and satin-smooth, unnervingly soft. As the lid closed, air brushed across my arms and face. At least I could breathe. The coffin lurched forward, lights flickering to life along the walls as we slid deeper into the unknown.

Then, with a metallic jolt, my chamber locked upright. My breath caught as the room opened before me—rows upon rows of identical pods, each one cradling another prisoner. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Why?

The pod’s interior smelled faintly of antiseptic and hot plastic, with a sweeter note underneath—as if someone had tried to cover the metal with a flower that didn’t exist on Earth. A thin thread of cool air flowed past my cheeks in measured breaths, matching the soft pulse of lights along the rim. Beyond the curved glass, I saw more pods standing at attention like soldiers who had forgotten how to sleep. Condensation bloomed and slid, turning the room into a rainstorm behind windows.

Some pods hummed louder than others; some were nearly silent. Every so often, a light changed from blue to green or blinked amber and settled. The soundscape built itself: the steady whisper of vents, the tiniest clicks from hidden relays, the faraway thump of something heavy docking or undocking—like distant thunder held under a blanket.

Shapes moved in neighboring coffins—slight, slow, the way sleepers turn when they’re deep in dreams. Faces swam in and out of condensation: a cheek, an ear, the outline of a nose pressing fog to glass. I scanned for Marni, counting rows, measuring distance with a child’s stubborn math: one-two-three down, four-five across. I found a pod that felt like hers because hope insists. Numbers glowed at the base of each chamber in symbols and digits that made my eyes ache. On one, a string that meant nothing to me—on another, 369852. My heart jolted. Before I could be sure, moisture swept the glass, and the numbers blurred back into meaningless light.

The purple squares at my temples pulsed more slowly now, and the buds in my ears sighed a gentler tone, like a seashell pressed against skin. Somewhere far to my left, a door opened with a breathy hiss and closed again; silhouettes crossed the aisles, long-limbed and tireless. Their claws tapped the floor in a cadence that tried to become a lullaby and failed.

A hairline crack of frost crawled across my view and etched delicate white branches before melting away. I watched it spread and fade and spread again, the way I used to watch winter creep over the inside of the kitchen window on the coldest mornings. I pictured my grandparents at the table, hands around coffee mugs, my grandmother’s Bible open to a page she’d read a hundred times and would read a hundred more. Lord, hedge her in, she would pray. Right and left, before and behind.

My chest hurt with wanting. I whispered words in my mind because my lips would not shape them: Please keep us. Please keep Marni. The pod answered in lights and measured breaths. The room answered in quiet.

The aliens moved to a control panel, claws flicking across its surface. A door slid open with a hiss, and they vanished.

Darkness swallowed everything. No light. No sound. Only the certainty burning in my chest: I would never see my grandparents again.