"Hey, Nish." Dylan smiled as she slithered onto the flight deck.

"Hello. Sorry I’m only just now joining you. I’ve been storing the supplies I bought."

Dylan flicked a sidelong glance at Lorkis and grinned. The mekharan kid had brightened instantly at the sight of a female of his own species, but appeared to remember what he was told about all the women on the ship being married. Lorkis kept his smile in place, but didn’t even bother to introduce himself in his usual flirty manner, quickly focusing instead on the holofield.

Nishara put all four arms around Dylan and they kissed. When they parted a few seconds later, he held her lower-left hand and they joined the rest of the crew around the circular console at the rear of the flight deck.

"I hope I haven’t missed anything," Nishara said. Her face turned a darker shade of brown and she added, "Or kept everyone waiting."

"Nope, you arrived just in time. We’re just getting started." Cora smiled, gave her a kiss, and turned back to Ralissa.

"Here’s what we know so far," Ralissa said. "Fifty years ago, the Galactic Expeditions deep-space explorer ship George Vancouver vanished while surveying the trinary star system known to Terrans as Beta Persei, or Algol, ninety-three light-years from Earth."

She touched a button on one of the control panels and the old ship appeared in the holofield. It was one of Gal-Ex’s earlier efforts, back when they focused more on function than form. Basically a three-hundred-meter pole with four centrifuges along its length housing crew quarters, labs, and so on, with a command module at one end and the main engines at the other.

"I remember skimming through history textbooks in school mentioning the Vancouver and the rest of its fleet," Kolya said. With a sheepish grin, she added, "I kind of wish I’d paid more attention back then, but I didn’t expect I’d ever need to know a lot of the stuff we were taught in school."

"I know the feeling." Dylan chuckled and turned back to the holographic display.

"The last transmission from the Vancouver stated an intent to investigate what the captain called an ‘anomaly,’ accompanied by scans taken minutes before the ship’s disappearance," Ralissa continued, turning toward Cora. "Those readings matched scans conducted by a number of other ships over the last few centuries, including yours. Specifically, the scans you performed during your disappearance."

"The space-time rift we used to get here from wherever we were before?" Cora glanced around at her crew.

"You think the Vancouver ran into the same thing?" Dylan wondered how many other ships had been zapped across the universe in the same way. In fact, if those rifts could open near planetary surfaces …

How many unsolved disappearances throughout history might’ve been caused by anomalies like those?

"Yes," Ralissa said with a quick look around at everyone. "The rifts have been popping in and out of existence for as long as my species has been exploring space, and we’ve found records on long-deserted worlds of their occurrence even farther back. Almost all of them have been short-lived, lasting only hours or minutes, sometimes mere seconds, but a few remained stable."

Grishnag nodded. "One of those stable rifts was how humans reached Hell’s Heart and relocated my people to Earth so they could conduct mining operations without harming the local population."

"Yes. We’ve never figured out what causes them. According to our records, the Vancouver appeared near a mulathi scientific outpost in the star system Terrans call Beta Orionis, or Rigel, roughly eight hundred sixty light-years from Earth." Ralissa paused to let that sink in before adding, "That was nearly seven hundred years ago."

"Whoa," Kolya muttered.

"That turned out to be their first encounter with humanity, though of course they had no idea at the time," Ralissa continued. "A ship was sent out to try to make contact, but the Vancouver turned around and reentered the rift, giving the ship barely enough time for a thorough scan plus a few vids and still images. Then the rift vanished before the mulathi ship could send a probe through."

"I’ve been searching archive records from the past thousand years," Lorkis added. "Haven’t found any indications of the ship appearing anywhere else, but I haven’t gone through all the data yet."

"As far as we know," Ralissa said, "this is the first time the Vancouver has popped back up since its initial disappearance. We’re guessing another rift opened long enough for it to pass through. All we know for sure is that the ship’s transponder beacon suddenly started broadcasting again and its navigation system reconnected with the jumpgate network."

She leaned over and swiped a finger across a touchscreen. The ship in the holofield blipped out and was replaced by a massive blue-white star.

"And that’s where it reappeared. Gamma Orionis, also known as Bellatrix. Two-hundred-fifty light-years from Earth, but still close enough that we haven’t done much with it aside from detailed surveys, some mining here and there, and setting up a few research outposts." Ralissa smiled. "There’s actually some fascinating stuff we’ve found there, but we’ll get to that in a moment."

