I took a step back. I stared at her.

“What?” demanded Toni. “What did the giant spider say?”

“She said…” I turned, staring at the others, at my friends, at the people who had, however, unwittingly, participated in humanity’s lack of salvation. My mouth was dry as a bone. I swallowed to moisten it, and said, “The seeds come first, to find out whether the world is suitable. They look for good soil, and they spread. They start generating the pollen as soon as enough of them reach adulthood, and that’s what opens the forest, and that’s what summons the ships. They do everything they can to make sure things are good. Some planets don’t have sapient life, so the armada stops, refuels, and moves on. Others … others are like this one. They have inhabitants who can communicate, reason, understand what’s coming. Those ones, the armada has to approach a little differently.”

I paused, trying to collect my thoughts. Suddenly, the compulsion that I’d thought might be intended to isolate us from our neighbors made a terrible, logical sense.

“When the seeds sprout and find templates to base themselves off of, they copy their targets completely,” I said slowly. “They have the memories and minds of the people they become. Only a little more standoffish, because it’s hard to really love a species you don’t belong to. They learn—we learn—with time. The people around us are all we have. We seek them out. We try to understand them. And the whole time, we’re telling everyone what we are. We’re telling them the invasion is coming.”

My voice dropped to a whisper, until I wasn’t sure any of them would be able to hear me. I couldn’t force myself to speak any louder.

“And if anyone asks us not to invade their planet, that goes out through the forest, and when the armada gets close enough, they know we’ve been asked nicely, and they go away.”

Everyone stared at me. I closed my eyes, trying to focus on the feeling of First’s talons running through my hair, and not the sucking dread in the pit of my stomach.

Mandy broke the silence first. “People are dying,” she said. “Lucas is dead. Tucson is on fire. I don’t even know … If those ships came down all over the world, thousands of people could be dead already. Thousands of cities could be burning. And you think because we never asked you not to, that means we’ve given you permission?”

// calm your pet. // First’s tone was suddenly cold. // we have tolerated much. we will not tolerate disrespect from meat. //

“Mandy, calm down,” I said. “They did give us fair warning.”