Free Chosen by the Alien Above Part 3: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance Serial by Nora Lane Page B

didn’t you tell me where to find it?”
    “You indicated I should not speak.”
    Great. An AI with no understanding of sarcasm or nuance.
    I tried the closet, or what I hoped was it, and not a trash chute that jettisoned straight out of a hole in the hull. It would suck me into oblivion. Faster than Astro could do her alien medical things to me.
    That would be the upside. To the trash chute.
    Still, I hoped it was a closet.
    Those black vein-circuits ran down the door and circled in a tight oval, spiral. I touched my palm to the spiral. The door slid to the side in silence. Why were space doors always slidey ones? I guessed there was a manual somewhere, one that all the builders had to abide by.  
    Follow the rules and you'll do fine.  
    That was the assurance you got. Well, it was a lie.
    I'd followed the rules my entire life. From honors classes to saving myself for Mr. Right. And what assurance did I get?
    That I was going to die in less than thirty days. That thirty was optimistic.
    Why me?
    Why did I get to be the lucky outlier that broke all the rules? It didn't matter what I did. Fate had already decided my future. Why was I so special?
    GRREAARRRAAHHH.
    I flinched in fright. Why did Noah have to program that dog with such a hideous growl? It would've been bad enough as your garden variety baritone, Rottweiler bark. Adding that metallic scratch and sliding off-pitch note made it heart-attack terrifying.
    Despite his genius, Noah had obvious programming shortcomings.
    The open closet door revealed my wardrobe options.
    I should say option. Singular.
    The generous Mr. Sinclair left me one single outfit to wear. How thoughtful. How thoughtful because he must not’ve been using his brain. The jerk!
    It got worse. There were two things horribly wrong with the single choice before me.
    One. It was pink. Not baby, soft pink. Hot, cotton candy, lasers pink. I hated pink. Not since the age of seven was pink a major constituent in my wardrobe. I mean, pink!
    Did Noah think I was seven years old? Maybe twelve? Was I somehow frozen on the day that Cindy and I watched him leave Earth? We were definitely going to discuss this. His manual on how to relate to women was missing a page or two. Probably whole chapters.
    And two. It was tight. I didn't do tight clothes. I was curvy enough without purposefully drawing attention. Me and tight clothes guaranteed one of two responses.
    Oh yea's from the boys. Hisses from the girls. Sometimes laughter too. Point was, I didn't do tight clothes. And this one-piece was a narrow nightmare.
    I glanced at my thermals. At the orange stain down the front. I was not wearing this to dinner.
    TING, TING, TING.
    I was seriously going to reboot that thing.
    In more time than it should ever take to get dressed, I got dressed. I wanted to hate the one-piece, but I couldn't. I liked it. The color was atrocious. There was no getting around that.  
    But the way it held me. The slightly stretchy material was smooth as silk. Like a puppy’s fur that begs to be petted. It held and comforted me like a hug. It made my curves firmer and more sensuous.
    If I could get this in periwinkle or even mocha brown, I’d be all over it.
    TING. TING.
    “Yeah, I'm coming,” I said. “Knock off the Cujo crap!”
    If that beast was coming for me, I wasn't going down like a rabbit.

CHAPTER THREE

    A pair of boots were the only other thing in the closet. They were black. That was something. I'd never seen boots like them. I doubted anyone on earth had. There were no laces or velcro. They were like Martian Army boots. I didn't have any clean socks and none were on offer so I slipped my foot straight in. The plush leather-like material conformed to my foot. Filled in my arch. Supported the undersides of my toes. That gel stuff, like the bed. Restoration pod. Whatever.
    Where did they make that stuff?
    You'd make a killing on it at Bed, Bath and Beyond.
    I slipped the other boot on and it did the same. I took a few