The Bones Beneath My Skin

Chapter twelve

THEY HEADED east.

Nate asked where they were going.

Art grinned up at him.

“I have no idea. Isn’t that awesome?”

Nate let it go.

THEY KEPT to back roads. Alex said main highways were off-limits if at all possible. They couldn’t take the chance.

They hadn’t made the news. There was nothing about them on any radio station Nate could find. Nothing in any papers he got when they stopped for gas.

Alex said that didn’t mean civilians weren’t looking for them.

THERE WERE beasts in Montana.

Art demanded they pull over, jumping up in the seat, stretching over Nate and plastering her face against the window.

“Alex!” she cried.

“Alex, look at them! Alex, pull over, pull over, pull over.”

He thought Alex would keep going. Would tell her they didn’t have time to stop.

Art had said time was fluid. That it could bend.

Alex stopped.

In a flat field with a snowcapped mountainous backdrop was a herd of bison. There had to be dozens of them.

Art was scrambling over Nate and out the door even before Alex had turned off the truck. The air was cool. Nate stared after her for a moment before turning to tell Alex that it’d been good of him to stop.

But Alex wasn’t there.

His door was open, and he was crossing around the front of the truck.

Art stood at the top of an embankment, gazing down at the bison below. She was waving her arms wildly, face alight as she glanced over her shoulder at Alex as he approached. He didn’t speak, but it didn’t matter. Art did enough talking for the both of them.

Nate thought he should stay right where he was.

This didn’t concern him.

This wasn’t about him.

Alex looked back at the truck and arched an eyebrow, jerking his head toward the field.

Nate was out of the truck before he realized he was even moving.

“…and they’re so much bigger than I thought,” Art was exclaiming, nose a little red.

“I mean, you see pictures of them, but that doesn’t show anything. Look at them! They’re huge. Oh my heck, there are babies. Alex! Nate! Look at the babies.”

Nate came to stand next to Alex. Their shoulders brushed together by accident. Alex was warm. Nate didn’t move away.

But then the breath was knocked from his chest because Art was right. They were big, far bigger than he ever expected them to be. And they were close. He could hear them snorting and snuffling, heads bent low as they grazed.

“Wow,” he breathed.

“That’s… wow.”

Art laughed.

“Right? That’s what I said.”

“You ever seen these before?” Alex asked him.

“No. There aren’t too many bison in DC.”

Alex rolled his eyes.

“Imagine that.”

“You?”

Alex looked back out at the animals.

“Once. A long time ago. It was… yeah.”

Nate didn’t push. He’d already gotten more than he expected.

But then Alex said.

“I was just a kid. Road trip. Went through Glacier. Yosemite. It—haven’t seen them since.”

Art tilted her head back, looking up at them.

“Were they this big back then?”

Alex shrugged.

“Bigger, even.”

Her eyes widened. Then.

“Do they taste like bacon? Can we get one and see?”

Nate coughed explosively.

HE ASKED questions. Of course he did. It was in his nature. It was who he was.

The problem with asking questions was that sometimes he didn’t want to know the answers. Not exactly.

“Greys,” he said suddenly as they drove down a bumpy road.

Art hummed but didn’t look up from her book.

“Aliens.” He breathed heavily through his nose.

“Big heads. Big black eyes.”

“What about them?” she asked.

“Are they… are they real?”

She looked up at him.

“You really want to know?”

He nodded slowly.

“Yes. They’re real.”

“Oh,” Nate said, unsure what to do with the information now that he had it.

“Yeah, but honestly? Those guys are jerks. Seriously. If you ever meet one, just punch it in the face.”

Nate didn’t know what to do with that either.

Alex snorted but said nothing.

Art’s face scrunched up.

“They have a weird obsession with probing. Like, okay, we get it, you want to see what the insides look like, but my word, there are scans that can do that. You don’t need to stick something up an anus to find out. I think they just have a rectum fetish. Do you know what fetishes are? I do. It’s when you—”

“Art,” Alex said.

Art sighed and went back to her book.

Nate rolled down the window, trying to gulp in as much fresh air as possible.

He didn’t ask any more questions for the rest of the day.

THEY HAD a routine when they stopped.

They didn’t want to be seen all at once. Two men traveling with a girl could be memorable. Motels were fine. They’d park far away from the office, and either Alex or Nate would go in, leaving the other two in the truck.

