John was a cash-only antiques dealer in Chicago. Everything he sold once belonged to the  rich, famous, and scandalous. His side business salvaged architectural remnants and sold them to contractors. Another all-cash scam. His crews stole stained glass windows and glazed tiles at night and unloaded them at daybreak.

In a bar tricked up like a church, I convinced him I was better than his current bookkeeper. “Look,” I said when he was blind drunk. “Look at my face. Trustworthy as faces get.”

My timing must have been right. In three years I skimmed three million. With John’s drinking problem, I could have grabbed six, but greediness killed the cat.

Then I drove cross-country and bought a Victorian mansion in Yonkers.

Months later, I’m still sniffing around for an occupation. Three mil ain't what it used to be. Besides, I'm bored. But everybody’s already set. No need to talk. And my trustworthy looks? Not even women respond.

So I hire Natalie off the internet, and leave a fat envelope on the armoire. Same girl twice a week, so after a few months, I don’t mind asking her, “What gives?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean why am I still paying for it and why can’t I find a nice situation?”

“Guess the market for embezzlers has just dried up,” Natalie says.

“Listen up, Sherlock, who says I’m an embezzler?”

“Who says I’m a whore?”

“Very funny.” Before I get angry, she says there’s a party down the street--my kind of party--and tells me to wear clean jeans and a good shirt if I have one.

Meanwhile, she washes her face, twists her hair on top of her head, and pulls flat shoes from her purse. Her skirt’s three inches longer than usual and she buttons up a little checked jacket.

Walking to the party, I ask Natalie if this is the same guy who gives piano lessons. 'Cause I've seen his flyer at the liquor store. 

 A little girl opens the door. “Hi Natalie.” My whore teaches the girl ballet. Also, the piano teacher deals drugs.

Natalie introduces me to people in real estate, car dealership owners, tax lawyers, supervisors, and consultants. 

After we shake hands and move on, she tells me how they really make their living, what their con is.

A man wearing a tuxedo extends a platter of stuffed mushrooms. Natalie eats three. I’m not hungry. She asks the bartender for bourbon, straight. 

“What’ll you have?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Loosen up,” Natalie says. "The Embezzlers Club is outside, on the deck.”

“Very funny.”

“They don’t call it The Embezzlers Club, but everybody knows. Do you want to land a ‘nice situation’ or not?”

“You’re kidding. Like, if I wander outside, I can meet people who'll hook me up with a sweet deal?"

Her shoulders lift, her head nods.

"And I suppose, I never get caught.”

“Not for a long, long time. Of course, someday you will. We all will, soon or later.”

Boe was waiting outside, just as Jayme had asked her to. She was leaning up against the side of the warehouse, her long, dark hair sticking to the rough brick building. A lighter was being twirled in her hand - a pink plastic one. 

"You smoke?" Jayme asked. He jumped from the large doorway of the building and to the road of the alley. 

"No," Boe smiled, pocketing the lighter. "I just like to burn shit." 

Jayme snorted. 

They turned a left and made their way back to the battered main road, not talking. He could feel her holding her breathe, wanting to ask about the exchange inside the building, but not daring to. Even bounty hunters are too afraid to bite the hand that feeds them, he thought. Good. Let her be.  

He had only hired her a week prior, and Jayme was already captivated by Boe. In the best and worst ways.

"We should get back," Boe said, looking up at the sky. "It's close to dark."

Jayme nodded, looking up as well. The sun was setting, and the little light that was cast over the city was eclipsed by the Queen's ship - a huge thing, made of metals Jayme couldn't pronounce, with price tags that would take years to pay off.

Of course the ship was so spectacular to him. He was just a thug on a tiny, unimportant planet. He wasn't even really sure why the Queen was here, when she could be in the comfort of her own planet, far, far away from this one.

Jayme preferred to think about the ship instead of the woman who owned it. It made things a lot simpler to him.

The meeting that just happened didn't help, though, but he decided that he would just repress that, too.

He curled his hand into a fist.

"Hey," Boe said, noticing his slowed pace. Her lighter was out again. Jayme noticed it had marks written on it in black - something in a different language. "You good?"

Jayme nodded.

Boe studied him for a second, and then - either out of satisfaction or disinterest, Jayme couldn't tell - began to continue on. She walked in front of him, down the wet sidewalks, in front of the shop windows and their owners and the materials within them.

Jayme could see the bulge of her guns in the pockets of her jeans. Her hair nearly reached them, dark and thick, and the dark tattoos that completely covered her body drew attention away from the barely concealed weapons that were scattered in her jacket and shirt and boots.

Jayme knew he could find those weapons on her, if he wanted to.

He knew she would let him find them.

He decided not too. Not only was he utterly uninterested, but the ship was also there in the sky, looming over his planet - just as the person within it did every other planet in this galaxy.

He cursed her, and continued to follow Boe - would continue to, if it meant escape from the Queen.

"Would you hurry up?" Boe turned to yell, and nearly knocked into a man with green skin and large eyes.

"Sorry," he muttered.

   Greetings from Murk. I am Lysander. Some would call my people merfolk. Murk is a secluded kingdom, immersed in the iciest waters of this realm. My amber eyes glow in the darkness. I am not liked here, the illegitimate progeny of our deceased emperor and his slave. Still, I reign.

I remember a rough impact. I remember my arms being lifted and my back scraping against rough ground. I remember the wind of passing people, of a busy street. And that's all I remember.

Well, I remember myself. I remember my childhood, my birthdays. I remember algebra and essays and arguing over Twitter, how to drive and how to swim, and how not to ride a bike.

But I don't remember my name.

I don't remember friend's names. My mom's name. Nothing. Faces and faces and faces but no syllables to build them. I was glad to know who I was, but as I realized I didn't know who I am, a slow, foggy panic set in. Just enough adrenaline that my eyes... Opened.

If people 'slip' into comas, I did not. I must have jumped a fence and cliff dived into the very concept of unconsciousness.

And as my eyes opened and my eyelashes stuck for a moment, and I took a breath for what felt like the first time... I came free falling out of the aforementioned coma without a parachute to even slow my fall.

And that feeling you get when you dream about falling- that's a nice thought, that I might be dreaming- and your limbs jerk and you're suddenly more awake than you've ever been... I became that feeling. Sweat coated my back and I was suddenly very aware of it. There were sheets over my body and a hard floor under my back.

And one thing-- only one thing-- was I sure of.

My teeth felt sharper than they did before.

It should never have happened.  It shouldn't have been possible.  But that didn't change the facts.  Doctor Raymond Niesen-Ward had been bored.  Horrendously bored.  They'd made leaps and bounds in recent years, realised that there was no way that humans had just evolved.  They had to have been created.  And they'd found evidence of who had created them.  The only problem?  They didn't know who'd created the aliens.

In Raymond's defense, he was really bored, and they had a time-travel machine they'd wanted to test.

He'd never thought he would end up creating the creators.