Page 123 of Stardusted

I forced another cough to expel the remnants of coffee from my lungs. Breathing much easier, I shook my head. “Sorry, but I told you, I can’t remember anything…”

But that wasn’t entirely true, was it?

Shapes. Lights. The echo of something behind my eyelids when I woke up. Distant and half-formed. I’d had dreams last night.

None of them had made sense. None of the images were coherent or resembled organized information that would, say, be stored in an alien info cache, waiting for humanity to access it.

They were just stress dreams, I told myself again. Stress did weird things to the brain. Science backed that up. Studies. Peer-reviewed journals. Real,reasonablethings.

And currently my life was sorely lacking anything resembling reasonable.

I believed Sky that something was happening. After all, the glowy hand kind of made that difficult to argue. Still, it didn’t make it easier to accept I’d been blasted with an alien encyclopedia or whatever he thought.

I took another long sip of coffee to buy time and soothe my scratchy throat.

Elbow resting on the couch’s arm, Sky watched me. Waiting, I realized, for an answer.

It seemed a bit early for alien experiments, but I supposed now was as good a time as any. At least I’d had caffeine first.

“Okay,” I said, swirling my mug to mix in the egregious amount of creamer. “I’m not agreeing, but for hypothetical purposes…how would you do that? Help me remember things, I mean.”

Sky made a thoughtful noise then stretched his arms overhead. His chest muscles and shoulders bunched in the process. The shirt was thin enough to leave nothing to the imagination. Not that I needed to imagine after last night. I’d seen it in all its eight-pack, gym-bod glory.

Did he even need a gym? Or did the synth-skin just ensure he was always ripped like that?

I wrenched my eyes away when he rubbed a hand over his sternum and leaned forward, picking up his mug. “I have a few ideas.”

I was tense, wound up, and suddenly nervous, soI tried for humor. “For the record,” I attempted a sneer, “I’m not on board for probes of any kind.”

“I see.” He tucked his tongue into his cheek and considered his coffee cup. Then he tipped his head my way, and his lips curled up in the corner. “Ofanykind?”

If I’d been drinking, I’d have choked again. That smile was just shy of criminal. I opened my mouth then closed it. On second thought, exceptions could be made.

But as if he’d just realized what he was doing, Sky’s flirtatious grin vanished as quickly as it’d appeared. A beat of eye contact passed, during which we both silently acknowledged the boundary-setting conversation we’d had last night, before he looked away.

“Sorry,” he muttered, attention dropping to his mug again. “No. No, ah, instruments involved besides your mind. Minimal touching. If you don’t mind me using…well, the synth-skin’s abilities.”

I froze with my coffee halfway to my mouth. “Like…the memory wiping?”

I lowered the mug slowly, and Sky shifted, glancing away like the reminder of what he was capable of somehow madehimuncomfortable. “

Not like that,” he said, rubbing his neck. “Just…just a little bit of its neural interface. Nothing too invasive.”

Oh, just a littleneural interface.“Defineinvasive,Sky.”

“It’s hard to explain…” At my disbelieving huff, he swiped his hand across his mouth and peeked at me from beneath his lashes. “Low-grade electrical interference? Directed throughyour nervous system to your hippocampal cortex. It’ll stimulate memory pathways and hopefully promote recall.”

Myhippowhat? He’d just dumped a whole lot of big words on me, and I’d gotten a little stuck onthe mention of low-grade electrical interference being aimed anywhere near my brain.

I took a massive gulp of coffee, not even caring when it burned all the way down. My heart pattered against my breastbone. Swallowing, I lowered the mug and took a deep breath. “Okay. So basically,probingmy memory banks.” I raised a brow.

“Basically.” Sky seemed to be fighting a smile again, though there was something cautious in his expression. Like he was waiting for me to laugh and sayhell no.

Figures. All this stimulating and probing, and none of it sounded like the fun kind. “Will it hurt?”

“No!” He leaned in, serious again when he caught my eyes. “No, Rae. You probably won’t even feel it.”

“Probably,” I repeated, gnawing the inside of my cheek. “You’re really selling this.”