Same with food. Only one of them would go inside.

Gas stations were trickier. Some had cameras. Art would slide from the seat, lying down by Nate’s legs. Alex would go inside and pay. He’d come back out and fill the tank. It was quick and easy. No one ever paid them any mind.

Until Havre, Montana.

It was a little town near the Canadian border. They’d swung south before heading north again. They were spinning their wheels, waiting for something to happen, for Art to tell them the way. She’d said it wasn’t time yet, that she’d know when and where she needed to go. She’d tried to explain it to Nate, telling him it was a tug in her head, because she didn’t need to speak where she’d come from. The first time she’d ever even had a mouth was with Oren.

That had sent Nate spiraling for hours.

She’d laughed at him.

Alex had scolded her.

She’d apologized.

Nate wasn’t sure she’d actually meant it.

“We need to stop,” Alex said, approximately a week after Art had sat on a picnic table and told him she was an alien from another planet.

“Need to fill up.” It was late afternoon, and they’d probably need to start looking for a place to stop for the night soon. There were heavy-duty sleeping bags packed in the bed of the truck that they’d managed to grab before fleeing the cabin. Art had wanted to use them immediately. Nate had said he’d rather have a bed if at all possible.

He’d never seen such a look of betrayal on a space princess’s face before.

He’d almost felt guilty.

Art nodded but didn’t look up from her book.

“Tell me when I have to get on the floor, partner. I’m with a cowboy about to partake in a shootout to save the woman of my dreams from the clutches of her evil oil-baron uncle.”

Alex glanced over at Nate.

“I blame you for those books.”

Nate rolled his eyes.

“Just because you don’t know how to read.”

“He knows how to read,” Art said.

“He just doesn’t like to. It’s because he doesn’t have an imagination.”

“And you do?” Nate asked before he could stop himself.

She looked up from her book.

“Of course I do. Don’t most people?”

There were times like this, times when Art seemed so damn human that he could almost forget what she’d told him while she sat on a picnic table in the middle of nowhere. That she was essentially a ghost possessing the body of a little girl who’d been in a coma that she’d never wake from. And when he did remember, when she said something like having an imagination, it threatened to send him into another state of panic. He’d never thought about it much before this. Never thought about the implications of what it could mean to find out humans weren’t alone in the universe. It was science fiction. It was aliens coming down in their spaceships and blowing up buildings and trying to enslave the human race. It was little green men with lasers or robots with spindly fingers. They were monsters from deep space, and that’s all they were to Nate. He’d never had any reason to believe otherwise.

But here she was, in the body of a ten-year-old girl. She liked reading. And bacon. And her sunglasses were on her head, and she was staring at him with such an inquisitive look on her face, like she couldn’t wait to hear his answer. It was so fucking outside of the realm of what Nate considered possible that he couldn’t even begin to fathom what it meant.

So he said.

“Yeah. I guess. Most people do.”

She nodded before turning back to her book.

“Except Alex.”

“Except Alex.”

“I don’t have time for an imagination,” Alex muttered, but he kept glancing at Nate like he knew exactly what he’d been thinking.

Art had been… vague about where she’d come from. She said it was much farther than humans had ever been before, which—okay. That was probably true. Because the universe was terribly vast, and from Nate’s rudimentary knowledge of astronomy and space travel, he didn’t think they’d gotten very far outside of their own solar system, much less the galaxy. He remembered, loosely, a quote he’d read from Carl Sagan, who said there were more stars in the heavens than grains of sand on all the Earth. It hadn’t meant much to Nate then. He hadn’t really given it more than a passing thought.

But now?

The thought was wondrously horrible.

He thought about asking Art if there were others out there. Other… aliens. Besides the asshole Greys.

He couldn’t find it in himself to force the words out. He didn’t think he wanted to know the answer.

Sometimes he could almost make himself believe he was on a road trip with a man and his daughter.

Who’d broken into his cabin.

And then forced him on said road trip when soldiers and helicopters came.

He was pretty close to spiraling when he saw the sign.

Havre, Montana.

“We’ll stop here,” Alex said.

“In and out. We’ll be quick. Find somewhere down the road to stop for the night.”

Nate didn’t say a thing.

