Morgan woke to soft grass under her cheek and the sound of a babbling brook close by. It should have been calming, but the unfamiliarity sent alarm straight through her. She sat up with a gasp.

Then she stared for what felt like a full minute, though it had to be only seconds. She didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, what her eyes were telling her.

The school was gone. Vanished as if it had never been there. Morgan was in the middle of a green, grassy field, an idyllic stream a few feet away. Above her stretched a pitch-black sky full of stars. But they were stars like she’d never seen before, not even out in the wilderness. The sky was absolutely crusted with points of light, more vivid and numerous than she had ever imagined.

Despite the fact it was night, the landscape around her was lit as bright as day, though there was no obvious light source.

The nearby brook wound through the grassy field a football field’s length or so, then dropped off into absolutely nothing. As if she was on the edge of the Earth, and the land ended where it met the starry sky.

Oh God, she thought half hysterically. The flat Earthers were actually right? She had been to enough survivalist meet-ups to have come across that brand of crazy more than once.

Other girls were waking around her, groggy and confused. One screamed. Morgan whipped around.

It was the pretty girl who had hidden with her and Lucas under the table. Her name was Timberly, she remembered. Shorter than Morgan, she was one of those girls who could turn a guy’s head without trying. Petite, but curvy.

Right now, Timberly wasn’t pretty. She was terrified. One of Timberly’s hands covered her own mouth in horror, the other pointed behind Morgan, beyond the field, where the curve of the Earth (spherical, thank you very much) was rising up on the horizon like an overly large blue and white super-moon. Forget the stars. The oceans were the most brilliant, beautiful blue Morgan had ever seen. The white clouds looked more clean and pure than the brightest snow.

Then, like two puzzle pieces clicking together, Morgan understood. “We’re in space.” She looked up, taking in the dazzling, impossibly bright stars again. Now that she was more alert, she noted the thick bubble of glass that stretched up above them in all directions and extended to the edge of the grassy field. They were encased in a dome. “Oh my God, we’re on a spaceship.”

The field and grass must be on the top side of a dome. She had seen the metallic underside when the roof of the school had been ripped off.

Timberly’s scream had woken the rest of the girls. Blinking, taking in the same impossible scene, they began calling out in confusion.

“What the hell is this?”

“Is that Earth?”

“Where are we?”

“My cell phone isn’t working.”

Her phone. Morgan snapped her mouth shut—she had been too busy gaping at the Earth to think—and dug in her pocket for her own phone, though she knew there was little hope. Cell phones had a range of, what, three to five miles? Maybe up to twenty miles in extreme cases? She wasn’t certain but had the feeling cell phone towers didn’t point their receivers up into the air.

She tried anyway, and came back with no signal.

Sometimes a cell phone could squeeze out a text with low signal. She typed ‘I love you’ to her sister’s phone and pressed send.

She didn’t ask for help, didn’t describe her situation. What would be the point? A deep part of her had already accepted that she was beyond any help the people down below on Earth could give.

Morgan couldn’t tell if the text had gone through. The little icon indicated the phone was searching for a signal.

It’s gonna run down my battery, she thought, then had to cover her mouth over a half-hysterical laugh.

Some of the girls had run to the edge of the field where glass met grass to gaze down on the Earth. They waved and yelled at it like they expected someone to hear them and throw an impossibly long lifeline up.

In fact, all the people around her were girls. Where were the boys? Where was Lucas?

Standing on wobbly legs, Morgan took a carefully measured look around. She found the boys quickly. They were grouped together some way off on the other side of a thick pane of glass that cut the field in half.

Like the girls, most were gathered at the edge to watch the rising Earth. Others were talking while some simply stared up at the sky in wonder. Lucas was one of those. He didn’t look hurt. Morgan’s heart unclenched, just a little.

I’m not bleeding. No one else looks injured. That’s a positive.

“I think we’re in some kind of a science experiment,” Timberly said as she came to stand next to Morgan.

Morgan turned to her. “What do you mean?”

