Lee Cheonha poked her finger through the open wire door of the hamster cage. She gently pushed in a small sunflower seed, slowly offering the gift to the small, bewiskered critter inside. Pappa had been through all this before. He knew what it meant to smell the scent of his new owner, and he hauled his pleasantly plump self through the pine bedding to go get his treat. He didn't so much as shudder when one of Cheonha's fingers rubbed his soft little ears.

"Good boy, Pappa," Cheonha giggled. "You're a very good hamster. I'll get you carrots when I go to the store tonight."

"You feed that thing too much, Cheonha. You're going to spoil it. Besides, I thought we were meeting to do our english homework."

Cheonha turned to the friend sitting at her kitchen table. Choi Eunha was correct. After all, english practice was the reason why Cheonha's poor, tiny little table found itself burdened in all manner of books, pencils, and papers. Cheonha blushed and accepted the seat opposite Eunha.

"I don't know how anyone would spoil a hamster." Cheonha pulled out the latest worksheet from her english class notebook. "They're supposed to be fat. Besides, all Pappa does is run in his wheel, when he is not asleep."

"I guess so." Eunha pointed to the worksheet. "Okay, so what you are supposed to do is read the english question, and then answer in english. Do you know what the first question is?"

Cheonha stared at the page. English was so confusing. It didn't help that english writing wasn't clustered by syllables for easy pronunciation. Daunting as it was, Cheonha wasn't going to give up. Biting her lip and forcefully placing each arm at the sides of the paper, she focused on the words before her.

"Co-oo-ld..." she struggled, murmuring almost inaudibly. "...You...till mee...TEH. Teh, teh...tell me, where th...the ban-ku. Where...the bank is?"

Cheonha glanced at the top of the paper, where a little fake map was drawn in thick black lines. The imaginary bank in the imaginary part of England was located right across from the imaginary post office.

"Goennoepyoneh oohcheguk..." Cheonha whispered. "Ah...I have to look it up..."

She reached for her little translation computer, a small handheld device that opened up like a small video game console. Instead of playing games, it allowed her to figure out english words. It was a handy little device, and she reminded herself to take it with her the next time she got zapped on Aldaris' ship, if she had the chance.

The translator wasn't in her immediate reach, and Cheonha had to look up to find it. She only briefly glanced up, but it was long enough to trigger something. Cheonha looked up again. No, she hadn't imagined it. Eunha was staring at her.

Cheonha's entire face narrowed. "Eunha..."

"Sorry, sorry!" Eunha shook herself out of her trance. "I wasn't staring. I was just thinking about things."

Cheonha still frowned. "Thinking about what?"

"Just...what they said at the Bang Bang store."

Was Eunha really still going on about that? It wasn't her fault that the first time she had come to Seoul, it was in North Korean rags, with a North Korean physique, and accompanied only by a soggy, shoe-less American girl. They had to get clothes from somewhere. Cheonha knew she shouldn't have agreed to return with Eunha to the Bang Bang store, even months after first embarrassing visit. It was a mistake to expose Eunha to gossipy workers. The last thing Cheonha needed was her closest friend nagging her about topics she'd rather forget.

"I don't know what they said," she replied, picking up her translator to find the english equivalent of oohcheguk and hoping her friend got the hint. "And I don't care."

Silence reigned for a few moments, and Cheonha made the mistake of looking up. Eunha still stared.

"Leave it alone. I don't want to talk about it."

"That doesn't stop me from thinking about it," Eunha said. "Cheonha, I'm your best friend. You can't keep these secrets inside you forever, and I'm the safest one to talk to about it. I won't tell anyone. You can trust me."

"Eunha..." Cheonha copied the words "post office" onto the blank space underneath the appropriate english question. "I didn't even tell the police about the American. I don't see why I have to tell you."

"You didn't tell the police?" Eunha exclaimed. "What? Was she a criminal? Were you her hostage?"