IT WAS cooler here than it’d been at Herschel Lake. There were still patches of snow on the ground, dirty and gray. Havre itself wasn’t anything spectacular. It looked like any other small town they’d driven through over the past week. The sun was weak overhead, and the clouds were thin and wispy.

They stopped at the first gas station they came to. Art was on the floor of the truck, her head lying against Nate’s knee, her focus still on her book. Nate brushed a hand through her hair. She hummed a little and leaned into it.

The station had four pumps. Unleaded was a buck twenty, something Alex grumbled about. It’d gotten more expensive the farther north they’d gone. Nate had asked about money, asked how their impromptu trip was being funded a few days before. Alex had stared at him for a long moment before showing him the contents of a secret pocket in his duffel. Inside were rolled bundles of cash, held together by thick rubber bands. It’d been quick, just a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t, but it’d been enough.

“You planned this,” Nate had told him, trying to keep his voice even.

“Her. You planned it.”

Alex had shaken his head.

“Not intentionally. Not at first. But once I started, I had to be careful. They’d have gotten suspicious. Ended up taking a year.”

Nate hadn’t said much after that, still stuck on they’d have gotten suspicious. The ever-omnipotent they. Those in the Mountain. The ones who’d held Art. They were the ones chasing after them, most likely in the form of the water guy. They wanted her back.

Nate understood why.

They pulled up to the pump, the gas tank on the passenger side.

Alex turned off the truck.

“I’ll be quick.”

Nate smiled tightly at him. These stops always soured his stomach. Rattled his nerves a bit. Nothing ever happened, but he was paranoid. He’d earned the right after everything.

Alex opened the door and slid out of the truck. He paused for a moment, raising his arms over his head as he stretched. Nate absolutely did not look at the thin sliver of the skin on his back as his flannel shirt rose above his jeans.

Alex closed the door behind him.

Nate watched as he glanced around, taking in the gas station. There was a car parked in front of the small convenience store. Their truck was the only one at the pumps.

Quick and easy.

Alex rounded the front of the truck and headed toward the store.

The truck’s engine ticked as it cooled.

The air in the cab felt stuffy. Nate cracked the window and took in a deep breath of cool air.

Art turned another page. Then she said.

“Alex likes you.”

“So you’ve said,” Nate told her, hand still in her hair.

“I know. Just wanted to remind you in case you forgot.”

“I didn’t.”

“Okay. It’s just he can act like he doesn’t sometimes.”

“I know.”

“He doesn’t know how to show emotions.”

Nate snorted.

“That might be an understatement.”

She squinted up at him.

“Just don’t give up on him.”

“I wasn’t—what do you mean?”

“He’s going to need someone… after.”

Nate didn’t like the sound of that.

“After what?”

She bit her bottom lip.

“After I go home. He’s… he thinks he can be alone. But it’s not good for him. He’s… he needs someone. Like you.”

Nate hadn’t really thought that far ahead, aside from that night in the motel. He wondered if it was because he still didn’t necessarily believe it. Oh sure, he knew something was going on. After all, he’d seen Humvees being thrown into helicopters. But the idea of there being an after was nebulous at best. They had been almost aimless as they’d driven on, Alex asking Art every now and then if she was getting anything. She’d shake her head and say something about how it wasn’t time yet, that she’d know when it was and where it was. What that meant… well. Nate didn’t know if he was prepared to find out yet.

So, no. He hadn’t thought about after. He was barely thinking about tomorrow. It’d have been like he was in a fugue state if everything wasn’t so startlingly sharp around him, as if he were seeing colors for the first time.

“I don’t think he’ll need anything,” Nate said slowly.

She shook her head.

“You’re wrong. He’s not like he was before. Things have changed. He’ll need someone like you. No. You know what? Not someone like you. Just… you.”

Nate looked out the window toward the store. He could see inside. Alex was at the drink coolers, probably getting Art her juice and Nate his Gatorade. Nate had asked for one once the first time they’d stopped, and every time after, Alex had made sure to buy one. It wasn’t—it wasn’t anything. It was probably just to shut Nate up so Alex wouldn’t have to listen to him bitch and moan about being thirsty. It was fine. Everything was fine.

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Nate finally said.

“He’s going to be fine on his own.”

Art wasn’t happy with that.