"And this is what a shonari scout ship found when it investigated the ping on the jumpgate network." Lorkis nudged the touchscreen and the image changed to a barren wasteland of a planet with the Vancouver transiting the hemisphere facing the ship’s camera.

"Here’s where things get interesting." Ralissa braced her hands on the console and stared at the image. "The Vancouver’s orbit is decaying. Our scout ship informed Gal-Ex as soon as they identified the Vancouver, and since it’ll enter the atmosphere in less than a week, they needed to get someone there as quickly as possible. My government worked out a deal with them and selected my team. We’d just finished a job, we’re close enough to get there in a few days -- before Gal-Ex could put together their own expedition -- and having a couple of Terrans on the team didn’t hurt, either. Cora’s ship was the first one ready to depart without a destination already determined, so she and her crew were hired to transport us to Bellatrix."

"We’re happy to help out." Cora smiled. "I’ve never been to Gamma Orionis since it’s farther out than Terrans had explored before my ship vanished, and it still is."

"So we’ll be the first people from Earth to take a look around, then." Dylan glanced at the other females as he slipped his arm around Cora’s waist. "The first of any of our species, in fact."

"I think you’ve got quite an adventure ahead of you, then." Lorkis beamed and waved his upper-left hand at the planet. "Gamma Orionis isn’t old enough for its planets to have developed breathable atmospheres and indigenous life, but there it is, anyway."

Ralissa leaned closer to the projection and shook her head slowly. "That’s Gamma Orionis b. From what we’ve found during our surveys, it has a breathable atmosphere and once had an ecosystem and a few dozen outposts all over the planet. Long ago, at least. The species that once lived there isn’t known to us, and may be extinct, but it looks like they were advanced enough in planetary engineering to shape the environment to suit their needs. But something devastated the surface thousands of years ago. Some of the outposts are still intact, but others are falling apart."

"That’s scary," Kolya muttered. "And kind of depressing."

"It gets even better," Lorkis said. "We’ve seen that pattern over a large area surrounding Earth. There’s an area of roughly two hundred light-years around your world -- though in a few directions it stretches out a bit farther -- where remnants of advanced civilizations have been found, but nothing that’s still alive."

"Huh. I wonder what happened?" Dylan stared at the planet in the holofield. The land near the equator was clearly desert, and much of the rest just looked like … dirt.

Donovan shivered and focused his gaze on the Vancouver, possibly an attempt to avoid looking directly at the planet. Kolya raised an eyebrow, seemed to ponder her next move, and then reached over to place her hand over his.

He turned his hand over and intertwined his fingers between hers. Her eyes widened in surprise, then she flashed a brilliant grin.

Lorkis spoke again. "I’ve got a couple of hypotheses about this. One is a plague that spread from world to world, but humans were spared because they were so technologically primitive back then. Not worth making contact with, I suppose, and they couldn’t travel to other planets and be exposed to whatever it was. The other is a species that considered advanced civilizations a threat and wiped out the ones within reach."

"Berserkers." Grishnag sighed. "Terrific."

"Something like that. But because humans had barely invented the wheel back then, they weren’t considered a threat. Or maybe they just weren’t noticed."

"Well, whatever it was," Ralissa said, "Earth got lucky."

"Ugh." Donovan shivered again. "If it hadn’t, humanity could’ve been wiped out before we even got started. None of us would exist now."

"Which means there would’ve been no one to build and program Cora, and set her free once she became sentient." Dylan glanced around at his wives and a cold sensation oozed through his guts. "No one to create the first anthros, either. And I wouldn’t have been born, so I would never have met any of you."

"And humans wouldn’t have been there to rescue my people from our own homeworld," Grishnag said. "Given how hostile to life Hell’s Heart was, we probably would’ve gone extinct a long time ago."

"And since Cora wouldn’t have been there when the rest of us met," Nishara muttered, "and couldn’t have rescued us from the simulation we were trapped in, all of us would’ve died when the star turned into a supernova."

"I don’t even want to think about that." Dylan shivered and Grishnag put her arm around him. "Any of it."

"Yeah, good idea," Kolya said. "Get back on topic before we all end up having nightmares."

Cora flicked her glowing red optics from the image to Ralissa. "What about rescuing the Vancouver’s crew?"

"It’s possible the ship has only been gone for a few hours or days, from the crew’s perspective, though if there’s anyone onboard, they haven’t attempted to communicate -- or even send out a distress signal. It could’ve been drifting for centuries or longer, and just happened to pass through nearby rifts. If that’s what’s happened, then there won’t be anyone to rescue."