Cheonha looked up from her homework. Great, she'd said the wrong thing. Now how was she going to make Eunha shut her face? She rolled her eyes and sat up, still firmly gripping her translator.

"Look, she wasn't a criminal." Cheohna paused for a second. "Okay, I don't think she was. She was just some person who talked too loud. Her and her loud-talking friends. They helped me get to Seoul, and that's all. There is no mystery story. It's not interesting at all, so stop asking me questions."

"Then why didn't you tell the police? Shouldn't they know about it?"

Cheonha opened her mouth again, then promptly shut it, growing redder by the moment. After a moment, she answered.

"Okay fine," she snapped. "I was rescued from North Korean by an alien from a video game and his American friends. Sometimes I get teleported to his spaceship and we draw pictures together. That is the truth. Happy, now?"

"Stop talking nonsense!" Eunha said, scoffing to the side as though she expected Pappa to agree with her. "I'm only trying to help."

"Then please, just listen." Cheonha took a deep breath. "The reason why I don't talk about the Americans is the same reason I don't talk about the North. Talking about it brings up bad memories, things that are too painful to remember. The Americans helped me get out of the North, and they are going to help other people too. I don't want to give away any of their methods for saving people, so I am not going to tell anyone. Not even you."

"But...you know I'm not a blabbermouth."

"Yes, I know." Cheonha tried her very hardest to focus back on her homework. "But I still don't want to talk about it. I just want to think about things getting better."

Eunha tapped her chin, and very thoughtfully stared off at Pappa rather than at Cheonha herself. Then she slowly nodded.

"I understand now. I won't bother you any more about it, okay? If you don't want to talk about it, then I will respect that."

"Thank you."

The two got back to their english homework, and soon the only sounds in the room were their pencils and Pappa digging in his bedding. But instead of focusing on her task, Cheonha found some of her own words running around her head.

...They could help other people too... Cheonha started underlining words on her worksheet to make sure Eunha didn't realize anything was up. Wait, yes, why didn't I think of it before? I must speak to Aldaris as soon as possible.

Distracted as she was, it took Cheonha a second to realize that Eunha was looking at her. She scowled, but Eunha simply reached down with her pencil and tapped Cheonha's paper.

"That answer is wrong," she said. "Those words are in the wrong positions."

Cheonha looked down at her paper again. In response to "Could you tell me where the bank is?" she'd written, "Post office across from."

"English is hard." Cheonha blushed.

Man, why does everyone I read about have something to do with communism? I swear I'm not looking for former communists on purpose. I'm reading this C.S. Lewis biography, and it turns out that his wife Joy was once a commie. She abandoned them when she noted their hypocrisy at claiming to help others, but then on the inside calling the desire to help a "bourgeois" value. I swear, sometimes when I read histories and biographies, I feel like there's some great idea or wave of understanding that's just out of reach. I'm going to obtain that, someday.

In any case, I was tired, but happy. Well, sort of happy. As happy as one can be when one is surrounded by still packed boxes, empty walls, and nagging thoughts of all the things I should be doing besides reading biographies and puttering on the computer. But my bed's already been lugged up the steps, the sheets are in the wash, and my internet's already been changed over. Hence the puttering.

That's right, after two months, my house is repaired, and I'm moved back in! Insurance covered everything that happened. The damage from the fire wasn't too bad. The roof had to be entirely replaced, and there was a lot of water damage that warranted torn out insulation and new carpets, but at the end of the day the damage was pretty minimal. Mom claims she can still smell smoke, but I don't smell a thing. The new lavender candles I bought should take care of that, though.

My mom's church helped me move all my stuff in, and they bought a whole bunch of sandwiches and drinks for everyone who helped. I got the leftovers, so dinner's not a problem. Of course it was this contented part of the evening that Aldaris' wonky arbiter decides it wants to interrupt and whisk me away to his ship. Yay. As the blue stuff surrounded me, I quickly jumped up and away from my laptop.