“Why won’t you believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s that—oh shit.”

“What?”

He ignored her, focus on the brown car that had just pulled up in front of the store.

Three words were emblazoned on the side.

HILL COUNTY SHERIFF

“Stay down,” Nate hissed at her.

“Don’t move.”

“Is it him? The water guy?”

The fact that she’d picked up on what Nate had called the Enforcer would have been hysterical if Nate hadn’t suddenly felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on his head. “No. Cop.”

“Alex?”

“Still inside.” And he hadn’t seen the new arrival. He was moving toward the front counter, plastic bottles in his hand. Nate screamed in his head, trying to force him to look over, to just turn his fucking head so he could—

And Alex did just that. One moment his attention was focused on the store clerk. The next, his head jerked toward the window, eyes narrowed in time to see the deputy pull himself from the sedan.

The deputy was a squat man with thinning blond hair. His cheeks were flushed a little, mirror shades covering his eyes. He wasn’t looking into the store. No, his attention was focused on the truck. He stared at it for a moment, head cocked. He nodded at Nate when he saw him inside, and it looked like he was going to walk over.

Instead, he turned back toward the store, closing the door to the sedan behind him.

Nate felt a hand tightening on his knee.

He looked down.

Art’s forehead was resting against his thigh, her fingers digging into his jeans. She was breathing shallowly, these quick little breaths like she was on the verge of a panic attack.

“Art,” he whispered. “Art.”

She didn’t answer him.

“Shit,” he muttered, glancing back up at the store. The deputy was inside. Alex was at the counter. The store clerk was ringing him up. The deputy was moving toward the coolers, but then he stopped. His shoulders stiffened slightly. He glanced back over his shoulder at Alex. Then he looked out the window at the truck.

“Come on,” Nate said.

“Come on, hurry up, hurry up.”

Art continued to breathe quickly.

Nate pressed his hand against her head.

His thoughts were racing. They were get out and what’s taking so long and it’s fine, it’s fine, everything is fine. And then came a voice that wasn’t his, and it felt intrusive and clawing and bright, and it said, Alex, Alex, Alex, please don’t leave me, please be safe.

Nate knew that voice.

He turned slowly to look down at the little girl sitting on the floor of the truck.

Her eyes were closed. Her chest rose and fell.

And then he heard a third voice, rough and deep in his head, and it said, be ready, be ready in case we need to move. If you have to, you leave with him. He’ll keep you safe. Nate is—

There was a complicated flurry of images in his head. The cabin. The lake. A field of flowers. A woman with black hair. A little boy with bright blue eyes. And Nate, Nate, Nate. Nate in the kitchen in the morning looking sleepy as he sipped a cup of coffee. Nate standing by the lake. Nate sleeping against the window of the truck. Nate angry, Nate scared, Nate laughing, and he’d never seen himself this way. He looked wild and fierce and vital. It was too much too soon, and Nate was drowning under the onslaught. The images were accompanied by shifting emotions, from anger and grief to tentative trust and heartache like Nate had never felt before. He was overwhelmed by the intense loneliness of it all, like he was alone and had been for a very long time.

He blinked, a lump lodged firmly in his throat.

“What’s happening?” he managed to croak.

Then: a clear, unambiguous thought.

Nate?

He said, Yes.

The door to the convenience store opened.

Alex, whose voice he’d heard in his head, was walking toward them, a hardened look on his face.

Nate’s skin was crawling.

Art sighed against Nate’s leg.

She said.

“You felt it, didn’t you?”

Before Nate could answer, another voice called out.

“Hey, you there. Hold up a minute.”

The deputy had followed Alex out the door. Alex was only halfway across the parking lot. He stopped, the plastic bag in his hand bouncing on his thigh. He squared his shoulders and turned around toward the deputy. “Yes?”

The deputy wasn’t smiling, but his hand wasn’t on his gun, either.

“That your truck?”

“Yes.”

“Nice rig.”

“Thanks.”

“Thinking about getting myself a truck like that.”

“That right.”

“Sure is. Got a Ford right now, but my daddy had a Chevy when I was a kid. I loved that truck.”

Alex shrugged.

“Don’t have any complaints.”

“Washington, huh?”

Alex didn’t respond.

The deputy stood a few feet away from him.

