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What if they’re not coht away before it could plant itself too deeply in , I lay in my bunk, hands folded on my stomach Sa the shapes I hada sernails Tugging gently, I pulled the strip off, carefully working it around, around, until it forirl, after the robbers decided to take her away, she ers and cut the rope off her hands" Rachel was leading the story today, filling in the hour before ere called to dinner Tonight, she wove the tale of yet another nairl, in yet another perilous situation I closed otten any better or any ed, girl struggles, girl escapes The ultimate fantasy at Thurmond

Physical exhaustion kept me still As much as I had trained at the Ranch, these hours of endless ith no break, on liy we’d need toh I kneould happen if I ured out what I was before I could complete what I’d come here to do

I have to walk out of here

"Ruby?" Ellie called from her bunk at the center of the roo back to swing s off the craht about hoas going to finish this story "The girl" When I was younger, I would have passed it on to Sa only a feords, but I could use this I wasn’t sure they would understand, but I hoped so when the tiirl cut herself loose from the rope and knocked the bandit off the horse in front of her She took the reins and turned the horse around the road, heading back in the direction they had come from--back toward the castle"

There was a murmur at that Vanessa had spent the better part of fifteenoutside of its walls It had provided the distraction the bandits needed to take the girl in the first place

"She used the darkness," I explained "She left her horse in the nearby forest and crept toward a passage she kneas hidden in the far stone wall The fighting had stopped once the knights in black had taken the castle They locked the white knights out, and they were unable to help the fairl coh the back door She looked like a helpless servant girl, bringing a basket of food into the kitchen For days, she stayed in the castle, watching Waiting for the right moment And then it cah the shadows of night, unlocking the gate for the white knights to co back in"

"Why would she come back? Why didn’t she just escape--hide?" Salad that, if nothing else, she understood

"Because," I said finally, "in the end, she couldn’t leave her fairls shifted silently in their bunks, looking at each other as if wondering the sa No one asked the question--I don’t kno many of them actually dared to hope But three short minutes later, the electronic lock on the cabin’s door popped open The door swung in and a PSF stepped inside

"Line up," she barked

We hastily asseht ahead as she counted us off She irls at the front of the line to start

I couldn’t help lanced back behind me No matter what happened, it would be the last tih the door of the Mess Hall that evening, I already had to revisit a key coainst the wall opposite of us, to the left of the here we lined up to receive our food, was a large white screen O’Ryan stood in front of it, his arital projector washing over him Sam threw a nervous look my way as our PSF escort pushed her toward our table

The last time we’d seen them use this screen had been our first week here The cah the list of cahts out Do not speak to a Psi Special Forces officer unless spoken to first On and on and on

Rather than have us line up to get food, the PSFs signaled for us to sit down and re; I couldn’t get a read on any of the camp controllers or PSFs

"There have been some recent developh to carry through the building, "regarding your situation Pay attention You will only be shown this once"

Theto tell thehts were diiving us a glimpse of a desktop before the videoexpanded and the PSF hit play

The video wasn’t about thefor mine I blinked in horrified disbelief