Thankfully, I appeared not underwater, or in some distant country, or in the middle of an active volcano. It was just in one of the halls of Aldaris' spaceship. Only a few little lights lit the length of the hallway, like a small trail of glowsticks leading down the passage. That was all I had to see by - other than that, it was like walking through a mineshaft.

Hey Aldaris, your teleporter messed up again. I thought out at him. I'm...uh, I don't know where I am. ...Charlie?

No response. While I guess Aldaris might could hide his mind from me (what do I know about psychics?) he normally didn't, and it's kind of easy to sense when he's around. You get this...I don't know, feeling that's something like power, something like disdain, fuzzing at that back of your mind. Sort of like an aura, perhaps, or a feeling you get when you're around someone you're not sure about. At the moment, all I could feel was the strange cold of the ship. I shivered.

Maybe he's turned down the heat to save power. Or maybe he left, and he's at that guy Kensley's property. Sheesh, I can't believe Kensley's been gone from his house so long. Huh, or Aldaris could have found somewhere else to go sun himself.

The idea of being on the ship without Aldaris being there didn't feel good. Since it takes a while for the teleporter to recharge, if Aldaris wasn't on the ship, he'd have to wait until the teleporter recharged before he could send me back. I've been drinking a lot of Coke, and I'm pretty sure Aldaris doesn't have a bathroom on this thing. That's a long time to hold it. Then again, I did make it through an entire Die Hard movie on a full bladder once. Not that I want a repeat of that episode.

Not sure what to do, I just started walking. The ship was dark and silent, whether I passed another hall or a room. I started to wonder how big the spaceship was. How many people were supposed to be on it? Could Aldaris really pilot it by himself? Then again, as far as I know he's only been orbiting Earth since he got here.

"Aldaris?" I called out loud. I think it gets on his nerves when people talk audibly, so maybe he'd notice sooner. "Charlie! You alright, bro?"

I chuckled. Maybe I shouldn't call a seven hundred and forty year old Protoss "bro." But my calling sort of worked. At least, it got someone's attention.

"Who's that? Is that Bethany?" a voice called.

"Hey, Statkus! I'm over here!"

The hallway I was in branched out to the right, and from that part of the hall emerged John Statkus, cranky Californian extraordinaire. He looked, well, sort of impatient, and he was holding his cell phone in his hand. Well, he stuck it pretty quick in his pocket after a second, before coming over to me.

"Bethany? How long have you been here?"

"Maybe a minute or so. You?"

"Fifteen minutes," Statkus said. "I've been wandering around, but I can't find Aldaris at all."

"I hope he's alright. Or that he's not hanging out at Kensley's."

"Kensley? That's the guy that owns that house we went to a while back isn't it?"

"Yeah. He goes there sometimes when he wants some sunlight."

Statkus pointed to the hallway ahead of me as he talked. "I haven't been this way yet, so let's look here."

"Lead on, brave leader." I saluted.

"Anyway," Statkus said as I walked up beside him. We went down the hallway together. "Who is this Kensley? Do you know anything about him?"

"Aldaris said he didn't do anything to him, but that his daughter was in some kind of accident." I shook my head. "Must be a pretty bad one if he left the house for so long."

"You're sure Aldaris didn't do something bad to him?"

"Uh, he said he didn't."

"And you believed him?"

I shrugged. "Name one point in Starcraft when Aldaris ever lied. It'd be harder for him to stay undercover if someone found a body or a neighbor tried to talk to Kensley and found out he wasn't there. I think one time he mentioned a neighbor coming along to check on the house sometimes."

"Eh, I guess..." Statkus shook his head. "Well, let's find the guy and make sure his teleporter isn't still running."

So me and Statkus kept on wandering. Actually it took us only a minute to find a familiar-ish place. Statkus knew this part of the ship from helping Aldaris, so he lead us to the room the Protoss had stashed us in before - the one with Aldaris' drawing stuff and a large window that overlooked Earth. I call it in my head the observatory, because what else is a room like that good for?

