A couple of hours after sunrise, the white one stood upright, its long stick fingers covered in what looked like tar. It backed away from the black one, and the black tar substance melted off its fingers like candle wax onto the floor. The black one had an elaborate system of glass-like bulbs now sticking out from under the wing-like shell of its back and what looked like hundreds of delicate wires flowing from those bulbs into the back of its head. The tar substance was everywhere.

The white one moved to exit the cave, and Ortega followed it. “Are you going to leave him in this mess?”

The white one stopped, turned, and looked at her.

“It feels cruel to leave him lying in his own filth like this.”

It continued to look at her, its big gemstone eyes glowing. They seemed to catch the light of the morning sun, glowing much brighter now than they had during the night.

“Well, tell me how to clean it up.”

The alien looked at her, silent.

“Will plastic gloves help?”

Still silent.

“I won’t, but will soap hurt him?”

Kaveh shook his head in utter bewilderment. Okay, not Autobots and Decepticons. Maybe blackie had just had a rough night and his bro was doing him a solid. Kaveh had been there a time or twenty.

“If it’s all biomatter, that means it’s going to rot. I need disinfectant.”

This time, there was a long pause between her words and . . . whatever she was hearing, then she grew agitated. “Wait, how is this my fault?”

what the pluperfect passive subjunctive fuck

The alien lowered its head a bit, its fingers curling up like it was one of those claw machines you try and fail to grab toys with.

“Why was he able to manipulate electromagnetic fields like that at all? Why did he even have that ability?”

The alien moved closer to her in what looked like a clear intimidation gesture. She didn’t even flinch.

“Well, it worked! He ran into a human, and he protected himself. I tried to stop him, and I couldn’t.”

The alien was now standing right over her, and she had to crane her neck to look at it properly.

“Don’t you dare blame this on me!” she said, nearly shouting. “You threaten my mind, let me wander off into the woods where you know Enola is running around somewhere, trust me with an untested weapon that you didn’t know the full side effects for, and then blame me when a fail-safe you installed to protect Obelus from humans succeeds in protecting him from a human. He could have killed me!”

The alien’s hands relaxed a bit, and he took a step back.

“It’s a good goddamn thing, then! If he wants to kill anyone, he’ll have to get creative.” She looked over at Kaveh, sparing a glance for the condemned. “What about him?”