"Your choices of entertainment for your one free hour, away from your work, are as follows," another stated at the front of the room.He stood in front of Gretel and the rest of all the others from Gryaz, who were still all sitting down and clueless and aimless, not knowing what was being expected from them and what they should be doing for the Empire that had kidnapped them and was using them as free labour."There is a library, you may use your shared office space as a common room, you may use the computers offered for your work service to play games that will be locked when the allotted hour for free time is complete, you may also play music from a list of certified songs and genres..."Gretel stopped listening as soon as she heard the word 'library' knowing immediately where she would be going to try and have some alone time, in complete isolation, away from everybody else, even if there was still a camera on her.Safety in numbers was certainly a val

Gretel remained in Yolanda's arms, even after she stopped crying, happy to stay there and stay warm.Silver looked away the entire time, sitting at his computer watching the screen without moving away from it, acting as if he wanted to look cool, calm, and unaffected but was in fact still quite awkward around the fact that Gretel had burst into tears and had received hugs,He hadn't moved the entire time, the computer still not turned on and the selection of sound stickers to listen to music privately, still remained untouched and undisturbed.He was just sitting there without doing anything, staring at a wall as if it was the most interesting thing in the world with his stiff shoulders and posture, actively looking in the opposite direction of Gretel and Yolanda."You sure you don't want to join the hug," Yolanda called out again, this time without any of the sarcasm of before, her voice perfectly sincere and polite, injected also with a layer of worry a

Everything about Yolanda seemed subtly wrong and there was something uncomfortable about how she constantly flickered between emotions and personalities as if she was simply substituting the people that she had simply met previously in her life in front of her actual person as it fit the situation and rise and fall in conversation.Gretel knew that Yolanda was borderline sociopathic and probably a psychopath with her master manipulation and use and control of herself, tugging Gretel and Silver in all sorts of directions, pulling answers out of them and having them dance to a tune that she alone was orchestrating, the two of them simply puppets on strings for her, but at the same time, what she was doing to them, how she was using them felt inexplicably kind.Gretel felt, deep down, that Yolanda, despite how uncomfortable that she was making Gretel and Silver feel with her flirting, her touching, and her general quickly changing attitude, she was preparing them somehow.

“So, what does she want us to make for her?” Emmet asked Jasper, leaning over the table to read the page full of notes.Almost immediately, his eyes fell back onto Jasper’s face, the other man holding an expression of deep concentration and a fervent passion that filled Emmet’s heart up with warmth and his stomach tingle.None of the notes were in any language that Emmet could read. He wanted to swoon at his multilingual and cultured partner.“She wants us to find a way to intercept the path of the time machine and alter the final destination. That first page that she gave us, here, is a transcript of a conversation that she’s allegedly had with someone in a more senior position about time machines in general. This next one is full of information about another device that can apparently communicate with the time machine that we both used to travel and alter its course, and the last sheet is just general information of her exac

 Kai hugged Lila as soon as she opened the door of the café.Looking over his shoulder, Lila noticed that the social worker had left, making sure to peer through the cracks between the different folding screens for the dark suit that she wore.“I’m happy for you, Kai. I’m so happy for you,” Lila assured him, wrapping her arms around him to keep him close and safe, even if for a little bit.“The social worker says that I can stay here. She’s going to interview you, so I can stay here with you. We can actually live together for real without any problems now. Just like you wanted!” Kai continued to shout over her head, a bright, big smile over his face.Lila held him tighter to herself, not saying a single word.“We can finally live together and keep each other safe and be each other’s family. I’ll be your proper brother and you’ll be my proper sister, and we’l