The door was slightly ajar, so we could see the big ol' window and Earth waving hello at us. The light was on too. I took a quick peek around. I didn't see anything at first, but luckily something caught my periphery. Aldaris was there, sitting at the table. Because the chair he sat in was positioned so far to the left of the door, I almost didn't see him.

"Oh!" I gasped, almost jumping out of my skin. Calming down, I whispered to Statkus, "Hey, dude, he's in there, and totally fast asleep. I don't know why, but that just scared me half to death."

"Well, what are you waiting for? Go wake him up."

"What? Me?"

"Yes, you. Stop being such a wimp."

"Fine, whatever."

I opened the door, and tip-toed inside. Not sure what I was so quiet for, as I was supposed to be waking the guy up. In any case, I circled silently around the table, resisting the temptation to try and see if there was anything on it.

Y'know, when Aldaris is asleep, he's...well, not exactly adorable, but definitely peaceful, with all the dignity of a king dozing in a throne. His hands were folded in his lap, and his head was bowed over his chest, which, strangely enough, moved as though he were breathing with ordinary lungs. Maybe Protoss do have normal lungs, and we're just tricked into thinking they don't because they don't have noses.

But that was a musing for another time, preferably one where I wasn't near a telepathic creature. Then again, Aldaris didn't look like he was faking being asleep. It probably explained why I couldn't sense his mind. Sleeping people have brain activity, so that activity must be too quiet to detect. To non-psychics, anyway.

"Would you hurry up?" Statkus half hissed, half whispered at me. "I really need to get back home."

"Feel free to come in here and wake him up yourself, why don't you?"

I turned back to Aldaris and shuddered. There was no getting around it, so I tried to think of all the best ways to wake him up. Eventually I just settle on poking him in the arm. That way I'd be at his side and at a better angle to run for my life. I poked the dark crimson of his embroidered sleeve, then poked a little harder when nothing seemed to happen. After a moment, he suddenly swatted away my hand, and glared at me through eyes hazy through exhaustion and irritation. I immediately regretted all my life's decisions.

"Um, hey, your teleporter's buggin' out again."

And there was that mental presence I knew and loved. It's weird. As Aldaris snapped out of his chair and paced out of the room (good thing I wasn't in front or bro would've run me over), his aura just went nuts for a second. It's like he was cursing, except not using words. The sentiment of cursing, I guess.

Statkus was smart enough to hurry into the observatory before Aldaris shoved him in - Aldaris totally had his arm ready to grab John - and the Protoss left with a slam of the door. Me and John just stared at each other in the horrifying moment that followed.

"I hope..." my weak words trespassed on the cold silence, almost like it was mad at me for trying to break it. "I hope Aldaris was asleep for a while before we woke him up. I do not wanna deal with the guy short on sleep."

Statkus chuckled, not seeming all that put out by circumstances. "What's this 'we woke him up' you're talking about?"

"You're awful," I laughed.

It helped that we could joke, but I was still kinda nervous. It's rude to wake a guy up, and I felt bad. Aldaris is stuck orbiting a foreign planet where he can't show himself, and he can't even have a night's rest. Well, nothing for it but to stand around in the observatory. I didn't feel like talking. Actually, now that I think about it, Statkus was more chill than I was. He was relaxed, just looking around and wandering over by the huge window.

"Don't you have to get home soon?" I asked.

"Well yeah," he shrugged with a smile. "But at this point I can't do anything to get me back quicker."

Not that there was anything to worry about in that department. Only one more minute of silence passed before the angry 'Toss returned. Well, Charlie wasn't too angry, I guess, but he did glance back and forth at us like we smelled rancid. To give Aldaris some credit, he didn't yell at us.

"How has it been since the two of you arrived?"

"I got here like a minute or two before we woke you," I said.

Aldaris let his stern gaze linger on me a minute before turning to Statkus, who casually nodded, glancing and pointing over in my direction. "I was here just a little bit before her. I saw her out in the hall, and we wandered over this way."