"Do we have any idea what condition the ship is in?"

"Our scout ship didn’t approach it. Since it’s not one of ours, we don’t have a right to board it and start poking around. We had to get permission from Galactic Expeditions to salvage the ship for them. So, we’ll find out what shape it’s in when we get there."

"Okay, then." Cora smiled. "Anything else we need to know?"

"This covers the basics. We can go over the details later -- plans for boarding the ship and bringing its systems back online, recovering data, having a look around the planet while we’re there, and so on."

"Sounds good. It’s almost lunchtime, so that can be the next order of business if you’re done with the briefing."

"Several of us skipped breakfast, so that’d be wonderful." Ralissa grinned.

"Okay. I’ll show you to the mess hall."

"I could definitely use some light and uplifting conversation after those ‘hypotheses’ we just heard." Donovan kept his hand in Kolya’s as they followed everyone through the door.

"Yeah, me too."

He grinned and nudged her shoulder. "I have a few ideas for dessert, too."

"Oh." She matched his grin. "You naughty boy."

***

"Hey, there’s something I’m curious about," Donovan said as he and Kolya sat at a table in the corner of the mess hall. "Kolya’s an interesting name for a woman. It sounds like a family name."

"It is. My parents named me after my mom’s best friend, Anastasia Kolya." She stuck a fork into her western omelet and held it up for a moment to let it cool a bit. "So for the first few years of my life, I was Anastasia Mason. But I thought ‘Kolya’ sounded much cooler, and begged them to change my name." She shook her head and laughed softly. "Eh, I was a kid. It made sense to me at the time. But my parents actually did it."

"It does sound cooler."

"Well, thank you." She chuckled. "How about you? How’d you end up with a last name as a first name?"

He shrugged and picked up a huge burrito from his tray. "I think my parents just picked it because they thought it sounded distinguished or something. I always thought it sounded kind of pretentious. My friends usually just call me Don or Donny."

"I’ve heard worse names. Much worse."

"Such as?"

"Well, when I was a kid, we had a neighbor with the last name of Wegfahrt."

A laugh exploded from him and he put his burrito back down. He took a breath, coughed several times, and tried to pull himself together. "You’re kidding."

"Nope." She giggled.

"Was your neighbor an alien?"

"Nah. Just had a bizarre name."

"That must’ve made your childhood entertaining."

"Yeah. I was one of those kids who, when they stumble across a word or phrase they think is funny, they won’t stop repeating it. I’m pretty sure I drove my parents insane, walking around the house and giggling like a fiend while saying, ‘Wegfahrt, Wegfahrt, Wegfahrt,’ over and over."

Donovan slumped over the table and shook with laughter. When he finally regained his composure, he took a few slow breaths, sighed, and raised an eyebrow. "Is it safe for me to take a bite? Or could this become a choking hazard?"

"Nah, don’t worry, I’ll let you eat in peace."

He chuckled and picked up his burrito.

"Wegfahrt!"

He dropped the burrito back onto the plate, laughed until he started coughing, and shook his head. Kolya grinned and held his hand.

"Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Okay, I’ll stop, I promise." She squeezed his hand and grinned.

He took another deep breath and eyed her suspiciously while raising the burrito to his mouth. She kept her hand on his and remained silent, letting him chew and swallow. Finally, he let out another sigh and grinned.

"If only my childhood was as entertaining as yours."

"Aw, you had a rough time of it?"

"Not really. Not much worse than any other average kid. I was one of the kids that everyone else in school liked to pick on, so most days I headed straight home afterward and just watched vids all the time."

"Ah. I did my fair share of that, too." Kolya took another bite of her omelet. "What sorts of things did you grow up watching?"

"Not much current stuff, actually. There was another reality-show craze going on back then, and I couldn’t stand those things. I got more than enough reality from everyday life. So I’d find stuff to watch in online archives. Some of it was pretty old."

"Hmm. Such as?"

"Well, for some reason, I took a liking to animated stuff from the 1980’s on through the 2050’s or so. Transformers was one of my favorites, though when I was a little older the original series became harder to watch. It was just awful."

"I remember those shows!" Kolya beamed. "I loved those! Which one was your favorite?"

