// soon. close. ready? // Their last word had an echo to it, the sound of a dozen different languages layered on top of one another. I had heard that echo before, a reassuring implication that I wasn’t alone in this forest when I slept—and more, that I was not alone in my alien condition when I woke. I had never been able to find another person who shared my convictions about the upcoming invasion. I’d met other “aliens,” sure, but none of them had the same framework of beliefs and details that I did.

Maybe it’s silly, but when I heard the voices whisper through the forest of flowers, it was easy to think each of them might belong to another scout, working alone and without clear instructions in hostile, alien terrain.

That’s the thing about being from outer space. I’m an alien to the people around me. It’s easy to forget that this also makes them alien to me.

// ready? // asked the flowers again, more urgently this time.

“Yes,” I said, and closed my eyes.

The air thrummed with the affirmative, answers coming from all parts of the forest. The scent of honey was thick and heavy in the air, so sweet it was like breathing candy. I relaxed further, slipping toward sleep while I was already dreaming. The vines were wrapped everywhere around me, a maternal embrace so complete, so familiar, that it pulled the stress from my body, leaving me relaxed for the first time since I had left for work. It was going to be all right. Everything was going to be all right.

The forest sang around me, wordless songs of conquest and hunger and the stars, and I slept in its embrace, aware that I was dreaming, equally aware that the dream was finally, blissfully coming to an end.

4.

When I woke up, the sun was shining through the clouds, and the scent of honey was gone. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that a step had been taken—a step that had been in progress since long before I was taken, long before I was returned.

Ready, whispered the voice of the forest, and I was. Oh, yes. I was.

Chapter 3

Seattle, Washington: July 16, 2031

Twenty-two days pre-invasion

1.

Work, again: the slow grind against a stone made of people who hated me for being different and good at my job. Another talk with my supervisor about the way people touched my things, ending with the not-so-subtle suggestion that maybe it was time I clean all the personal items out of my desk. It felt like failure. It felt like giving ground. It also felt like the only way to win. Sometimes retreat is your only way to take the resources your enemy wants away.