(More tribute to SaraC's heroine Edie) Edie gazed out the view-port, sensing the brilliant twinkles of the star field in ways no human could - a gift of her father's hunter-DNA. She was still groggy from the drug-sleep. The privateers who had kidnapped Edie had drugged her - no doubt to keep her 'Safe' while the ship had sat in space-dock. Why didn't they just toss her into a brig-cell? Perhaps having her wake up in the pleasant med-lab was their way of pretending that she wasn't the prisoner she obviously was. Yet they had given her a choice ... cooperate or be sold on the black market. They certainly couldn't advertise her unique mastery of bio-formulation for such a sale, not without alerting the CCU corporation's underworld moles. So they would sell her as the unlikely half-breed that she was. She was indeed rare, perhaps one of a kind; the highest bidder would have no interest in her computational skills. It had been no choice at all. Her life had always been like this, always offered a choice without choices. Her contract work at CCU was a forced march on a very long leash. While on her project-planet, she could wander where she pleased - with a bodyguard. No proximity mine would blow her head off should she stray, yet as soon as the terra-forming reached a point where a master-artist was no longer required, as soon as more mundane techs could take over her work, then Edie would be bundled off to the next planet. Even her adolescence at the school had been a forced march with a much shorter leash. Wake. Study. Test. The implants. But the humans at the school had offered her far more praise than punishment, for she exceeded their expectations over and over again. And her life at the school had certainly been more fun and challenging then her early life in the 'Safety Camp' of Talas Prime. Humans had come to her home-world long before she had been born, discovering a planet they could colonize. Yet finding the Talas Prime air 'uncomfortable', they had terre-formed the atmosphere, poisoning and stunting the native vegetation. Following the vegetation, the native animals - including the Talasi people - had diminished. Then humans had created the 'Safety Camps', claiming they would keep the remaining Talasi natives alive and 'safe'. Safety Camps? Concentration camps really, keeping the clever native hunters from interfering with the terre-forming. It wasn't the Talasi people which the camps kept safe! Since the child Edie wasn't human, she had been discarded into the safety of such a camp. Yet the child Edie also wasn't a real Talasi. She was shunned by all ... until a bored human guard had humored the equally bored rag-doll by letting her try on his holoviz-game. Hung over the neck and shoulders of a human, the machine interacted with subtle bio-implants in the cerebral cortex, creating the perception of virtual sword-play and virtual aliens to blast in the world around the player. To the guard's astonishment, the dusty 10-year old had been able to dimly sense and interact with the game - without implants. Later, other humans had offered her a choice. If the child Edie agreed to meet with the School-Lady, and if the School-Lady was happy with Edie's answers, then Edie could have her own holoviz-game to play whenever she liked. It had been a dirty trick to play upon a bored outcast-child with no future. Edie sighed, enjoying the light show of space, and the silence of the room. Today would certainly not be the worst day of her life. === Disclaimer: this scene isn't directly from SaraC's sample book chapters & my over-active imagination (held hostage by heroine Edie :-) is responsible for any details likely to be proven wrong when the book releases. === Credits; [P8 and GIMP][Elspeth for A4][Dryades hair][MFD for V4 with texture by PCGaijin/sharecg][SpaceBlocks by The AntFarm][Steam Mech leg (outside the window) by imagenation3d]