“Alien, but not an Olyix. We’re very different.”

“Oh, Je-zus wept!”

“Do you recall the Fermi paradox?” Jessika asked. “Fermi asked: Where are they? You always assumed life in the galaxy is rare, that because of its size you would never coexist with another species. That is only partly true. When sentience arises, and begins to make itself known with radio emissions, the Olyix arrive—with their false friendship, and their religious greed. So, in truth, the answer to Fermi is: We have been hiding. And now you must join us, out in the silent darkness between the stars. That is where you will be safe.”

“Your colleague is Soćko, right?” Yuri said.

“Yes. He allowed himself to be captured by Baptiste Devroy’s people during the firefight on Althaea. We have been searching for an Olyix snatch operation since our arrival. Horatio Seymore was a stroke of good fortune. The Olyix proxies like Devroy would be instructed to snatch low-visibility humans, and that’s what Horatio was—apart from Gwendoline. She was a rogue factor that would elude even the most talented matcher.”

“Holy shit,” an ashen Loi muttered, looking like he might be sick again.

“So Soćko is the one who crashed that ship out of the wormhole,” Yuri said. “He flew it here. He switched on the beacon before he went back into hibernation.”

“Correct. Our bodies have the ability to resist contamination by Olyix biotechnology. They would have been unable to elevate him, though that would not have been apparent to them at first. It gave him time to infiltrate their operation. I have been waiting for a disabled Olyix ship to be detected ever since the firefight at the warehouse.”

“Sonofabitch,” Alik spat. “Then the others in the ship, they’ve been…elevated?”

“The Olyix truly believe the God at the End of Time to be real. It will coalesce out of the thoughts of every species left as the universe collapses. Because life is so rare, and so many civilizations are destined to fall long before the end of time, the Olyix see it as their duty to carry every sentient species to the apex of evolution. But the God only needs your thoughts, your personality, not your body. The Olyix have been stealing humans right from the start to experiment on. We were the ones who started the rumor about Kcells making brain transplants possible, because we knew that’s what they’d do—allowing a captured, cored-out body to move among you unseen. But their main focus, the reason they snatched so many people, was to research the best way to sustain a human brain on the pilgrimage. Their technology is far more advanced than they have revealed to you.”