“They’ve separated us by sex. Males on that side,” she waved toward the other end of the field, “females on the other. I had to do the same when I did a presentation on mice in mazes for the science fair. Because... you know, I didn’t want baby mice.”

“They separated us?” It felt like a cold wind had blown over her, though the blades of grass hadn’t so much as wavered. Morgan hugged herself, looking out over the bright starry sky.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Timberly gave her a pitying look. “I don’t think NASA has enough funding to pull this.”

Morgan wanted to disagree. Aliens didn’t exist! Except… well. It was kinda hard to argue while in space aboard a freakin’ spaceship. Morgan swallowed down her automatic disbelief and nodded. “I didn’t see any little green or gray people. Did you?”

In fact, the only other feature around them, other than the brook and the separating plane of glass, was a large oak tree planted in the back corner of the field. Like a Zen garden with one lone feature to make it imperfect.

“No girl, I just woke up here.”

Timberly and Morgan seemed to shrug at the same time and walked across the field to the glass where most were gathered to stare at the vista of Earth.

Two girls were off to the side, weeping, and one was sitting down, rocking back and forth in a worrying fashion. Morgan heard her whimpering that they’d use up all the air in here and that she felt like she couldn’t breathe already.

Panic attack, she thought with sympathy. The girl’s friends were gathered around her in support. Hopefully, it would pass soon.

“Does anyone remember what happened?” someone asked. “I was in the bathroom and thought there was an earthquake.”

“I think that was the spaceship above us,” another replied, young enough to be a freshman. “I was in from PE and we saw it come out of the sky. We tried to run, but it was like my legs wouldn’t work.”

“I fainted.”

“We all did.”

“You guys,” said a girl in Morgan’s math class. Her voice rose to a high pitch. “There are no teachers. Where are the teachers?”

There was a pause as everyone looked around. Sure enough, all those on both sides of the dome were teenagers. freshmen though seniors. No cafeteria staff, no janitors, no one old enough to graduate.

“My dad’s a vice principal,” said one girl who usually hung with the stoners. “Do you think he’s okay?”

“He’s fine,” Timberly said soothingly.

Privately, Morgan had no idea if that was true, but she didn’t see any need to say it.

“I think that’s China down there,” a snotty junior named Nevaeh said, pointing. “Do you think we’re going to pick up more passengers? There are a lot of people in China.”

“No, we’re moving away from the planet.”

The voice was quiet, but all attention focused on her. She was a girl Morgan noticed always seemed to wear the same overlarge jacket, her hair in a sloppy ponytail and glasses. Everything about her screamed nerd.

“How do you know that?” Morgan asked.

The nerd—Leah, wasn’t it?—shrugged and bit her lower lip. “Because of that star.” She pointed to a particularly bright one nearly straight above them. “It’s Polaris. You know, the North Star. I’ve been keeping an eye on it. Five minutes ago, it was in relation to Japan, but now it’s right above the Gobi Desert, don’t you see? No way the Earth is moving that fast. So we have to be the ones moving. And I think we’re moving away.”

Everyone stared at her as if she was speaking another language, but Morgan realized something else. “So… it’s daylight over Asia right now, which means it’s probably night in North America...”

“Ugh,” Timberly said in disgust, seeing where she was going. “How long were we asleep?”

“Explains why I have to pee,” someone murmured.

“There’s a tree over there,” her friend said. “I won’t look.”

More chatter broke out, but Morgan wasn’t paying attention.

We’re moving away, she thought, dazed. Every second, I’m getting further away from everything I ever knew. Why is this happening?

Leah glanced at her and offered a hesitant smile. “Morgan, right?”

“Yeah. Hey... how fast do you think we’re going?”

Leah shook her head. “It only takes the International Space Station ninety minutes to orbit the Earth, but I think we’re moving away from the planet, not around it. So, faster than that, probably.”

“Yay, us,” Timberly muttered.

