Kalea hooked her hand under my elbow, and pulled me to my feet.

  “Stand up straight. We’ve won the day. They’re retreating.”

  And that was how I won my second battle. I wasn’t sure I did much. Kalea had done all the work, really.

  She’d saved me.

  “Let’s go!” I said, attempting to follow the fleeing robots, but stumbling again. Kalea didn’t have to hold onto my shoulder too hard to keep me in place. I think something was deeply wrong with my hip.

  “Not like that, you aren’t,” Kalea said, soft and stern.

  I turned to focus my VP on her mask. I couldn’t see her face, but I imagined what it must have looked like behind it. Was she laughing at me? Was her face concerned? Her mask grimaced at me, the stylized designs I almost saw as a face. But maybe that was just the pareidolia talking.

  They looked kinda like some tattoos I’d seen. I’d seen what she looked like behind that mask before, but I wondered if she had any tattoos. What a weird thought. Did Aliens even get tattoos?

  “Yeah,” I said, relenting. “Okay.”

  “Let’s head to the roof,” she said, picking up her gun. It collapsed into a more compact version of itself, as she stowed it on her back. She motioned to the roof closest to us.

  And before I knew it, she’d dipped me into her arms, and leapt. She set me on the roof, and I could see the city splayed out before us, the holes in the skyline smiling like broken teeth.

  “Your mask,” Kalea said. “It should be safe to breathe up here.”

  I tapped the bottom of my mask, and the clear bubble slid open. I breathed the air in, and winced. I must have hurt a rib in addition to the other injuries.

  Feeling the wind on my face was a miracle. I pushed the strands of hair out of my eyes clumsily with my gauntlet, and took in the view. My vision felt diminished now that I didn’t have my VP, and the music was gone, but there was something more — authentic, I guess? Something more authentic about seeing with my own eyes, free from Morrigan’s input.

  I could see the capitol building from here. It had a hole in it. That was new. Thin trails of smoke snaked like black ribbons against the dark blue sheet of sky. Lit by the fading sun, twilight was well on its way.

  The spring air blew crisp and pleasant, but it hurt to breathe. I took shallow breaths. Kalea walked in front of me. Her armor peeled open, and she stepped out in one fluid motion.

  She rubbed the sides of her neck under her floral culture. The agitation seemed to flow out of her in a single breath.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, her voice holding some amount of kindness.

  “Yes,” I choked out.

  Kalea turned, and tapped on her suit. A plate slid, and a compartment opened. She reached in, pulled out a protein bar and a bottle of water. Getting a closer look at her suit, I could tell it was a much newer model. Older suits looked a lot like old US Army tech from before the War, were all flat planes. They looked a lot like the ancient tanks from before contact. The newer ones were more organic, they almost looked like a creature, more alive.

  From our speculation — us fanatics online — it seemed like as the Knights discovered more about the pre-Somniferian tech that powered their suits and made the Dreadnaught fly, the further away from typical Terran tech it looked.

  For some reason, the Somnifer that stayed, the ones that helped us after liberating Earth, didn't want to impose their understanding on us. And when they went to battle alongside us, they used our technology. Were they really stretched so thin? Maybe. Or maybe they just didn’t care in general, and those that stayed were the weirdos.

  I tore my eyes away from her suit, and took the bar from her, ripping it open with superhuman strength. The bar popped out of my hands, and with some scrambling I caught it before it hit the ground. It was slightly sweet, and chocolatey, a little gritty on the tongue, but made of food I couldn’t quite place. Maybe it was meant to cater to Somniferian tastes.

  The water helped the dry food go down easier.

  “Better?” Kalea asked.

  “Some,” I replied.

  Kalea didn’t reply, just gazed at me thoughtfully, hunched down in a squat.

  “That your first combat?” she asked.

  I thought for a second. Was that number three, or number two? Or maybe it had all been one thing.

  “Sorta,” I said weakly.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “You’re good.”

  I laughed, and broke into a painful cough. I didn’t feel ‘good’ at this. I had mostly just kept the bad guys busy, so that Kalea could jump in, and finish them off. But I was alive. So I guessed that counted for something.

  Could I really do this? Could I save my brother? Save Boston?

  “Obviously not good enough,” I said. “I think I bruised a rib. Should I get out?”

  “No, no,” she replied, “let the medical gel do its thing on your arm. For a bit. We may need to check your sternum later, make sure we don’t need to pop a rib back in place.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, it’s not fun. Also,” she continued, “make sure to take deeper breaths. Even if it’s painful.”

  I tried my best. I could feel the sweat on my skin under this thing. My armor was going to smell real rank once I was finally out of it.

  Kalea gazed into the sky, wide eyes squinting. The wind ruffled her floral culture, and the silence hung there between us for a moment. I looked closer at the flowers, and algae, and who knows what, that formed up her ‘hair’ so to speak. One of the flowers was clearly a rose, but the others were either unfamiliar to me, or actually alien.