“License plate. Washington.”

“Yeah.”

“On a trip?”

“Me and a buddy.”

“Where ya headed?”

“South Dakota.”

The deputy nodded.

“Strange route to take from Washington. All the way up here.”

“We went through Glacier.”

“Pretty, right?”

“Sure,” Alex said, and Nate decided right then and there that if they got out of this, if they managed to escape without seeing the inside of a prison cell, he was going to make Alex work on his small talk.

“What’s in South Dakota?”

“What the heck,” Art muttered.

“Is every human this nosy?”

Nate felt like screaming.

“Badlands,” Alex said.

“Oh yeah!” the deputy said.

“Great park, if you’ve never been.”

“First time.”

“Camping?”

Alex nodded.

“Sounds like a good time.” The cop glanced over Alex’s shoulder at the truck. Nate almost waved at him but decided against it at the last moment.

“You and a buddy. That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Alex sounded as if he were done with the conversation. Nate should know. He’d heard that tone of voice many times in the past couple of weeks.

“Well, y’all have a safe trip, all right?”

“Thank you.”

The deputy turned back toward the store.

Alex turned toward the truck.

Nate’s stomach flipped.

Then.

“One more thing.”

Alex’s jaw clenched before he glanced back at the deputy.

“You serve?” the deputy asked.

Nate wondered if the deputy had a death wish. The gun was sitting in the glove compartment. All he had to do was grab it. Sure, he didn’t know the first fucking thing about guns, but it couldn’t be that hard, right? Safety off, finger on the trigger. Point and shoot. He didn’t need to kill anyone. Just a warning. That’s all it’d have to be.

“It’s just you carry yourself like a soldier,” the deputy said.

“My daddy was in Korea. Had almost the same haircut and everything.”

And Nate could feel how much that rankled Alex. Somehow, he knew that Alex wanted to correct him, telling him that he wasn’t a soldier, he was a Marine, and there was a goddamn difference.

Instead, he said.

“Long time ago. Old habits are hard to break.”

The deputy nodded.

“Thank you for your service. Never did myself, but I know what kind of man it takes to enlist. My daddy taught me that.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Sure. All right, then. Best let you get on your way. Have a good day, sir.” The deputy gave a jaunty salute and turned back toward his car.

Alex was moving even as the deputy did. He went to the pump and started filling the truck.

The deputy’s car didn’t move.

It took perhaps two minutes for the truck’s tank to fill.

It felt like it went on for hours.

Eventually, Nate heard the telltale click on the pump’s handle.

Alex screwed the gas cap back on as he put the nozzle back.

He was around the front of the truck and opening the door. He tossed the bag inside before he sat down. He wasn’t looking at either of them.

He reached down and grabbed the exposed wires, rubbing them together.

Nothing.

The truck didn’t start.

He pressed the wires together again.

No spark.

Alex grunted and tried a third time.

Nothing.

“Fuck,” Nate breathed.

“Art,” Alex snapped. “Let go.”

Art looked up. Her eyes were wide.

“Let go,” Alex said again, and Nate knew the moment she did, even though he didn’t know what she was doing. One moment his head was stuffed full of voices that didn’t belong there, and the next, there was only his own thoughts. It felt like he’d breached the surface after being under for far too long. He gasped in a deep breath as Alex pressed the wires together again. They sparked. The truck roared to life.

He put it in drive and pulled away from the pump, heading toward the road.

“What the fuck was that?” Nate demanded.

“What the hell—”

“Why?” Alex growled, and it took Nate a moment to realize the question wasn’t directed toward him, but at Art.

“Why did you—”

“Because he fits,” Art said.

“Like you. It’s not quite the same, but you know it as well as I do.”

“He didn’t want this. He doesn’t want any of this.”

“Have you asked him?”

“I don’t have to. He’s told us both enough that he—shit.”

“What?” Nate asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.

“He’s following us.”

Nate looked out the rear window.

The deputy was behind them.

“He’s in this,” Art said, still seated at Nate’s feet.

“You know he is. He’s here. With us. He hasn’t left. He won’t leave us. He won’t leave you.”

“Don’t,” Alex said, the warning clear in his voice.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you need to stop. You hear me?”

“Just because you can’t see it yet, doesn’t mean—”

The light bar on the deputy’s car flared to life, flashing red and blue.