“Oh my God, how do you even know that?” Christina asked, overhearing.She’d always gone for a goth vibe before, but now her dark make-up was smeared under her eyes from crying.

Leah blushed and looked down.

“Maybe she actually pays attention in class,” Morgan snapped.

Christina rolled her eyes and turned away. Ignoring her, Morgan focused back on Leah. “Okay, so we’re moving away from Earth pretty fast, but... it’ll still take a long time to get anywhere, right?”

She wasn’t into sci-fi stuff, but she remembered one of the Voyager probes finally getting out past the solar system recently, even though it had been launched over forty years ago.

This dome might be her new home for a long time.

Leah nodded. “Human beings, yeah. But these are…” She swallowed as if she couldn’t say the word and covered it with a shrug. “Who knows?” She looked down and her bottom lip wobbled. “I wanted to work for NASA. I wanted to go to space. Maybe a Mars colony… I didn’t want it to be like this.”

Before Morgan could do more than feel awkward, Timberly swooped in and laid her hand on Leah’s shoulder with a smile. “But imagine how this will look on your college application. You’ve actually been to space.”

Morgan made herself smile, too. It was better, maybe, to pretend everything was going to be all right for Leah’s sake. And her own.

* * *

Someone poked Morgan’s shoulder. “I think that boy is trying to get your attention.”

Lucas stood at the glass barrier. Catching Morgan’s eye, he waved and knocked on the glass. The barrier was so thick (or maybe so alien) that she couldn’t hear a thing.

Morgan rushed over. Lucas looked her up and down, relief on his face. He spoke, but there was no sound.

“What?” Morgan asked, holding a hand to her ear.

He mouthed the words in exaggeration. “Are... you... okay?”

Was she okay? What kind of question was that? Morgan started to nod, but then paused. A lump, unexpected and swift, grew in her throat. Would she ever see her father and her sister again?

Tears burned in the back of her eyes. She blinked them away furiously. Now was not the time.

She gave Lucas a thumbs-up in answer and tried to smile, though it came out wobbly.

He nodded and placed the flat of his hand on one side of the glass. She placed her hand on the other side and they stood there for a minute just looking at one another.

Someone must have called Lucas’s name because he whipped his head around and called back. Then he glanced at Morgan and said something. It might have been, “Be careful.”

Yeah, she thought. I might get kidnapped by aliens or something.

A ripple of noise from her own side of the dome caught her attention.

What looked like every backpack the student’s owned were piled haphazardly in the middle of the field. But… they hadn’t been there a few moments ago. The backpacks hadn’t been dropped from the sky or beamed in with a glittery Star Trek effect. They had just... appeared.

“My bag better not be crushed!” Nevaeh shrieked and marched over to pull her sky blue bag out from under the pile.

Frowning, Morgan glanced over to the boys’ side. A similar pile had appeared there, and they were rushing forward to claim their things.

Did the aliens have some sort of beaming technology like in Star Trek? If so, was it on a timer, or were they being watched? She looked around but didn’t see anything that looked like a camera. Just space and their personal glass bubble. Then again, there was no visible light source. How was it so bright in here?

Most of the girls hurried to claim their backpacks. Morgan wasn’t the exception. Her black tactical bag stood out from the rest.

Timberly cocked an eyebrow at her. “Nice of the aliens to give us back our homework. I was almost done with Mr. Madison’s history report.” She bent to pluck out both her bag and a separate makeup kit.

Why is she hanging around me all of a sudden? Morgan wondered, but shook her head. Timberly had never been rude to her, but they never exactly interacted, either. “I think they’re watching us. They gave us back our stuff when we’d gotten over the worst of the shock.”

“Who are these people?” Christina demanded stridently. She looked up at the sky and waved. “Hello? Who are you? What do you want from us?”

“We want to go home!” another girl yelled.

They might as well have been yelling to the empty sky.

“Maybe they’re going to do experiments on us,” one of the girls muttered.

Nevaeh laughed outright at the girl as if it were the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “Maybe we’re part of a breeding program and they want us to carry their alien babies.”