  Kalea looked at me for a moment, smiling, then finally said, “Why aren’t you with your aunt?”

  “I’m here to rescue you. Also, I have to find, I have to find…”

  I couldn’t say it for some reason. A lump formed in my throat, and now I couldn’t swallow or breathe. I fell to my knees, and doubled over.

  I didn’t want to cry. I shouldn’t. I was 18. I was a woman. I had so much I had to do.

  But I couldn’t do it. I’d gotten hurt. I couldn’t run like this, fight like this.

  “Oh, no,” Kalea said. “No, you’re not crying are you?”

  “No!” I said through the tears. Dots formed on the concrete as they dropped there one by one.

  “Hey,” Kalea said, kneeling next to me. “It’s okay to cry,” she said.

  “Did you? When you first started?”

  “Ah, no,” she said, with some embarrassment. “But I’m an alien.”

  I sobbed harder. I don’t know why but this wasn’t stopping. I wanted it to stop, but it all just hit me at once. I had to go. I had to get up, and go save Matt, but I couldn’t, and it was all my fault. All of this was on me.

  I couldn’t do it. I’d fucked it all up, and that kid would die, and it would kill my parents, and I couldn’t go home after that. Or to the dreadnought. I couldn’t go anywhere.

  I’d be freaking homeless!

  “Ah, shit,” Kalea said in English. “Now you got me going too.”

  I looked up at her. She wiped a tear from her eyes.

  “Wait, why are you crying?” I asked, just barely able to breathe.

  “It’s just a thing that happens with us. You guys think that we have so much control over you with our spores and pheromones, but we’re just as susceptible.”

  “Wait really? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  This was a dumb question. ‘Hello alien woman, tell me everything about your biology!’ Also, when would she have brought it up?

  “When would I have brought it up?” she asked.

  There it was.

  “Wait. So if I was happy, you’d be happy?” I asked, sniffing.

  “Not necessarily,” she said, sitting back, resting her hands on the concrete.

  I’d stopped crying now. The weirdness of the situation had kind of shocked me out of my doom spiral. I sat down. A plate on my chest popped open. A bit of cloth stuck out.

  “Thanks Morrigan,” I said, and dabbed my face. “So how does it work?”

  “So,” she said, her head bouncing around as if she were weighing what to say next. Then, she just powered through it. “So to us, humans are a huge ball of hormones and emotions just constantly roiling, and putting it out into the air everywhere. To some of us that aren’t used to it, your feelings can sometimes overwhelm us. Our noses are quite attuned, and our flower cultures are very delicate. Quite like your hair, our bodies receive data from it. So when a human cries or is in distress, it can be distressing for us too.”

  “Oh no, I’m sorry I,” I felt the tears coming again.

  “Don’t apologize!” she said quickly, holding her hand out like she was trying to calm a scared animal.

  “I've been around humans enough to get it,” she continued. “I’ve had lots of practice separating my stimulus from human feelings. This is just unexpected. I’ve done a lot of listening about this. I know you need to release these feelings, or you could have maladaptive thoughts.”

  When she said listening, she meant the Somniferian Sagas. They preferred to encode information in songs rather than words.

  “Wait,” I said. “Somniferians don’t need to release their feelings?”

  Again, the wonder of talking, and being with an entirely different kind of being cut through all of the pain. This was all so new to me.

  “Not so much release, but share. We have much more communal living situations. Our culture prioritizes consensus, and support.”

  I thought back to some of the podcasts I’d listened to. Some of them were quite salacious about speculating on Somniferian sexuality. Thinking about what she’d just said, I could see how some people could infer that they were overly promiscuous or something.

  “You’re doing it,” she said, standing. “You’re imagining that we’re all some kind of —” here I was unable to understand what she said. Were the spores wearing off? Did I need more to understand what those words were? Or was the concept just so alien, that the spores hadn’t gifted me with the proper context? How did any of this work anyway?

  “I didn’t understand that last word,” I finally said.

  Her beautiful lips quirked in annoyance.

  “Yeah, I bet. I will say that some of the rumors of Somniferian immodesty are not entirely unfounded. Imagine all the feelings of newness and discovery of seeing an alien, mixing with an intensity of feelings from them you aren’t used to managing, some of these feelings quite brazenly amorous… and some of us have found ourselves flaunting fraternization norms more than is prudent. But that just tends to be some very notable, and embarrassing outliers. And if anything it is humans who are —”

  “I would never assume. But wait. How does —”

  “Hey, we’re in the middle of a warzone, kid. I’m not gonna get into —”

  “I was just — I wasn’t meaning to —”

  I was absolutely meaning to. I was 18, but not entirely innocent. I could feel the heat spread to my face. I was probably getting all splotchy, and thinking about that probably just made it all worse.

  “I’m going to make some tea,” Kalea said. “Do you want some tea?”

  “Yes,” I said.