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"Well, if you’re sure …"

He took a deep breath and appeared to force his shoulders to relax "I’reat idea, but I don’t seem to havefor quite a while and wondered what our watcher thought A long chat at the front door after a date shouldn’t be too strange, I hoped I iive Owen a kiss on the cheek, like I was saying good night We both paused for a htly "I don’t think you should come inside," I said, quite reluctantly because I didn’t want to be alone or let hiht I wasn’t even sure where he lived in this world "Like I said earlier, I was being proposed to by soo, and we don’t want the"

"I’uy stays here with you or follows me," he murmured as he nuzzled my neck and made me wish I hadn’t just announced that he shouldn’t coo and see what happens Then once you’re inside, try veiling yourself and look out the "

After one last kiss, he turned to leave and I headed up the front steps I paused at the front door to turn back and didn’t have to fake a besotted grin as I watched hiray guy stayed on the sidewalk in front ofwatched when I was the one who’d resisted the ic, but that didn’t make me any more coht, I unlocked the front door and went up the indoor stairs to ed into sweats before atte out theThe gray guy was still out there, but he didn’t see my place with an intense focus

Sleep seeht soto bed and therefore not likely to do anything suspicious for the rest of the night I settled onto ainst the pillows The fact that I could do so and feel it made me sure that this apart an entire replica of pseudo New York seemed like overkill, so I was sure some of it had to be illusion But howhad to be real, but how uards? Were the extras in this h people here to fill out every building? Would they bother to finish out the insides of buildings even if no real person lived there?

There was one way to find out I tiptoed toa neighbor co any noise above , I paused and listened for any signs of life co from that aparth thatlike I was violating all kinds of social mores, I put my hand on the doorknob, then I squeezed my eyes closed in dread as I turned the knob It did turn, and the door eased open, so either nobody lived there or hbor didn’t lock his door and I was about to be really embarrassed

When nobody shouted at me, I opened my eyes and was surprised by what I saw It was an empty shell of a room, not as finished as an "unfinished" aparth features like interior walls It was just a space that happened to be enclosed It did still have s, and I iined there were illusions on those s to make it look like a normal apartment from outside, but just in case, I dropped to the floor and crawled so my watcher wouldn’t be able to see ht coh the s, but I didn’t think there wasThe exterior walls looked like the back side of a movie set, and I had to be careful as I crawled because the floor joists were bare, the plaster of h crawling was slower than walking, I soon felt like I’d gone beyond where the wall of lanced at the s and saw that they were a slightly different size and in a slightly different position The open space ht go on until there was some reason it had to stop, like the end of the block or an inhabited apart, but the risk of getting stuck soet back to reat As I crawled back toward the door, I wondered how much of this prison was just an empty shell, a Hollywood-style backlot to create street scenes But even iflike this see a lot of resources, either physical orsecret by bringing us all here was equally huge