Morgan wrinkled her nose. Some of the other girls looked sick. That one who was having a panic attack earlier went pale all over again.

“Well,” Morgan raised her voice, “they already know about us. At least enough to know what we breathe, and a little about our planet.” She looked down at her feet meaningfully. “This grass might as well be from Earth, and I’m pretty sure that’s an oak tree over there. And they don’t want us for breeding,” she added dismissively. “Unless they expect the boys to put out, too.”

“You don’t know what they want,” Nevaeh said.

“Neither do you,” Morgan shot back.

“Hey, that’s enough,” Timberly cut across between them. “Whatever’s happening, we’re all in this together. We shouldn’t fight among each other.”

Nevaeh sneered, “Whatever,” and turned away with a couple of her friends.

Morgan didn’t care. Hefting her backpack on one shoulder, she turned away. To her surprise, both Timberly and Leah followed. Leah’s own backpack was simple and cheap with a patched hole in the corner.

“They know about us enough to figure out which of the backpacks are ours, and which are the boys',” Morgan said once they were far enough away that Nevaeh and Christina wouldn’t overhear.

Timberly drew her eyebrows together. “So?”

Leah got it. “So they’ve been studying us for a while. Or they’re not aliens at all.” Though she looked doubtful. “But I don’t think any other country has this type of technology.”

Timberly thought for a moment, then frowned and fixed Morgan with a look. “Spill, prepper-girl. What do you have in that pack of yours?”

Morgan froze. “What?”

“My dad owns the hardware shop on Broadway. We know all about your family.”

That explained why Timberly was being friendly all of a sudden. She probably thought she could get something from her. A part of Morgan relaxed. One mystery solved. “Nothing that will get us back to Earth,” she said. “Just some food and rations and stuff. I have a straw filter we can use to drink out of the stream—I don’t think it’s a good idea to just blindly trust the water.”

She had a lot more in the pack than that: A first-aid kit, fishing gear, a mylar sleeping bag, flint, and a multi-tool as well as other supplies she had spent years curating after countless drills.

“You brought that all to school? Did you know something was going to happen?” Leah asked.

“No, it was by accident. My father… He’s really into survivalist stuff.”

Timberly laughed. “Are you kidding? He practically keeps us in stock of all the prepper items. We had to special order heirloom seeds for his seed bank last year.”

“Well, I don’t have any of that with me,” Morgan said, annoyed. It was one thing to secretly think her father was a kook, another to hear someone else say it. “Do you two have anything useful?”

Timberly held up her tiny backpack. It actually had glittery rhinestones sewn all over it. “Makeup. Tampons, too, in case of emergencies. That’s going to come in handy.”

Great. That was a major inconvenience she wasn’t looking forward to tackling. She looked at Leah. “How about you?”

“Just my books. My eReader. I tried sending an email, but it’s not getting any signal.”

At least Leah was thinking ahead. Morgan glanced again at the sea of stars above them, so vivid without an atmosphere. “Do you know how far away the closest solar system would be?”

“Alpha Centauri,” Leah answered promptly. “But it’s still stupid far away.” Though she looked briefly enthusiastic. “These… people, or aliens, or whoever brought us here have to have FTL—uh, faster than light travel. A wormhole or some sort of hyper speed technology.”

“Warp drive?” Morgan suggested with a smile.

Timberly looked between them. “You two are such geeks.”

Leah shrugged. “Just thinking aloud. But… even if we were to travel the speed of light, which you literally can’t do, it would take us over four years to get to Alpha Centauri.”

“Years?” Timberly hissed. Now she was looking like she wanted to hyperventilate.

“You can’t think like that. You’ll get overwhelmed,” Morgan said quickly. “I don’t think these aliens or whatever brought us here to make us live in a dome. Whatever this is, we have to plan and prepare, but take it one day at a time.”

“How?”

“First thing’s first: Let’s see if there’s anything interesting about this field. A message or something we missed.”

