My senses are overloading and the more the seconds pass the more fear overcomes me.

I’m so terrified, my body is shaking and I cannot stop it.

The alien stops abruptly and I hear when he inhales. The intake of air sound loud in the stillness of the night.

I stop moving, desperately trying to prevent myself from shaking when the alien makes a sound that sends a new wave of terror down my spine.

It is a hiss, one like an alligator would make.

I know enough about animals to recognize it’s obviously a warning sound, though I don’t know what I’ve done to cause him to respond in such a way.

He has me at his mercy.

There’s not much I can do.

For what feels like painfully long seconds, the alien remains rooted in the spot.

His lack of motion doesn’t calm me in one bit.

“W—What do you want from me? From us?” I whisper.

There’s a lot of vibration in his chest and he clicks a few words.

I lift my head and squint. My eyesight isn’t the greatest but I don’t see any of his kind around.

He is talking to me.

Despite the hiss, his words don’t sound hostile, but I could be wrong.

I’m no good with languages. Especially, ones I’ve never heard before. Alien ones.

Abruptly, the alien starts walking again and we break through the tree line. Lifting my head, I strain as to look over his shoulder. He’s heading toward the water.

I can see it shimmer in the light of the moon.

Movement catches my eye and another surge of fear envelops me.

There’s more of his kind waiting there.

Like shadows in the night, I barely make out their shapes in the darkness as we pass them.

I count at least six and one thing is evident in the way the alien moves. He can see much better than I can in the dark.

From my position, I can’t make out much, but the others seem to be moving around.

There are a few thrums and clicks from the alien and some of the others respond.

He turns and my head flashes around as I try to get a sense of what he is doing.

I do not dare to speak, as if doing so will somehow alert the others to my presence.

I’m confused as to what’s happening when I’m suddenly moving again.

The alien hoists my body as if I weigh nothing and sets me down.

I scramble backward immediately, my eyes on the huge alien before me.

I don’t know where he’s set me down, I’m dimly aware of the hard dirt, pebbles, and twigs beneath me, but I don’t stop scrambling away till my back hits a tree and I can go no farther.

There’s a small fire here and…two bodies resting at the roots of the trees.

Human bodies.

“Sam!”

The word is barely out of my mouth before Sam darts a glance in my direction.

She’s lying on her belly but her gaze is on me. It’s obvious she’s been alert the whole time, watching us.

Watching him.

She doesn’t reply. Her gaze only flies back to Lava Eyes.

There’s tension in her shoulders and slowly, cautiously, she rises and moves over to me.

She grips my hand, her gaze still on the alien.

“Adira…” she whispers. “You’re alive.” She’s gripping my hand so hard, it disturbs the wounds already there. But I don’t push her away.

There is a bigger problem in our midst.

All through this, neither of us move our gaze from the alien before us.

He stands across the fire and light chases shadows across his face.

Those strange eyes of his move over us both before landing at where we’re gripping each other.

I don’t understand.

Sam is alive.

But the scream I heard…

“Is Mina…” I swallow hard.

“No,” Sam whispers. “She’s alive. She’s just… Her energy…”

Sam stops speaking but she doesn’t need to continue.

The parasite within her…that’s why Mina sleeps. She wouldn’t be asleep otherwise.

Our gazes remain locked on the alien and those pointed ears of his twitch a little.

He’s standing with his hands at his sides, but even without doing anything, he looks intimidating.

Firelight flicks over his chest, his torso…

With us on the ground, I can see he is more than a bit over six feet.

I’m thinking seven feet. Seven feet and a bit?

“What do you want?” The words come from my lips in a whisper but I know he hears. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink, but those ears of his twitch again.

“What do you want?” I repeat, louder this time.

No response except for a sudden thrum that he begins in his chest.

I’ve worked with a lot of creatures, and to me that sound he’s making is almost like a cat’s purr.

Just…deeper and with a second low tone that I almost cannot hear because of how deep it is.

Why is he purring at me?

“Where did you come from?” I whisper.

At the sound of my voice a third time, the thrumming suddenly stops and the alien’s ears twitch again.

I don’t know how I’m able to pull my gaze away from him but I somehow do.

Sam’s gaze doesn’t falter though and as I look her over and then glance toward Mina, her eyes remain trained on him.

She’s a bit less dirty than before. I am too.

Almost drowning must have cleaned us a little.

“Are you ok? Did they hurt you? Has Mina…has she woken since…” My voice sounds so weak, I almost don’t recognize that it’s me that’s speaking.

“She’ll be…fine. It’s…like usual,” Sam whispers. “They revived us when they took us from the water.” Her hands tighten against mine as the other moves to her throat.

I assume they revived her the same strange way he revived me.

“Adira, I thought they’d killed you.” Sam sobs and my gaze darts back to the alien close by.

As she sobs and I reach for her, tears rising into my own eyes, I notice the alien’s ears are perked so much now, they are almost pointing in our direction.

His gaze flicks over our faces but I don’t let my tears fall.

I hold them back as I lean my forehead to rest against Sam’s.

I don’t have any words.

I thought she and Mina had died.

The coldness of it all. How I’d accepted it so easily. It chills me.

But that is life now.

You don’t get attached to things…anything. Nothing is permanent. Everything is temporary.

“They didn’t kill me,” I whisper as I stare into the red gaze of the alien who could’ve killed me so many times in the last few hours. “I’m still here.”

“I’m relieved.” Sam releases a breath that makes her shoulders rise and fall.

The alien doesn’t look away and apart from the slight twitching of his ears, you wouldn’t know he isn’t a statue.

His chest doesn’t even rise and fall like he is breathing.

He’s so silent, if I wasn’t looking in his direction I’d have thought he wasn’t there.

He’s just…observing us and I get the sense he is listening to every word we are saying.

“Have they hurt you?” I ask her again. I’m still confused as to what these aliens want with us.

The machines had made it clear.

Whether you were a Feeder or a Breeder, it didn’t wait around to put you in the group it wanted—or to make you cease to exist if it wanted.

But these aliens…what do they want?

Sam eases off me, wipes a stray tear from her eyes, and glances toward Mina.

“No,” she whispers. “They haven’t hurt us yet.”

Yet.

One of his kind clicks something down near the water and Lava Eyes turns toward the sound.

I take the moment to let my gaze rove over him. The suit he wears clings to him like it is a second skin.

Even as I stare at him, his back turned, I get the sense that he is aware of my every move even though his eyes aren’t on me.

That’s a ridiculous thought.

But I’m staring at him when something catches the corner of my eye.

There’s a spike in it…in his suit. A spike at his wrist.

Almost as if the suit is…stretching toward me?