"Transformers Prime was the first one that hooked me since the original series. The writing could’ve been better, the show could’ve been more than it ended up being, but it was pretty solid most of the time, and the characters were fantastic. I could re-watch it as an adult and not feel like I was being talked down to."

"That’s one of my favorites, too! Smokescreen was one of my first teenage crushes." Kolya fired off a lopsided grin. "Arcee was the only female character I’ve ever lusted after."

Donovan blushed. "Yeah, I admit I had a huge crush on her when puberty kicked in. My friends thought it was weird, but I didn’t care. I thought she was hot. And the animators did an amazing job with the expressiveness of her face. She seemed to have this habit of smiling and glaring at the same time, and somehow it worked. I always thought it was adorable."

"Yeah, me too. And sometimes she looked like she was thinking something naughty."

"About Jack, you think?"

"That’s what I choose to believe." Kolya cut off another bite of her omelet. "Just from some of the dialogue they had, I figured they were totally hot for each other."

"You, too?"

"Yep. I really wish the show had ‘gone there,’ because there’s no other way some of their lines could’ve been construed."

"Yes!" Donovan nodded emphatically. "I think some of the animators were in on it, too. In the final episode, when they were saying goodbye, there were some close-ups of each of them, and there was something about their eyes. The way they looked at each other …"

"Oh, I know! That and the voice acting. I was absolutely sure at that point that they were in love, but for some stupid reason, they just weren’t admitting it. Seeing the show end without them staying together was a huge heartbreak. It was the last episode. Why couldn’t they have finally said those three words to each other?"

"Well, that settles it." Donovan gave her another of those brilliant smiles and clasped her hand between both of his. "You are officially my hero."

"I am?" She grinned back and her heart leaped. He’s hot, and he’s a geek. That’s too perfect.

"You’re the most awesome person I’ve ever met. I wish I’d met you years ago."

"Aw, that’s sweet. What do you think we’d be doing if we’d met back then?"

"I’m pretty sure we’d be married now. Doing the hitchhiking-on-starships thing. Exploring the galaxy together."

"I think I’d like that." She rested her free hand on top of his. "If you’d like, maybe we could give it a try. Seeing what’s out there together, I mean. See where it takes us."

"I’m definitely interested." He winked at her. "As long as you don’t yell ‘Wegfahrt’ while we’re having sex."

She burst out laughing -- and then what he said finished sinking in.

While we’re … She stared at him. He actually wants to … oh, wow.

Her grin broadened so much it almost made her face ache.

This one’s a keeper.

***

"Oh, what’s this?" Kolya cocked her head as she and Donovan entered the observation lounge.

"Just a little friendly competition." Cora smiled and waved. "Feel free to join in."

"Are those antiques?" Donovan pointed at the laptops and game consoles on the tables, one in front of each of the crew members seated there. Cora, Dylan, Grishnag, and Zilaka sat at one table. Nishara coiled up on the floor at the adjacent table with her lower arms braced on its surface, while Syala sat across from her and Ayastal sat on the floor. Lorkis coiled up across from Ayastal in a pose similar to Nishara’s. A pair of laptops and two other consoles occupied the empty table to their right.

"Replicas," Cora said. "Dylan looked up the specs to be sure they’d be accurate to the time from which he was taken through one of those rifts before we all met."

"If you’ve seen any of the interviews we did after we found our way back to civilization," Dylan said, "you know we were trapped in an advanced simulation after we were abducted. Basically, we were forced to fight in a series of combat scenarios, and kept dying over and over." He shivered. "It was so traumatic, I expected it to put me off of playing video games, but luckily it didn’t. Gaming was pretty much my life before I was stuck into that simulation, so it was a relief when I was able to get back to it without developing PTSD."

Kolya nodded and made her way over to the vacant table, glancing at their screens as she passed them. "I was a bit of a gamer before I left Earth, but they were all modern -- three-dimensional images in a holofield or full-sensory immersion. More recently, I admit I used the sensory-immersion ones for personal … um … fantasies. Because of this." She motioned at her face as she took a seat in front of one of the laptops, and Donovan sat across from her. She continued in a slight rush, as if eager to move on from a sensitive topic. "I’m glad your experiences in the simulation didn’t ruin your hobby."

"I’m thinking it’s because we know going in that it’s not real. Which is easy because it’s only on a small screen in front of us." Grishnag tapped a button on her controller and chuckled at something on her monitor. "We were all convinced the simulation was real, at least until Cora figured out what was really happening."

