“That feels like a vote in favor of ‘hoax.’” I frowned. “But I’ve heard that signal before. I … I understood it. How could I understand it if it was a hoax?”

For a moment, Graham didn’t say anything, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing. I could understand it if there was nothing to understand, if the part of my mind which insisted I was an alien was feeding me false data. My understanding of the signal was both the lady and the tiger, because either it proved, absolutely, that I was truly alien, or it proved—with the same certainty—that I had never been an alien at all.

“We know the signal was intercepted by the Portland Observatory,” said Graham. “We could go there and ask to speak with Dr. Vornholt.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t find him.”

“I can’t. No one can. Which makes me think the ‘fake name’ theory is probably the right one.” Graham smiled, half-encouraging and half-strained, and the absence of artificial cheer was probably the best part of his expression. “What do you say? Want to go to Stephen King country and see if we can find the person who talks to aliens?”

I didn’t have to think. “Yes,” I said. “I have some vacation time. I’ll make this work. Just … come home, okay?”

Graham’s smile slowly dissolved into a cautious frown. “You got a bad feeling?”

“I want you to stay near me until this is over. Whatever it is.”

Whatever it was, it was going to get worse before it got better … and “better” was still very much in the eye of the beholder.

“Come home,” I repeated.

Graham hesitated before he nodded.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

Chapter 4

Seattle, Washington: July 19, 2031

Nineteen days pre-invasion

1.

The airport arrivals gate was surprisingly empty. According to Mandy and her hawkish passion for the news, air travel had dropped almost thirty percent since the alien signal was intercepted. People had already started canceling nonessential travel, saying they’d changed their plans, when they’d really stopped wanting to leave the ground.

The alien signal had been ripped apart and put back together by every research institute and think tank in the world, with at least half openly releasing their findings to the public, and some members of the remaining half finding ways to quietly leak their own findings. So far, no one had managed to discredit the thing. If anything, they were proving it more and more conclusively, finding tiny artifacts that spoke to an utterly inhuman method of constructing and compressing the signal.

People were still hoping the alien visitors would be coming in peace, but they were keeping their feet on the ground until they knew one way or another. Fear is a powerful motivator when it comes to that sort of thing.