Satellite: The Satellite Trilogy, Part I Read Online Free

once, the results could be devastating.” She keeps her eyes on me and stands. “Come on, let’s see what’s cooking in Benson,” she says, pulling me up by my arm.
    My hand rubs along my jaw. “You’ve got some uppercut.”
    “You’re not going to whine about that for the rest of the day, are you? We heal three hundred times faster than when we were human, so that means”—she looks up at the ceiling, mentally calculating—“you shouldn’t even feel it anymore.”
    I continue rubbing, hating that she’s right. It doesn’t hurt at all.
    She uses her toes to flip over one of the dingy purple flip-flops by the door. “You should be thanking me. I think I made an improvement to that pretty-boy face of yours.”
    “You are such a flake.”
    She misinterprets this as a compliment. With both feet shoved into her beach shoes, she digs through the contents of a brown corduroy bag before lifting the strap over her head and across her short body. Then she throws a green backpack at me.
    “Where’d this come from?” I examine the familiar frayed bag.
    “I’m guessing your house.”
    “How did it get here?”
    “Must have followed you,” she jokes. “Convenient, huh?”
    “No, seriously.”
    “I am serious. You’re going to need a bag for your stuff. You should have some clothes in the hall closet as well.” She pulls her collection of dreads into a ponytail while I stare at my bag in confusion. “Just put your rulebook in there and let’s go already.”
    I do as she says, following her out the door and down the copper hall. The elevator opens the instant she touches the button. We’re delivered to the ground floor at a speed not quite as fast as my ride up.
    “Have a fabulous day,” GPS Jeanette pipes after us.
    “What’s with the birds?” I ask when we pass by the three doorways on the far side of the lobby.
    “You mean in Alogan?” She pauses. “That’s the room you were in with Jonathan,” she explains, reading my puzzled expression.
    “Oh, right. The birds?”
    “Scarlet tanagers. Beautiful, aren’t they?”
    “They’re loud. I bet they leave one heck of a mess.”
    She snickers. “You have a lot to learn about this place. On Earth, they’re secretive and prefer flying high in the canopies, out of sight. Here, they don’t have to hide.”
    “I still say they’re loud.”
    “They’re not nearly as annoying as some people I’ve met.”
    I bite my bottom lip to keep my grin from escaping.
    The smell of something baking—cookies, maybe?—fills the air as Willow leads me through a forty-five degree opening off the corner of the lobby. Benson , written in various shades of earth-toned glass, spans the length of both walls. The stone floor is similar to my parents’ patio back home—the one I single-handedly installed with Tate serving as “foreman.” These tiles, however, are easily five times larger and must have been a nightmare to install.
    Through each of the four archways, the weathered plank floor goes on forever, but the noodle rugs and leather furniture make the extensive space welcoming. The smell of food is so overwhelming that my mouth waters, even though I’m not the least bit hungry.
    I stop and stare at the hundreds of iron-and-glass lanterns overhead, all scaled proportionately to the massive room. My mouth hangs open. “Are those floating?” I finally ask.
    “Mmm-hmm,” Willow replies from a distance.
    I pull my eyes from the ceiling and jog around the fireplace before snaking through a maze of curvy wood tables.
    “So this is Heaven, right?” I say when I catch up to her.
    She keeps walking. “Progression, actually. Thousands of bases are spread over the Earth, grouped by languages and regions. This is the American English base, obviously.”
    “Obviously,” I mutter, but Willow ignores me.
    “It does seem perfect, doesn’t it?” She looks around as if seeing it for the first time. “Don’t be fooled by the extravagance. Appearances can be