* * *

The only object of interest aside from the brook and the glass barrier was a large oak tree, which marked a slight downslope to the far side. The boys had a cedar tree on their side.

Morgan, Leah, and Timberly wandered over, looking up as if there were answers hidden in the branches. Except for the fact it was growing on a spaceship, it looked like a normal tree.

“What’s this?” Timberly pointed to a dark, rectangular patch on the trunk set about eye-level. Before Morgan could warn her, she brushed her fingers over it. “It’s a slot.”

There was a slight buzzing sound that sent the three girls back a step in surprise.

The dark slot flashed green, and a gray puck of something spit out.

Carefully, Timberly pulled it out. It was about the size of her palm, a half inch thick. It looked like an overbaked, dry cake.

“I think it’s dehydrated food,” Morgan said, touching it and then sniffing the tip of her finger. There wasn’t a smell.

Carefully, she broke off a bit with her fingernail and tested it against her tongue. Waxy and bland. “Tastes like a protein bar.”

Leah waved her hand over the slot and a second grayish cake was promptly spit out.

“Wow,” Timberly said. “The aliens planted us a giving tree.”

There was no point hiding what they’d found from the rest of the girls. Soon, others were waving their hands over the trunk and receiving cakes of their own. There didn’t seem to be a limit on how many would spit out of the “giving tree”.

They had all missed lunch, and a couple were hungry enough to bite straight into the cake.

Morgan’s stomach rumbled, but she waited a while after the first girls had eaten theirs to make sure they suffered no ill-effects before she bit into her own. Yes, she had her own rations, but there was no point in using them up. Not when there was free food for the taking.

“The fact that they’re feeding us means that they mean us to stay,” she said to Timberly.

“Wherever ‘here’ is,” she agreed.

It wasn’t long before the boys found their own giving tree on their side of the dome. Soon, all the teenagers were fed, if not happy.

Morgan wandered toward the back of the dome to stare out at the receding Earth. Like watching a pot of water boil, it was difficult to tell if there were any changes unless she looked away for a while.

Eventually, the moon came into sight. A sterile gray ball pockmarked by millions of years worth of craters. The sight was spectacular, but disheartening. The moon was growing larger while the Earth grew smaller. Leah was right: Their spaceship was leaving the orbit of the planet.

Every once in a while, she caught sight of flashes of metal in the atmosphere. Probably satellites or other space junk. No ships would be coming to rescue them. There wasn’t a shuttle program anymore. Even then, Morgan wasn’t sure how long it took to prep a mission, but she didn’t think they could just send one on the fly… that was if anyone even knew they were out here.

Sitting on an empty patch of grass, she pulled her knees up to her chin. The image of the Earth fractured and blurred as tears pooled in her eyes.

The last words she had spoken to her father had been in the heat of an argument. Would she ever see him or Emma again?

She wasn’t the only one—or even the only girl—crying by themselves. Morgan still hid her face, ashamed of her weakness.

* * *

There wasn’t any concept of night or day in a spaceship. Morgan slept for a few hours at a time, woken by arguments or someone walking nearby. She ate the giving tree cakes when she was hungry and drank from the stream. At first, she used her straw filter, but when no one else got sick, she returned it to her pack. Better save it.

She volunteered her tarp to the cause when it became evident there were no restrooms aboard the dome. The girls picked a low point near one of the outer walls away from the tree and the stream to do their business, burying what they could using a branch from the tree. The tarp was propped up for privacy with a couple more branches.

As far as Morgan could tell, the boys didn’t have one designated place to go. Gross. And unsanitary. She was glad they each had their own brook.

“There they go again,” Timberly said, half amused as she glanced over to the boys’ side. A circle was forming around a pair who were shouting and shoving one another. This wasn’t the first fistfight they’d seen. Stress led to people getting on each other’s nerves.

The girls weren’t immune, but they tended to form into catty cliques that did their best to subtly ignore and snipe at one another.