The Protoss glanced over at me a second, and I said nothing. It's not like I knew anything about how long Statkus was on the ship before me. The Protoss guessed this, and his stare went right on back to John, with all the firey distrust it entailed. Apparently, not misplaced distrust either. Statkus started to squirm uncomfortably, and made really, really noticeable signs of hiding it. Instantly Aldaris grabbed his jacket, and with a momentary struggle, pulled out John's cell phone and threw it at me. It was a quick, sideways throw (plus I catch like a girl), so it hit the floor. I picked it up automatically.

"My phone!" John gasped.

"Be silent! You!" Aldaris turned to me. "Remove everything he recorded."

"Oh, Statkus..."

I shook my head and started checking out John's phone. After getting out of sleep mode (it wasn't password protected), it immediately popped up with pictures. Oh boy, it was Charlie's ship - lots and lots of pictures of various hallways, consoles, rooms, and a couple of window shots with Earth in the background. It occurred to me that he might have videos too, so I checked. Yup.

Poor Statkus. Why does he have to get himself in trouble like this?

"Don't delete it!" Statkus snapped at me. "If you do, you're a traitor to the whole human race!"

"Huh," I answered. "Kinda no point in keeping them. 'S not like Charlie'll let us go home if I don't. You want your phone, right?"

Of course, there was the whole issue of Charlie letting us go at all. If Statkus is willing to spy on him, then he's a threat to Aldaris, and that means he'll try again. Unless Aldaris knows for sure his teleporter won't recall us up again...we just might be dead. I started deleting the videos.

I didn't hear anything for a minute, but I could feel something buzzing in the air. Looking up, I noticed Aldaris holding on Statkus by the top of his shirt. Judging by their expressions, whatever they were saying (why were they talking with thoughts?) didn't appear to be pleasant. Was...was Aldaris doing something to his brain?

Well, I had to do something about that phone. Instantly reviewing the logic of the situation, I knew immediately that whether me and Statkus lived or died had everything to do with how Aldaris' reacts to the situation. Deleting the pictures wasn't going to make a difference, because we could both just try again. I hadn't been spying on Aldaris and didn't plan to, but a lot hinged on whether or not Aldaris would believe me. It might not even matter, depending on how much he distrusted Statkus. Trying to think about it as little as possible, I checked for a memory card. With a pluck of a fingernail, out it came. Alright!

You know that feeling you get when you're absolutely, most certainly doomed? You know, that feeling you get right in your stomach when you begin to understand that something's happened that you can't fix, and it's all your fault. That moment happened to me in that instant, and for a full year crammed into two seconds I found myself caught in it. I dared look up. Oh crap, Aldaris still had Statkus' collar, but was now focused on yours truly. Funny, despite his anger, he looked surprised.

There was no point in pretending I'd done anything else but tried to keep the pictures. I stared right on back at Aldaris, jutting out my chin with true Irish overconfidence. Sure, he's a ten-foot telepath that apparently can fry my brain at any moment, but I'm still not going to let him intimidate me, the scrawny nerd who once read a Krav Maga book.

"I'm sorry," I spat out as much sarcasm as I dared. "But I wasn't aware we were supposed to simply allow you to yell at us while we have to be polite at every moment. 'S not something particularly tolerable. Now, it was wrong for John to take pictures of your ship, but you're not getting this chip unless you let him go and we can talk like rational people. Now is that really too much...?"

I continued to talk, but suddenly had no idea what I was saying. I couldn't see anything clearly - the ship, Charlie, and Statkus went in and out of focus. My body wouldn't move, and the whole world withdrew like my eyes were suddenly nothing more than a television screen. It didn't hurt when I hit the floor, and Statkus' scream was only a faint buzzing in my ears. The last thing I saw was John slamming into the floor, his face frozen into a mask of horror as his consciousness slipped away.

And, for the second time in the space of ten minutes, I regretted all my life choices.