Captured for the Alien Bride Lottery

I exhaled. I was a surgeon, and I’d done plenty of minor excisions. My hands stopped trembling, and I reached up to make the first incision about an inch behind my ear, hissing sharply as the pain hit. But I breathed past it and kept going. I’d have to stay steady to cut the wires that led into my brain.
Less than ten minutes later, I dropped my biochip into the toilet and flushed it away. With any luck, authorities would try to chase it down as it washed through the Las Vegas sewers, giving me time to get away.
I stitched up the wound I’d created with the needle and thread. I’d rinsed it all in isopropyl alcohol first, but I’d still need to keep an eye on it for any infection. Luckily, the conference had been rife with pharmaceutical reps handing out sample meds like they were candy. There were bound to be a few antibiotics in there if I needed them.
After I’d taped a bandage over the whole grisly mess, I glanced around the bathroom. It looked like a crime scene with blood smeared across the counter. With a shrug, I moved into the bedroom, trying to decide what to take.
My computer? Phone? God, they’d be able to trace me with those.
Better get a burner phone.
I grabbed the biggest shoulder bag in the room—one with a pharmaceutical company’s logo on it, a conference-attendee gift—and threw two changes of clothes into it, along with all the sample packages of meds, including more than one antibiotic, and my drugstore purchases.
The television was still playing in the background, and Vos had just drawn another name. “Amelia Rivers,” he announced.
I turned around as if in a trance. There it was. My face on the screen behind him.
Shit. Time to go.
No time to dye my hair, either. Maybe I could duck into a casino bathroom for that. Or better yet, find a way to do it at the airport—assuming I got that far.
But before I left the room, there was one last thing I needed to do. Moving in front of the bathroom mirror, I lifted my long, blonde ponytail. Then I used the nail scissors to snip it off. I shook my remaining hair out. It was a shaggy mess, but at least I looked a little less like myself than usual.
I carried the ponytail out of the room and dropped it in a trashcan as I bypassed the elevators and opened the stairwell door.
“Here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself as I headed down.
The heavy door closed behind me with a final-sounding click as I walked away from everything I’d ever known.
I marched down the Strip, moving as quickly as possible. The farther away from my own hotel I got, the better it would be for me. I swung into a casino hotel, one of the smaller ones, and hid in a bathroom stall, dying my hair a dark burgundy red.
Yet another blood-red scene I’m leaving behind.
No one came in while I rinsed out the excess dye in a sink, and at the last minute, I stripped off my white button-down shirt, balled it up, and ran it through the dyed water, just in case anyone at the conference remembered what I’d been wearing that day.
When I squeezed the excess water out, the shirt was a weird shade of pink with darker burgundy streaks running through it. I pulled a t-shirt out of my bag to wear and held the now-pink shirt under the hand dryer.
I blotted my hair and dried it, at least a little, under the air-blower for hands. I surveyed the results in the mirror.
I definitely didn’t look like myself any longer. I looked exactly like the rebel I had never been, not once in my entire life.
Now I have to get out of Las Vegas.
I had already abandoned my plan to head to the airport. I couldn’t fly—they were too careful about checking IDs. Same with renting a car.
Buses, I decided. Maybe Greyhound would be less stringent with their ID requirements.
When I walked through the hotel lobby and stopped to ask the concierge for directions to the bus station, he barely glanced at me before offering me a map and the information I’d requested. He might remember me later, but it was a random stop, so it might be months before anybody figured out they needed to talk to him in particular.
Luckily, the bus station was within easy walking distance. I hated to blow any of my limited cash on a taxi. I slipped my still-damp shirt over my t-shirt and walked with my head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone else.
The bus station in Vegas was cleaner than I anticipated. Not that I’d ever ridden on a public bus before. I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes, suddenly feeling tired.
Maybe it would be easier to give myself up, go through the Bride Games.
The thought made my stomach clench.
I’m just tired, I told myself. It was well after midnight by this point. I’d feel better once I got out of Vegas.
At least the desert air had mostly dried the shirt I’d dyed.
A single bored ticket agent manned the counter, tapping at the keys with long, pointed fingernails painted a bright blue that matched the streaks in her hair.
“Hi. When does your next bus leave?” I tried to sound nonchalant, but I could feel my anxiety threading through my voice.
The ticket agent frowned at me. “Where are you headed?”
I shrugged. “Wherever the road takes me, I guess.” I knew it was a stupid answer, but I was trying to channel my inner hippie-child. The one who’d never existed—but who might be the sort to dye her shirt to match her hair and take an impromptu trip on the next bus out of town.
She gave me a long look but went back to clicking keys on her computer. “We have a bus leaving for Chicago in about twenty minutes.”
Chicago. That was the kind of place I