“Because you want me fat and healthy and filled with delicious blood,” said Toni. “Yummy, yummy, in your tummy. Now fuck this thing up. Mama needs her processed fats.”

“Gross,” said Mandy.

“Mammal,” said Toni, hooking a thumb toward her breastbone. “Don’t know if you’ve been following the news around here, what with all that alien abduction and going into space that we’ve been doing, but I don’t expect this state of affairs to last much longer. If I’m going to be a hydrangea, I’m going to do some serious damage to my lipids first.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Mandy.

“But not illogical,” said Graham. “Get me a Snickers.”

“My man,” said Toni, making finger guns at him. “Enjoy it while you can, because it’s not going to be around much longer.”

“Shush,” I said. Outside, on the tarmac, the helicopter had finally found a safe place to land. It settled laboriously onto the pavement, while I shrank against the wall, hoping not to be seen. I knew the others were doing the same, even Mandy, who seemed to have exhausted her need to run away from us out there in the sunlight. She was giving up. I wanted to feel bad about that. There were other things I wanted to do even more.

I wanted to live.

People poured out of the helicopter, four men in black suits and body armor, and one woman, her sleek, short-cropped hair blowing in the fading wind from the blades above her. I clapped a hand over my mouth to stop the scream that wanted to form there, filling me, choking me on my own voice.

Agent Brown shouted something to the men under her command, and it was a relief to realize I couldn’t hear her over the rush of the wind and the roar of the engine powering down. Then she turned to look at the collapsed terminal, and relief became terror, hot and twisting in the pit of my stomach. She knew we were here. Maybe not us in specific, but she knew someone was here—someone who’d either evaded the scout ship, or come to meet it.

“We need to go,” I whispered, lowering my hand.

Toni looked to Mandy. “Here’s your chance,” she said. “Last stop before the end of the line. You want to run? You do it now, or you do it never.”

Mandy bit the corner of her lip, pulling her mouth into the worried pout I’d seen so many times before, usually when she was bent over her sewing machine, struggling to bring her dreams to life. Finally, regretfully, she shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I can’t … No. I can’t run. I should have run a long time ago, and doing it now would be … would be refusing to accept the consequences of my own actions. Lucas wouldn’t be proud of me for doing that. Robert wouldn’t be proud of me.” Her voice broke on the name of her dead boyfriend. Her eyes were full of tears when she looked at me again.