“Fuck,” Alex snarled, banging a hand against the steering wheel.

“Art, get back up on the seat. And don’t you say a goddamn word, you hear me? Nate, get the gun. Keep it hidden.”

Art moved.

Nate did not.

“Now, Nate.”

Nate moved. He popped open the glove compartment. Alex’s gun was sitting on a pile of paperwork.

“If he runs the plate, we’re—”

“I know.”

“You can’t just kill him.”

Alex wouldn’t look at him. He pulled the truck to the side of the road. He broke apart the exposed wires and shoved them back into the dash as the truck fell silent. He put the panel back in place, banging on it with his fist.

Nate took the gun and set it in his lap. Art handed him her coat, and he laid it over the gun.

“We’ll be okay,” she told him.

“You’ll see.”

He tried not to flinch.

“I thought you said you couldn’t read minds.”

“I can’t.”

“I heard—”

“That wasn’t mind reading, Nate. Jeez. Give me some credit. Even if I could, I wouldn’t do that to you without your consent. That was just me forming a connection with you so you could hear what Alex and I were talking about in our heads. I wanted to keep you in the loop so you would—why are you staring at me like that?”

“Do you not hear yourself when you talk?” Nate demanded.

“What the hell do you mean connection?”

She frowned.

“I don’t know how I can be any clearer. I simplified it as much as I could so your smaller—but nonetheless fascinating—human brain could have a basic understanding of—”

“Both of you shut the hell up,” Alex snapped.

“Not a word, you hear me? He’s coming.”

Alex rolled down his window.

Sure enough, the deputy walked up to the side of the truck.

“Hey,” he said, a smile on his face.

“I hope I didn’t startle you. I just—well, well, well, who do we have here?” His smile widened at the sight of Art.

“Hello. I didn’t see you at the gas station.”

“I was lying down,” Art told him, voice sticky-sweet.

“I was so tired. I was still wearing my seat belt, though, because that’s the law.”

“Aren’t you just precious,” the deputy said.

“Good girl. Always wear your seat belt.”

“I want to be a police officer when I grow up, so I know the law very well,” Art said.

“My daddy said you have to be very brave to do that, so you must be very brave too.”

“Well,” the deputy said, blushing slightly.

“I don’t know about that. That’s very nice of you to say. This big guy your daddy?”

She nodded.

“He’s so awesome.”

“Well, you need to tell your daddy he’s got a taillight out.”

She gasped.

“Daddy! That’s against the law.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“Are you going to take him to jail?”

The deputy looked taken aback.

“No, no,” he said quickly.

“Of course not. Your daddy is a hero as far as I’m concerned. Just going to let him off with a warning. No one’s going to jail. No one’s even getting a ticket.”

A single tear tracked down Art’s cheek.

“Oh, thank you, sir. We’re going on a road trip, and I know that would make my daddy feel so bad if you took him away from me.”

“No need to feel bad,” the deputy assured her, and Nate could do nothing but stare in awe at the way she was playing him. They’d been lucky that he hadn’t run their plates. They wouldn’t have even matched up with the truck they’d stolen.

“Just wanted to make y’all aware so you can get the bulb changed out before you get too much farther. Don’t want to get pulled over again now, do you?”

“No, sir,” Art said with a sniff.

“I’ll make sure he gets it taken care of right away. Daddy’s special friend here will make sure too.”

The deputy’s smile faltered a little.

“Right. That’s… that’s just swell. Y’all have a good afternoon, okay?”

Art’s tears were gone as quickly as they’d come.

“Thank you, officer!” she chirped.

The deputy nodded and turned back toward his car behind them. He pulled out and made a U-turn, heading back toward the gas station.

“Wow,” Art said, slumping in the seat.

“That was close. It’s a good thing I learned how to work tear ducts pretty early on, right?”

Nate didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe it was better that way.

THEY DIDN’T stay in Havre. In fact, Alex made it a point to get them as far away from Havre as he possibly could. They’d stopped in the next town over at some local body shop and bought a bulb, cheap. Alex replaced it without a word, and they’d been off again.

They were still on the road long after the sun had set. Nate didn’t ask where they were going because he didn’t think even Alex knew.

