I wanted a distraction from the itch that still burrowed in the crook of my left elbow, roiling and stinging and catching my attention every few seconds, whether I wanted it to or not. It hurt. Not constantly, but often enough that I could never quite forget that it was there, or allow it to fade away.

The face of the man in the forest … I couldn’t quite remember what I’d seen, but I knew it wasn’t anything that could ever pass for human, not once he took the bandage away. Jeff. His name was Jeff. It was a silly name for an alien invader, simple and ordinary and human.

I snorted soft amusement, earning myself a curious, sleepy glance from Graham. Was “Anastasia” any better? We had picked up our names when we picked up our forms, and this part of the planet didn’t really like it when people refused the names their parents had given them. It had taken Graham almost two years to get his parents to stop calling him by his birth name, and his change had come with a physical transformation. Mine hadn’t.

Not yet. If Jeff was anything to go by, or if the itch at my elbow signified what I’d dreamt, it was coming.

“You okay?” asked Graham.

I turned to offer him the warmest smile I could muster. It wasn’t as easy as I wanted it to be. I was tired, and scared, and I itched. “Just woolgathering,” I said. “We’re going to the observatory in the morning, right?”

“As soon as we’re ready to face the world.” Graham grimaced. “I couldn’t get us an appointment with Dr. Vornholt, since he doesn’t seem to exist. But if we show up, we may be able to track him down.”

And once we had tracked him down, he would be able to play the signal for us, without filtering or distortion. That was our goal: to hear the aliens loud and clear and unencumbered, to find out whether this was a hoax or a uniquely distorted episode of The Brady Bunch somehow bouncing back to us off of a distant satellite. That was what Graham wanted, anyway. I didn’t need to hear the clean signal to know that it was real. I knew that. I needed to know what it meant—and how close the people who’d sent it were. Because it felt like they were almost here. Hearing the signal without distortions would give me a clearer idea of what to expect. I knew it.

This—the strange, not entirely voluntary game I’d been playing since I was three years old—was finally coming to an end, and when it got there, I was going to find out where my loyalties really were. I was going to find out what was under my own skin. Again, my memory shied away from whatever it was I had seen when Jeff had revealed himself to me. I wasn’t ready for it yet. Maybe I was never going to be ready.