“My phone has been undetectable for years,” said Toni. We all looked at her. She shrugged. “Paranoia is only a disadvantage before the alien invasion. Now it’s the reason I’m going to outlive half my species.”

“We’re getting away from the point,” I said. “If what Lucas says is true, we need to get out of here. It’s only a matter of time before someone finds the senator’s body, if they haven’t found it already, and starts checking local hotels for people who don’t belong there.”

“Then we’re fucked,” said Lucas. “There’s no way someone doesn’t know what our van looks like by now. We take it out on the road and we’re finished.”

“Not necessarily,” said Mandy. “You got any money left?”

Lucas grimaced.

3.

David had gone with Mandy and Lucas to the nearest all-night drugstore, leaving the rest of us to mill around the motel room and wait for them to return. Tahlia and Jeff were in the corner with Toni, speaking in low tones and occasionally gesturing toward the window. The divide of their species seemed to have been forgotten in the face of the larger problem of how we were all going to get out of here in one piece. This wasn’t privacy—privacy might be something we never had again—but Graham and I were still taking advantage of the pause, curled face-to-face on the bed, his hand cupping my cheek, our foreheads barely touching.

“Hey,” he whispered, his voice barely a breath. I felt it as much as I heard it, and it made me shiver with comfort and with longing. Longing for a simpler time, when I’d been a girl who might or might not be out of her mind, and not the fugitive agent of an invading alien empire.

“Hey,” I whispered back. “How are you holding up?”

Graham laughed. It was a tight, unsteady sound, and hearing it broke my heart a little. That was almost reassuring. I was having thoughts that didn’t feel like my own, and it was getting harder and harder to think of the Earth as my home or the human race as worth saving, but I could still hurt when the people I loved were confused or in pain. I was still human enough to care.

Was caring really a human attribute, though? Second had been delighted to have a sister. The Swift had been harder for me to read, but he had seemed pleased by Jeff’s presence, and proud to have a brother who was conquering this bright new garden. They had to care about each other, at least a little, and if they cared about each other, they would learn to care about us. They would.

“I don’t know anymore,” said Graham, snapping me back into the moment. “I feel … I feel like I’m releasing an invasive species into the Everglades. You know?”