Art had fallen asleep between them, head resting on Nate’s shoulder, snoring softly near his ear. He was pretty sure she was drooling, but he didn’t have the heart to shove her off, even if she’d somehow gotten inside his head.

Alex had turned reticent again, the look on his facing making it clear that he wasn’t in the mood for any kind of conversation.

Nate let him brood. For a couple of hours.

But then he couldn’t take it anymore.

He didn’t know how he’d lasted as long as he had. He was almost disappointed in himself.

“I heard you,” he said, flinching at how loud his voice sounded inside the cab of the truck after the lengthy silence.

“In my head. I heard her too.”

Alex grunted.

“That’s not a good enough answer. Not after this. You don’t get to be stoic. Not after everything. I heard you, Alex.”

Alex’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I know.”

“I saw things. Just—pictures. I don’t—”

“It’s—the closest word she can use to describe it is bonding. It’s… familial.”

“Familial.”

“It’s how she—they don’t have the structure we do. They aren’t born like we are. But they have… families. Or at least a semblance of one. She’s—there was just me. And now there’s you. She’s bonded with you. Like she has with me.”

“And now she can read my mind,” Nate said, sounding rather hysterical.

“And you can too.” Nate tried to block out all the thoughts he’d had of seeing Alex naked, because that wasn’t something he was willing to share. But the more he tried not to think about it, the more he did think about Alex with sweat on his bare skin, chest heaving as he leaned down to.

“Oh my god. No. Absolutely not. You stay out of my—”

“I can’t read your mind,” Alex said with a sigh.

“She can’t either. It’s a connection. Like a radio or a phone. Just… without the radio and the phone. I can’t see or hear anything you don’t want to show me. The same for you. For her. And it’s not on all the time. She facilitates it. I can’t do it now. And neither can you.”

That… didn’t make Nate feel any better.

“Did you ever talk about me before today with your voodoo mind spell?”

Alex snorted. Nate thought maybe it was his version of a laugh.

“Really. That’s the question that comes to your mind.”

“It is. And you need to answer it.”

“Yes.”

“Aha! I knew it. When? And what did you say about me?”

Alex glanced over at Nate.

“That first night you showed up. Art was curious about you. And I wanted to shoot you in the head and bury you in the woods.”

“Wow,” Nate said.

“I’m shocked. Really. That’s so surprising, coming from you.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Thanks. Thank you for not putting a bullet in my head. I mean that.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I know.”

Nate couldn’t reach over and slap him upside the head because he had an alien in the body of a little girl sleeping on his shoulder.

“You’re infuriating.”

“You’re annoying.”

“Don’t be rude.”

“Like a gnat in my ear.”

“You’re still not funny.”

And wonder of all wonders, Alex chuckled. Nate shouldn’t have liked the sound as much as he did. It wasn’t safe. Nothing about this was safe.

“I heard her,” he said slowly. “And you.”

“We covered that. You’re repeating yourself again.”

“And you said that it’s a bond. Family.”

“Right.”

“So she thinks of me as… what?”

“I don’t really know,” Alex admitted.

“There’s—it’s complicated. No one understood it at the Mountain. Not really. There wasn’t… they thought it was metaphysical. There was no actual quantifiable evidence of it. It hadn’t happened before—before I was assigned to her. It was just another thing they didn’t understand. Nothing changed, at least not physically. She bonded herself to me, and they thought they would see evidence in my brain scans. That there would be physiological changes. But there was nothing there.”

“That’s hardly surprising that you don’t have anything between your ears.”

“Har-har.”

Nate thought hard.

“But now she sees me as part of… this?”

Alex didn’t look very happy at the thought.

“It seems so.”

He didn’t know what to do with that.

“This is stupid. Like, this is the stupidest thing that’s ever happened to me. I can’t even begin to express how stupid this all is. You have to realize that, right? How ridiculous this sounds?”

“You’ll get past it,” Alex said.

“I was where you are at one point. I thought the exact same things you’re thinking right now. Even more, probably.”

“Yeah, okay. But you’ve had ten years. I’ve had two weeks.”

“Fair,” Alex said, though it sounded begrudging.

“She’s… complicated.”

“You are too.”

“Not really.”

Nate considered letting it go right there. Letting Alex off the hook, at least for now. Instead, he said, “And you?”

“What about me?”

