by Ella James
He groaned, and as our bodies pressed together, I was reminded that he was one-hundred percent male. My breath hitched as the stars above us spun.
I’d only been kissed twice before—once by Jax McIntire at an eighth grade dance, and once before by Nick, after my recital. Neither had been like this (though the first Nick kiss had obviously been an experience).
I felt like the world had been ripped from underneath my feet. I was floating, weightless, like the steam that surrounded us, my only anchor to this world Nick's lips moving hard on mine.
I kissed him back as hard as I could, my hands first on his broad shoulders, then his strong arms, and when I ran out of air I pulled back gasping. Nick was half an inch away, cradling my face between his hands and pressing kisses on my cheeks, my chin, my nose, my neck. Moving down my throat, heating me inside, and I was going to explode.
My hands didn’t stay by my side. I just couldn’t keep them there. Neither could he. We didn’t hit the ball out of the park, but we definitely made it past first base. I remember thinking, as I kissed him, and he kissed me, that if the world ended after all, it was enough.
Nick ducked under the water while I changed. I wasn’t fast, because I was naked and wet, and outside of the hot springs it was freezing. I pulled the dress and jacket on first, followed by my damp socks, followed finally by my borrowed leggings, which I barely managed to get over my legs. When I did finally finish, Nick had been under so long I worried he’d drowned.
“Nick!” I fell to my knees by the springs and peered into the murky fog. He splashed up not three feet from me, and I shrieked.
“Shhhhh,” he hissed, laughing. Once again, the water barely reached his waist, but the moon had decided to bless me with some well-placed light. I was openly staring at the places my fingers had explored, and I blushed deeply. “Even though you wouldn’t think this was important to me, I feel kind of like I need some privacy, too,” he said. I bit my lip and turned my back to him.
“How long can you hold your breath?” I asked as he dressed.
“It’s more like slowing my body down than holding my breath,” he said. He touched my shoulder, and I spun, startled. He was wearing the same khakis and white button-up that he’d had on in the tent, presumably borrowed from the man of the family we’d robbed. He looked completely dry, even his coppery hair. “But to answer your question: roughly ninety-two and a half earth years.”
I shivered, but because of the cold. “I’m impressed. Also by your dry state. Any chance you could hook me up with that?”
He pursed his lips. “Hmmmmm… I could, but it would be faster to get warm in the tent.”
“Ok.” I lowered my voice to a whisper, because the image in my head—Nick, toweling me off—required it. “Let’s, uh…we should try to be quiet as we sneak past Vera.”
He winked, and we tiptoed through a steamy, twinkly dreamscape, back to the tent. We collapsed onto the sleeping bag, and immediately I was cold. “I thought you said I’d be warm,” I complained, and he laughed. “Not immediately. We need to get in the sleeping bag.”
My eyes were so big they bumped into each other. He smiled. “Just until you warm up.”
“Right. I know that. I mean, that’s what I thought.” Milo Mitchell, the least cool 17-year-old on the planet. “Let me just—oomph.”
He hit me in the head with my pillow—not hard, but with enough force that I was shocked, so I didn’t laugh immediately. Which made him worry he’d hurt me, which gave me time to steal the pillow. I reared back to give a devastating blow (he was alien, he could handle it)—but Nick wasn’t in the moon to take abuse. He snatched the pillow from my hands lightning fast, and as I cried “no fair” as he pummeled me until I took shelter in the sleeping bag.
He was in right behind me. Sneaky alien.
“So this was your plan all along, huh?”
“Maybe.” He grinned.
“But the human girl had to make the first move. Don’t forget that.”
“I could never forget you,” he whispered. He brushed my cheek with his knuckles, laughing softly. “You’re so amazing, Milo.”
All I wanted to do was stare at his face forever because it was so open. If he was a human, he would have hidden his feelings, and I was so glad Nick wasn't human, because what I saw on his face was extraordinary. He regarded me with wonder, genuine marvel. Lowly, human me. “I’ve been everywhere. Seen everything. None of it filled me with wonder. None of it... I don’t know. I didn’t mean what I said, back there at the springs. About wishing I didn’t…you know. I’m so lucky I found you.”
His fingers curled into my shoulders, and I turned on my back so I could face him completely. My heart pounded as he lowered gently onto me, pressing his forehead against mine, so his mouth brushed my jaw as he whispered, “There’s nothing like this where I come from. No closeness. I’ve told you we don’t have bodies, really. We do have a physical form—billions of units of synthetic matter that can merge into a single form twice as long as your planet.”
“Wuhhhh” was probably the noise I made, because that was hard to imagine. My mind immediately jumped to what I considered the most important question. “So can you, like, fly away?”
He smiled sadly. “Think of each unit as a platform. Each platform hosts part of the network. I exist within the network, but I’m tied to a particular platform only in so much as it hosts the area of the network I’m in.”
I nodded, not sure what to say. He was dumbing it down for me, but he needed to go a lot dumber. “So you really don’t have a body?” It was impossible for me to imagine.
