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world had ever been. She supposed she should hate him, but she couldn't. He was sitting quietly on the edge of the bunk, keeping his prisoner company in the middle of the night, even though he didn't have a clue as to why.
    No, she couldn't hate him. She didn't even fear him any longer. He was trying to be nice to her, and she was surprised to find she liked him. Maybe she suffered from Stockholm syndrome; identifying with her kidnapper.
    This was the first time she had really dared to think about the world that lay behind them, and even though she vowed to herself not to give up on getting back there one day, it was late, and she was tired, and the thoughts of home made tears well up in her eyes.
    Travis was staring into the wall, but he must have been paying more attention than she realized because he asked immediately, "What's wrong?"
    She wiped a tear away with the back of her hand and mumbled, "Nothing, I'm just homesick."
    He looked at her blankly, as if trying to figure out what the word meant, and she knew she would have to change the subject before she started to bawl like a baby. She said the first thing that came to mind, "Where do you live, anyway?"
    Now he stared at her as if she'd asked if he'd ever met a unicorn, and she elaborated, "Home, where is your home?"
    Travis shook his head, "I don't know. Here I guess."
    The answer was so strange to her she forgot her own misery. Everything she had seen of the ship had been an efficient way to transport people between planet A and planet B. All walls were bare, there were no decorations, hardly any colors, and it didn't resemble a place to live at all. Maybe he had a hidden room somewhere that contained personal things, but she doubted it. She tried again, "Well, where do you come from?"
    "I should have kept you in the cell, or let you scream alone."
    He sounded irritated, and she winced. Seeing him sigh soothed her fear a little, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet. "I have no idea."
    For the moment, all her own problems were forgotten, and she nudged herself a little closer. "Are you serious? You don't know what planet you're from?"
    He shook his head, and sounded like he was explaining a simple concept to a child. "Random children are selected for the corps every year. They're taken at young ages and conditioned for duty, and during this process you forget everything about your old life."
    Patricia opened her mouth and closed it again. It sounded nightmarish to her, and she could easily imagine the parents' despair at losing their children, the long days and nights of wondering if the baby was alright, and what might be happening to him or her. She exclaimed with wide eyes, without thinking, "Conditioned? That sounds scary."
    Travis's mouth twitched into a wry smile, and he answered flatly, "It is."
    She wanted to ask more, but she was afraid to as well; it didn't seem like a subject she wanted to know all that much about. Besides, he probably didn't want to talk about it. Instead, her mouth asked, automatically, "What's going to happen to me?"
     
    *****
     
    Travis looked at his prisoner thoughtfully, wondering why she had to ask so many questions, and what he should answer. It should have been an easy question; he knew what happened to prisoners. He had questioned a lot of them himself, and he had never before thought it seemed gruesome. Their voices did come back to him from time to time, but he had ignored them successfully for decades. Still, the thought of someone torturing and using mind-altering drugs on this girl from a planet that still thought ground-level transportation was a great invention, disturbed him. It shouldn't have. He was conditioned not to care about things like these, and the fact that it did bother him sent a twinge of very physical pain down his spine.
    Sighing, he wondered how he'd gotten himself into all this. Normally, the criminals on his ship already knew everything about it. Everyone did. "I don't know."
    As soon as he said