"And I’m just fascinated by … well, everything around me, but especially these games." Nishara motioned with her upper-right hand at Zilaka, Ayastal, and Syala. "We grew up on worlds which had barely started to emerge from the stone age. I’ve seen a lot of vids showing people similar to us being fearful of advanced technology, but we’ve embraced it."

"We’re slowly learning to fit in," Syala added. "For me, every moment is an adventure. Even after several months on the station, I’m still seeing things I could never have imagined before."

Zilaka nodded. "As horrible as the simulation was, it led us to each other. If it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be together now."

"True." Dylan smiled, leaned over, and kissed her. They kept their lips pressed together for at least ten seconds. Cora grinned and Grishnag thrust her arms up.

"Woo!" She seemed to notice something all of a sudden and glanced up at the controller in her left hand. She gasped and yanked her finger off one of the buttons. "Oops!"

On Cora’s screen, a rocket streaked out of nowhere and drilled into the helicopter Ayastal’s character was piloting. The chopper ripped apart in a huge explosion and the debris tumbled to the ground. Grishnag’s eyes opened wide and she clamped her other hand over her mouth.

"Well." Ayastal stared at her screen for several seconds and finally sighed. "You’ve killed me."

Everyone else burst out laughing. Grish put her controller down and buried her face in her hands, but couldn’t help joining in the laughter.

"Sorry. I didn’t mean to pull the trigger."

Ayastal shrugged and laughed softly.

"Well, this looks like fun." Kolya pondered the laptop in front of her. "I was wondering what we’d do to pass the time after lunch. This seems as good a way as any."

Donovan picked up his controller. "I’ve never tried this before, so I hope I don’t make too big a fool of myself."

"We’ll go easy on you." Cora smiled and glanced at the others. "We’ll start a new mission so you won’t have to jump right into the middle."

Kolya poised her fingers over the keyboard and mouse. "What game is this, anyway?"

"Grand Theft Auto Online. Well, an updated version linked into the ship’s intranet." Dylan grinned. "One of my favorite entries in the series, and the one I’d just started playing when I passed out and woke up surrounded by my future wives and a ton of other aliens."

"The start of a beautiful relationship, eh?" Kolya grinned.

"Pretty harrowing at first, but yeah, it turned into something wonderful." Dylan glanced around at the other females and smiled.

Cora made a kissy face at him and turned back to Kolya and Donovan. "Want to create your own characters or just use the ones Peter and Mila made a while ago?" She motioned at the formerly vacant table with her left hand.

"I’ll go ahead and use one of theirs if that’s okay. Faster, that way."

"Me, too," Donovan said. "Let’s rock."

"Okay." Cora glanced at Dylan. "Wanna pick a mission, honey?"

"Let’s see." Dylan pondered his screen for a few seconds and made a selection. "We’ll split into two teams. One team will pick up a package and try to deliver it to a drug dealer. What the package is, should be self-evident." He chuckled. "The other team has to stop them, steal the package, and deliver it to their own dealer."

"Nice. We get to play less than upstanding characters. I’m having fun already." Kolya rubbed her hands together as her avatar appeared on Cora’s screen -- Mila’s character, a huge, muscular, bipedal dragon with emerald skin, tight shorts, and a tank-top. The dragon was joined by Lorkis’s snake anthro avatar. "Donny, which one’s yours?"

"Looks like I’m the chunky shonari girl." Donovan chuckled as Peter’s avatar appeared on the screen.

"Hmm, you’ve got nice boobs, then." Kolya held her hands up for a moment and moved her fingers as if groping a rack. Donovan burst out laughing.

"I’d rather play with yours, though."

"I’d prefer that, too."

He blushed and tugged on his collar, and she laughed before focusing on her screen again.

Cora, Grish, and Dylan entered the game, standing near their own vehicles.

"We’re on the same team." Lorkis smiled at Kolya. "Just as I hoped."

Donovan cleared his throat loudly and walked his character over to the hotrod-red Mustang stand-in parked beside Kolya’s character. "You wanna drive, or shall I?"

***

"Since I have no idea how to drive anything in this game, I’ll do it." She got into the car and nudged the mouse to rotate her view of the game environment. It appeared to be a sparsely-populated area outside a big city, with lots of hills and valleys, dirt, grass, and trees. "The best way to learn is to jump right in."

Donovan got into the passenger seat and tapped buttons, apparently just to find out what they did. His avatar stuck her hand out the window, holding a grenade. Donovan’s eyes nearly popped out and he yanked his finger off the button. The character pulled her hand back inside.