“It wasn’t just Art.”

Alex’s body language was all but screaming for Nate to back the fuck up.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And since Nate apparently had no sense of self-preservation, he said.

“You’re lying. I heard you. I saw… what you see.” About me was left unsaid.

Alex was scowling again. Nate wondered when that had become comforting.

“It didn’t—”

“Does that mean you like me?” Nate wondered aloud, as if Alex wasn’t capable of reaching over and strangling him with one hand.

“Because I think that means you like me. At least a little bit.”

“Absolutely not,” Alex retorted.

“I don’t like anything about you.”

“Well that’s certainly not true. You seemed to like how I look in the morning when I drink coffee. Saw that image a couple of times.”

“Shut up,” Alex said through gritted teeth.

“That’s not… I didn’t know you’d see that. And it doesn’t mean anything. All I was doing was telling Art that she’d be safe with you in case something happened to me.”

“Wow,” Nate said.

“You must really like me if you think that.”

“I hate you,” Alex said.

Nate grinned in the dark.

“I don’t know that you do, buddy. What is it about sleepy me that gets you so—”

“I will kick you out of this truck and leave you here without a second thought.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. You’ve had enough feelings for one day. Relax. You look like you’re about to break the steering wheel. We don’t have to talk about how much you think about me laughing or any other various images of me you apparently have stored up in your head—oh my god, I was joking. Don’t you dare pull over, Alex.”

Alex pulled the truck back onto the road from where he’d slowed on the shoulder.

“You done?”

“I’m done.” He wasn’t, but he figured the rest could wait. There was still the woman he’d seen. The boy. They’d been mixed up with everything else. But he’d pushed Alex enough for one day. He had an idea of what that had been, but he wasn’t ready to force it upon Alex.

“It’s just… a lot. You know?”

“I know.” Alex still sounded wary.

“I had time to process. To understand. You haven’t. You’ll get there. But everything can’t happen all at once. I forgot that, I think.”

“Did that hurt?”

“What?”

“Admitting you were wrong.”

“I didn’t admit anything.”

Nate laughed quietly.

“Sure, Alex. Okay.” He glanced down at Art. Yes, she was definitely drooling on him.

“You love her, don’t you.”

Nate thought he wasn’t going to get a response. Art had told him that Alex had a hard time showing any emotion, but Nate didn’t think that was quite right. Alex did show emotion, but most people just couldn’t see it. And that was okay. Because he remembered Alex’s hands deftly braiding her hair. That was enough for him.

But Alex surprised him.

He said.

“She’s all I’ve got left.”

That hurt to hear more than Nate expected it to. He’d felt Alex’s loneliness. Felt the way it wrapped around him like a shield. The way Art had been intertwined with him, like she was a part of him. Nate understood that more than he cared to admit. But wasn’t there more to it than—

Things have changed. He’ll need someone like you. No. You know what? Not someone like you. Just… you.

Nate had seen hearts break up close.

It was the look on his mother’s face as she stood silently while his father screamed that he wouldn’t have a faggot for a son.

It was the look on his own face in the mirror after he’d come home from being fired for doing something he’d never thought he was capable of.

He didn’t want that for Alex. Not again. The dark-haired woman. The boy. Maybe he had more than a good idea of who they were. What they’d been to Alex. What the water guy had meant when he’d said the test had been to see what Art would do in the face of Alex’s grief.

But it would happen regardless. If Artemis Darth Vader left, if she… returned to wherever she’d come from, it would happen again.

Nate would witness it up close, no matter how much Alex tried to keep it locked up. If they stuck with each other.

If they stayed alive.

He understood now why Art had asked him.

And he thought Alex knew that too. That he was already preparing to say goodbye.

“You’ve got me too,” Nate said before he could stop himself.

“I’m… okay? You just—you have me too.”

Alex didn’t respond.

But then Nate didn’t expect him to. He stared out into the night sky and the stars above. They twinkled brightly out here in the middle of nowhere.

One seemed brighter than the others.

And it looked to have a trail behind it.

“Huh,” he said.

“Would you look at that. That’s… What was it called? Markham something. The comet. I think that’s the comet.”

Alex grunted, but that was okay with Nate. It was comforting somehow.

He watched the comet for the longest time.

Eventually he closed his eyes and slept.