Caged

This is an alternate cover edition for B00OW7N0IG

A girl who counts everything falls in love with an imprisoned alien.

Ester Slade’s favourite number is 10 to the power minus 43 – Planck time. She likes to count things and has an extraordinary grasp of spaces. She used to be called dim, even stupid, but is brilliant at fixing things. She’s never told why the general selected her to fix the prisoner’s cell door but it soon becomes obvious. An alien from an opposing faction in the war, the prisoner holds the key to the moon’s destruction. Ester is told fourteen times not to look into his eyes – but what would happen if she does?

Extract: Hello, she should say. Hello. That’s what people said. Hello.
“I thought your ears would be pointed,” she said instead, suddenly, randomly, and then her hand was over her mouth, wondering why she had said that.
“Did you?” he said, as if she had said something enormously interesting.
“Like an elf,” she went on, unable to help herself. “I thought you would look like an elf.”

The Exodus Sequence: Each novelette in the Exodus Sequence is a standalone story. They don’t have to be read in order. They are not in any way connected like chapters in a book. They vary in style and character, time and place. However, the mystery unfolds as the sequence progresses, hence the numbering. To follow this unfolding, the sequence is best read in order.

A novelette is, by definition, longer than a short story but not as long as a novella.