Kolya laughed and shook her head. "Don’t blow us up before we even get started, you fucker!"

He blushed but laughed along with her. "Sorry, just learning my way around."

A waypoint appeared in the mini-map at the lower-left corner of the screen and Kolya pushed the W key. The car launched across the landscape, off the edge of a short cliff, and slammed onto the gravel road below. She giggled as she fought to regain control of the car.

"Wooooo!"

Lorkis yelped. "A mugger just pulled me out of my car!"

Cora snickered a split-second before a notification appeared above Kolya’s mini-map: The mugger sent by Cora to steal from Lorkis has been killed.

"Hah!" Lorkis grinned.

Kolya giggled and continued accelerating toward the waypoint, ignoring the roads and driving straight over the hills and valleys. Blips on her mini-map showed the rest of her team staying close behind her. Moments later they reached a cluster of small shacks, trailers, and sheds, all of which appeared to be falling apart. Here and there she spotted a mixture of non-player characters dressed in overalls and biker jackets.

The "package," a glowing briefcase, rested on top of a beer keg in one of the shacks off to the right.

"I see it," Donovan said. "I’ll grab it."

His avatar threw the door open and bailed out -- right into the path of Lorkis’s monster truck.

"Huaaaah!" Lorkis swerved, but Donovan plowed face-first into his grill, spun like a propeller, and landed under the rear tires.

Ka-thump!

Donovan released an uproarious laugh.

"Dork." Kolya reached over to whap him on the arm.

"Uh, sorry," Lorkis muttered while blushing.

Donovan managed to shrug while he continued laughing.

"I’m on it." Kolya stopped the car, jumped out, and grabbed the briefcase. On the way back to the car, Cora’s van barreled out from the edge of Kolya’s screen and plowed straight into her. She tumbled across the ground and dropped the briefcase.

Cora hopped out of her van, blasted Donovan with a double-barreled shotgun and finished the job Lorkis’s truck had started. She grabbed the briefcase, returned to her van, and roared off.

"Oh, you’ll go easy on us, eh?" Kolya chuckled, picked herself up, ran past Donovan’s dead character, and jumped back into her car. "Now it’s on."

Dylan’s car zipped past and she caught a glimpse of his arm poking out the window and lobbing a sticky bomb. The explosive stuck to the roof of her car.

Kolya squeaked and bailed out. She bolted straight away from it before the bomb detonated. The explosion knocked her off her feet and dropped her health level down to sixty percent. She popped up her weapons menu as she scrambled for cover, and selected the rocket launcher. She found Dylan’s car, locked on, and fired. The rocket streaked into the distance and then a tiny fireball and cloud of debris erupted from behind a hill. Dylan yelped and twitched.

"Holy shit!" He collapsed in laughter and applauded. "Bravo."

"That’s what you get for killing my guy." Kolya smirked as the rest of the opposing team’s vehicles passed by.

"Hey, that was Cora, not me."

"Guilt by association." She grinned, met Donovan’s gaze, and winked. "And I’m just getting started."

"Like I said during lunch, you’re my hero." Donovan batted his eyes at her.

"By Grabthar’s Hammer, by the Suns of Worvan, you shall be avenged!"

Donovan slumped back in his seat and dissolved into a fit of laughter.

Kolya pulled up another menu and searched through the options while everyone else roared into the distance. Let’s see, mugger, mugger, mugger, mugger … ah-hah! She selected the option and targeted Cora. Payback time.

"Well, now that I’m ’spectating,’ I can see some vehicles on the road," Donovan said once he’d caught his breath. "Uh, kind of southwest of your position."

"Thanks." Kolya climbed up a hill and spotted three cars passing slowly by. She ran down the slope, crossed in front of one, and waited for it to stop. She yanked the door open, pulled the driver out, and hurled him away. He staggered into oncoming traffic just in time to catch a face-full of Pißwasser truck.

"Haha!" Kolya sped off in his car.

"Not bad," Dylan said with a chuckle. "For a beginner."

"This is fun!"

"I could use a lot more practice," Donovan said. "I think I know what we’ll be doing over the next few days." He gave Kolya a lascivious smirk. "Well, among other things."

She gazed back at him and almost drove into a ditch. She laughed and took a slow breath.

Hoo, boy.

Next Chapter: Chapter 4: First Date