And with the one side of the political fence claiming them heroes came the voices, the voices with their commentary.

Now we see a taste of what these alien beings are capable of.

We see an unprovoked attack and an alien defending itself and its human allies.

These men had every right to defend their country.

These men were vigilantes, careless, murderers. The alien had every right to defend itself.

What is to prevent beings this powerful from taking us over? From gaming our system? From overpowering us?

But those four men weren’t the only ones who died. Even the most reactionary channels weren’t able to spin it that Kaveh wasn’t killed by human hands. They had his picture, too. The channels proclaiming the gunmen to be heroes used photos of Kaveh that made him look “foreign,” his skin tone pitched darker, the skin around his eyes sallow.

Kaveh Mazandarani was a hero.

Kaveh Mazandarani was a tragedy.

Kaveh Mazandarani was a traitor.

This man was always a traitor. A collaborator with Nils Ortega, he weakened our military by exposing our secrets. Now he aligns with beings that threaten our very existence.

This is what you get when you let men like him into our country.

Refugee. Foreigner. Alien. Muslim. Traitor. We took his people in, and this is our repayment.

This is what you get when you let people like him flood into our country. They accept our generosity, and they spit in our faces. No more. No more. No more.

Never again.

Cora sat all the way up, her balled-up fists pressing into her cheeks, taking in the putrid horror of it all. Half the country had already narrativized Kaveh as a traitor, and they were drawing it back to his nation of origin. They had already labeled the alien as an existential threat, and had condemned this foreign man who hated America as an abettor. The other half, the half calling for reason, the half calling for a sense of perspective, the half waiting for more information before they made a judgment, was already on the losing side of the war.

She felt a presence next to her and didn’t even wait for him to settle, to give her any indication; she turned from the wall of televisions and threw her arms around his neck, pulled him close, hoped he could feel her relief that he was alive.

“Enola is in an induced coma. He will stay in it until I wake him.”

He placed his fingers on her back, drawing them up to her neck and across her skin, the first comforting gesture he’d made in months. She held him close for a while, as if letting him go might mean he’d disappear. Like their surroundings would disintegrate into oblivion, and he would fall into the darkness, too.