Except now. Now, it felt like we had finally found the thing that was going to divide us for good, because I was right: if I hadn’t been here, he would have been siding with his own species. Maybe if we’d been a species of starfaring snake people, he would have been too consumed by professional curiosity to think about what it meant to turn his back on humanity, but we weren’t. We were green and growing and not something that had ever interested him, except in the sense that we were me and I was the love of his life. Supposedly. Was that going to be enough?

For the first time, I honestly didn’t know.

“Look,” breathed Jeff, voice filled with awe. I craned my neck to see around him to the window.

Streaks of light were cutting across the sky, too big and close to be shooting stars, too controlled in their descents to be meteors. One of them impacted in the far desert, sending a bright ring of molten sand splashing upward against the night. It was beautiful. It was the sort of moment that would have sold a million copies of National Geographic, if there had been a photographer quick enough and fortunate enough to capture it. It was eclipsed almost immediately, as three more streaks of light cut through the sky above it, heading for their own landing sites.

“It’s started,” said Tahlia. There was no hiding the joy, or the relief, in her voice. I shared it. We weren’t safe here anymore. We had never been truly safe here. We’d been sheltered by the assumption that we were just like everyone else, that our claims of an alien origin had been comical at best and delusional at worst. Once those assumptions had started to crumble, so had the pretense of our safety.

We were invaders. We were killers. We were an infection, and humanity, with its armies and its scientists, fancied themselves to be physicians. They would cure us if they could, saving themselves at our expense, and even now, watching our ships light up the night sky, I couldn’t say they were wrong. We were here because we needed to eat. Because humanity was a garden, and we were a species of gardeners. But when the garden fought back, who could really blame it?

Another sphere of light slashed by ahead of us, so low that the shock wave of its passing struck and shook the car. “Whoa!” shouted Toni, struggling to keep control. The brakes squealed and the tires shrieked as we spun in a half-circle, coming to rest lengthwise across the road. Toni clutched the wheel, panting, her eyes wide white circles in the rearview mirror.

“They’re going to hurt a lot of people before this is over,” said Lucas.

Jeff laughed. “Really? That’s what you have to say about all this? That we’re going to hurt people? Newsflash, buddy: we’re here to conquer your planet.”