El Paso was a border town and this was the gray area between the suburbs and the great wide open, reserved for passers-through; there were bound to be plenty of bars close to the motels and gas stations that lined the highway ramps. Riley briefly entertained the idea of just buying a bottle of Jack and getting nice and hammered in the privacy of the motel room, but discarded the notion almost instantly. He didn’t need alcohol so much as company—human company, no matter how oblivious—and he needed to be out and doing something. Anything. Shoot the shit with a friendly guy, play a game of pool or darts, listen to crappy jukebox music… whatever. For a man who’d spent most of his life on his own, he was really fucking bad at being alone with his thoughts. Or not, as the case happened to be. Which brought him back to his squatter, who’d been suspiciously quiet for a while now.

“Hey,” he muttered, warily. “You still there?”

Yeah, came the answer immediately. Then, unhappily, Are you going to keep calling me a squatter forever?

“No,” Riley assured him amiably. “’Cause you ain’t gonna be here forever, right?”

He was prepared for the other shoe to drop, then, for his passenger to say something along the line of “yeah, about that…,” but the alien surprised him with a heartfelt, Hell, no. It’s just… I want a name. Everything and everyone who counts has a name. People have names. Pets have names. I want one too.

“You don’t have a name?” Riley frowned, realizing he hadn’t even bothered to ask before. Of course, he’d been a little distracted by the fact that he had an alien in his head, but still. His mama wouldn’t have approved. “Well, what did your previous victim call you?”

Host, not victim, the alien corrected sourly. And proud to have been chosen as such, thank you very much. He was a volunteer and had to pass a very thorough screening to be even allowed close to me.

It must’ve sensed Riley’s interest, because he could’ve sworn it moved slightly in him, the miniscule shift in position eliciting a weird, slithering sensation deep in his body. It kind of made him want to puke, so he tried hard not to think about it too much. His unwanted passenger seemed to pick up on his discomfort anyway, because the movement stopped.

System Six, it told him quietly. That’s what they called me. There were six of us, originally. I was the last one out of the lab. We were experimental armor systems. Prototypes. They made us different, but we were all created to be adaptable so we’d be able to adjust to our host’s body and personality.

The idea was that armor and host would enhance each other, but we were still primarily considered tools. We didn’t get names, just numbers.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way,” Riley said cautiously, “but we don’t normally name our tools, either.”