Exchange

By Rachel Rossano

He offers her escape...
 
Isolated on a distant planet, she is incarcerated for a crime she doesn’t recall. She has no name, no idea where she came from, or why she is injected with drugs daily to hold these vital facts from her grasp. Despite small rebellions, she wastes away, worn and losing hope of ever being whole again.
Then he arrives. Claiming to hold the answers burned daily from her brain, he offers her a way out. 
 
…but at what cost?

A Science Fiction Short Story

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rachel Rossano
• Release date: Apr 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386556664

Rachel Rossano

Rachel Rossano is a happily married mother of three children. She spends her days teaching, mothering, and keeping the chaos at bay. After the little ones are in bed, she immerses herself in the fantasy worlds of her books. Tales of romance, adventure, and virtue set in a medieval fantasy world are her preference, but she also writes speculative fantasy and a bit of science fiction.

Book preview

He offers her escape...

Isolated on a distant planet, she is incarcerated for a crime she doesn’t recall. She has no name, no idea where she came from, or why she is injected with drugs daily to hold these vital facts from her grasp. Despite small rebellions, she wastes away, worn and losing hope of ever being whole again.

Then he arrives. Claiming to hold the answers burned daily from her brain, he offers her a way out.

...but at what cost?

Note from Author

Back in 2011, my father was scheduled for a serious major surgery. The projected outcome, though hopeful, was definitely not guaranteed. I had just been told about an opportunity to write a science fiction short story, a genre, I enjoyed reading and watching for years. In an effort to help me cope with the stresses of waiting for news of my father’s surgery, I started writing this short story.

Praise the Lord, my father’s surgery went well.

When I pursued publishing with a small press, releasing my little adventure into a new genre out into the world, the response was an outcry for more. The readers, including my mother and my husband, wanted me to develop the world I had created on a whim.

Since then, I have written a novel, the first in what I plan to be a series of four. Set as a prequel to this story, it features these characters, expanding and exploring their world. Since I cannot release the novel yet because it is not completely ready, I am rereleasing this story, the one that inspired it all, as a teaser. I hope you enjoy this inspiration for the series to come.

Enjoy,

Rachel Rossano

Chapter One

Darkness enveloped me completely. I breathed stuffy blackness in labored pants, struggling to tolerate the closeness. Cottony, the warmth threatened to suffocate me in a billowing blanket of malevolence.

I hated when I woke early.

The sensors glued to my forehead and scalp screamed to be scratched, but the arm bands made that impossible. I mentally clawed for something to fixate on, anything other than the inching six walls trapping me.

Why they called the box a dream suite I don’t know. I never dreamed, and it only barely contained me. Six by three by two feet, built to contain one average sized human, it was one of thirty stacked drawers in one wall of the ward. I suppose I should have been thankful I was a below-average-sized humanoid. Sometimes I managed to ignore the walls because I wasn’t constantly in contact with them, only the padded pseudo-bed beneath my back. However, no matter how I strained, I couldn’t truly believe they didn’t exist.

With a soft hiss, jets of cold air bombarded my naked feet signaling the waking time. The