There was a wealth of information packed into that word, possessiveness and familiarity and fear and loathing and yes, hope. Hope that soon, all of this would start making sense, and we wouldn’t be babes in the woods anymore, wandering endlessly, never knowing where any of this was going to end. The forest would end it all.

I looked at him more carefully. He was a stranger. He could have been any man on the street, dressed in his windbreaker and blue jeans. He could have been my brother, differences in complexion and bone structure aside. Something about him screamed “family” to me, screamed it all the way down my spine, like electricity seeking a grounding wire.

From the way he was looking at me, he was feeling something similar. Then his gaze shifted, going to the crook of my elbow, and his eyes widened, more like an owl’s than a person’s.

“You’re like me,” he breathed.

Confused, I looked down. My constant scratching had broken through the skin, tearing it until I should have bled. There was no blood. Instead, a hairline cluster of green, fibrous vines showed through, curled at the ends, like the wires on a scrubbing brush. I stared at them. They didn’t disappear. Cautiously, I reached down and tugged on the longest one.

The pain was immediate and electric, racing through a series of connections that felt like a spider web underneath my skin. I let go of the tendril, and the pain receded.

“You can’t pluck them,” said the stranger. “If you try, it hurts. Don’t worry, though. They’ll get less tender with time.”

I turned my attention from the tendril to him. “What do you mean?”

“Look,” he said. Reaching up, he began to carefully peel away the bandage, talking as he did. “My name’s Jeff. I knew I wasn’t the only one, but you’re all so far away, you were always just voices in the vines. I never thought I’d get to meet one of you. Not before the invasion started. Where do you live?”

“Washington,” I said, lips numb. There were hints of darker green behind the bandage, like whatever he was about to show me wasn’t … human. Like the essential humanity we had been hiding behind for so long was finally getting ready to fall away and reveal our true forms, whatever those might be.

I wasn’t ready. I might never be ready. I had always been an alien, but I had been a human at the same time, able to walk through the world without drawing attention to myself.

“State or DC?”

“State.” I didn’t look away. I couldn’t look away. This wasn’t the time to start running: not if I ever wanted to stop again. “We’re on our way to Maine.”