Tahlia closed her eyes. I wanted to do the same. I didn’t let myself. I needed to see what happened next. My own experiences and the scent of alien trees were combining to make me hate humanity, but this moment—the moment when the man who had already killed my friend for the crime of trying to protect me, the moment when he killed a woman who had never done him any harm for the crime of existence—this was when my hatred would become complete.

Graham stayed in front of me, not giving ground even as the vines of the scout ship sliced through the air around him, cracking like whips, some coming close enough to ruffle his hair.

“I’ll do it!” howled the man. The screams of his compatriots had virtually stopped, replaced by wet crunching sounds as the vines compressed their bodies beyond recognition. The air was still full of whipping tendrils, making it difficult to see.

Not so difficult that I couldn’t tell that none of my people, human or alien, had been touched. The vines were brushing our cheeks and disturbing our hair, but they weren’t taking us the way they were our attackers.

// wait // whispered the voice of the forest.

Tahlia went limp, becoming a dead weight in the man’s arms. He howled his fury, turning and firing wildly. I heard Jeff’s shout, an exclamation of shock and agony.

A vine as thick around as my forearm whipped out of the darkness and wrapped around the man’s throat, squeezing and pulling upward at the same time. Two more vines grabbed his legs, and his head detached from his body with a wet sucking sound, trailing a length of spine and gut. I screamed again, this time in horror, before clapping a hand over my mouth.

The vines whipped the remains of the man away, and then they came for us.

These were different than the others, broader, more like blades of grass beaded with sticky golden dew than the aggressive, thorny roots that had done so much damage in such a short time. I saw them clearly enough to register their differences before they were wrapping around my face and torso, cutting off my air supply. I began to struggle, trying to claw at them even as they pinned my arms to my side.

// calm // chided the voice. // safe. //

// our friends are human // I thought back, hoping whatever extension of the scout ship was allowing me to “hear” the forest while I was away would also allow the forest to hear me. // they need air to live. // So did I, right? I needed to breathe. The vines were cutting off my air.

But my lungs didn’t ache, and my head wasn’t spinning. Maybe air was more optional than I had ever believed it to be.

// safe // repeated the voice. // sleep. //

The sticky golden sap filled my mouth, and I knew nothing more.

Chapter 17