Case in point, Christina had accused Nevaeh of stealing eyeliner from her bag. Nevaeh’s response was to claim Christina had tried to steal her boyfriend at last week’s party. Now their two groups of friends were busy ignoring each other, when one wasn’t accusing the other of backstabbing and sluttiness.

At least Nevaeh and Christina haven’t tried to scratch each other’s eyes out, yet, Morgan thought as she eyed the boys’ side. The two shoving idiots had come to blows and were now wrestling on the ground.

Lucas wasn’t one of them. He was watching alongside his friend, Colton, the head jock. Colton pointed and said something that made Lucas and another boy, Max, laugh.

Without warning, the black starry sky above and around them came alive with jets of purple, blues, violets, deep reds and green. The colors crackled and shifted around the outside of the dome, like an aurora.

Some of the girls screamed, clutching each other.

Hunching in surprise, Morgan glanced toward the rear of the dome. Over the last few days, the Earth had receded to a blue dot the size of a quarter. Now it was lost among the violent, dancing colors.

Leah pointed almost dead ahead. “Do you see that? Is that what I think it is?”

Morgan squinted, and barely caught the outline of a round ball in space. It looked vaguely familiar. A dark planet? That sure as heck wasn’t Mars.

“Is that a black hole?” Timberly asked.

“You can’t see a black hole!” Leah snapped, impatient. “I think it’s a wormhole. A 2D construct in three-dimensional space. It’s a sphere!”

Timberly and Morgan exchanged a look. Sometimes it was like Leah was speaking another language. Then Timberly snapped her fingers. “Oh right, I saw that in a movie. Like, when the scientist pushes his pencil through the paper to create a shortcut.”

Leah beamed. “Exactly.”

“What?” Morgan asked but then shook her head. She didn’t want to know. “Uh, is it safe to go near a wormhole? We’re getting close.”

“Who knows?” Half the people around them were terrified out of their minds, but Leah’s eyes were bright with discovery. “I wish my phone still had battery and I could take a picture. This is all theoretical. It’s a tunnel through space. Wormholes aren’t supposed to exist!”

“Then how do you know that’s what it is?” Morgan asked.

“It looks like we’re going to crash right into it.” Timberly tilted her head. “Or through it. Whatever.”

Morgan glanced again to the boys’ side. The fight had broken up. Now everyone was staring in horror and fascination at the play of colors over the top of the dome. The former two combatants stood side by side, their argument forgotten about in the face of the wormhole. That was one positive thing about the boys’ way; Christina and Nevaeh still stood as far apart as possible. If they were going to die, it wasn’t going to be together.

The colors shifted and swirled in a sickening kaleidoscope that grew faster and faster as they approached the dark sphere. No doubt about it, they were on a direct course for impact.

Morgan held her breath. The very edge of the dome touched the surface, and the entire ship gave a shuddering lurch.

Timberly grabbed onto Morgan, who reached to grab Leah. Together, propping each other up, they held steady.

The colors turned, expanded, and contracted in a sickening dance all around them. Inside of them. Blending and colliding and rushing so fast she couldn’t tell if she were in a nightmare roller coaster or standing still while the universe bent around her. Morgan shut her eyes, but the colors were so vibrant they burned through her eyelids. Around her, more girls screamed. Timberly’s nails bit into her arm, and Morgan suspected she was holding Leah’s wrist hard enough to cause bruises.

Then, just when it seemed like it was too much, like she was going to hurl at any second, it ended. They were back in normal space. The blank, dark sphere was behind them. And ahead…

It was easy to confuse the planet with Earth for a second. There were the same blue oceans, pure white clouds, ice caps on the north and south poles. But the triple moons were definitely new, as were the two bright suns—one yellow and one a darker, burnt orange.

“Oh my God,” Leah whispered in awe. “Oh my God. It’s a binary star system.”

“Where are we?” someone yelled.

There were no answers, of course. But maybe those would come soon. Their dome spaceship was descending into the rich, blue atmosphere.

They were about to find out if they were alien cattle, slaves, or something worse.