“Just data, baby.” He smiled. “It’s how I’m able to write myself into different environments.”
I remembered when he first told me he wasn’t human. I had freaked out. But he had been right to keep it simple. If he had tried to explain this then, my head probably would have exploded.
“Vera is the same way?”
“Yes. She and I...the simplest thing you could call us is ‘Scouts’, in that our primary objective is to scan celestial bodies for resources for The Rest. We’re able to set our own secondary objectives within the parameters of our primary objective—”
I think my eyes crossed, because he laughed. “What I mean is, we get more leeway than other Ones. Every part has its purpose, and by necessity Scouts are able to separate from The Rest when an objective calls for it.”
“Ah.” I pretended to get it, but I really didn’t.
Nick smiled again, and I decided that even if he couldn’t read my actual thoughts, clearly his powers of observation were such that I was probably embarrassing myself every second I was around him.
Still smiling, he shifted his weight onto an elbow so he could look right at me. “I prefer this form of material permanence.” Which I guessed meant skin and stuff, ‘cause he traced a finger down my cheek and said, “This moment will stay with me forever.” He brushed my hair. “And this.” He grinned mischievously. “And all the ones from before.”
I blushed and shoved him, but he caught my arm and brought me forward so his face was an inch from mine.
“I’m still sorry,” he said gently.
“You still don’t need to be,” I whispered.
He took a deep breath, sighed, and pressed his lips flat. “I…I don’t want you to think of me as a machine. A program. Soulless,” he whispered.
I grabbed his face. “I never could. There’s no way I ever could.”
He leaned forward and kissed me, fast and hard. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to.” I kissed him again, then smirked. “Vera, on the other hand…”
“She’ll come around.”
I wrapped my arm around him. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Each Scout is different. We change based on the experiences we accumulate. But we are also in many ways the same. I know what Vera’s thinking. How she’s reacting to all of this.” A small smile. “She’ll come around.”
He pushed hi
mself into a sitting position and looked down at his knees. Misery rolled off of him as he spoke. “Even in this body, I define myself by The Rest. But…Vera is right—in my ‘mind,’ I’ve already split.”
“Like…fragmentation? What’s that mean, Nick?”
He flexed his jaw, and I could feel that there was so much more, just like I could feel when he decided to keep it to himself.
“She and I…work well as a team, if you can believe it. We've scouted hundreds of planets.” He grabbed my hand, still not lifting his eyes, and traced the palm with his fingertip. “Few had evolved past the—what you would call the amoeba stage of life.”
“And when they have?” I asked, clutching his hand as I, too, sat up. But I knew. “The test, right?”
He nodded.
“If they pass, you leave them alone?”
He nodded, taking my other hand, so we were face to face; he laced his fingers through mine and warmed me with a shot of heat. “But we don’t. Pass the test, I mean,” I whispered.
“You do.”
“Vera doesn't agree,” I said in a small voice.
“She will.”
“But they're on their way already—”
Nick shook his head. “They won’t make it.”
“I don’t want to be a broken record, but how do you know, Nick?”
“Because she sees it, too.” He stroked his thumb over the back of my hand. “She can see the truth about Us. The way things are. We’re too inefficient. We’ve grown too large. We’re slowing down. Stagnating.”
“So…you’re saying we don’t pass the test, but you think Vera will decide you guys shouldn’t take our gold? What would happen if you guys didn’t get any more gold?” I didn’t understand any of this. “Was that why she was crying? Does not getting gold mean that ‘The Rest’ would fragment? I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about all that. What I’m saying is I think you pass the test. But I think either way, I’ll win Vera to my side.”
“And she’ll blow the whistle again?”
He nodded. “She’ll call off the summons and I’ll change her mind before we blow our whistles in unison.” He grabbed me and pressed me tightly to his chest.
“That’s when you’ll have to go,” I choked out.
“Let’s not talk about that right now,” he said, stroking my shoulders.
“Can you explain to me what she needs to change her mind about in order to come to the same conclusion you did?” I asked.
“I’m not sure how to. You have to trust me. Vera—she’s been on this planet for as long as I have, but she’s been acting purely as an observer. Now she’s a participant. She can’t do what she wants, she’s feeling things like emotions and pain—”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“It’s essential. Emotion, the way you experience it, is like another sense. It informs every decision you make, no matter how mundane. It helps create memory, stimulates different parts of the brain. I want her to experience as much of it as possible.”
“And you really think this will change her mind.”
“Take it from me,” he said, “the more she experiences being human, she more she’ll see the value in it. Regardless of her feelings on fragmentation.”
I wanted to ask more about it—about fragmentation. I wanted to know how Nick would exist if the rest of his—his people—disappeared. Would it be like a turtle without a shell? Did you have to have the whole to have the parts? I couldn’t stand to think of a universe without Nick in it.
I wrapped my arms more tightly around him. “Tell me more about being human. I want to hear something good.”
“Being human.” He whistled, then smiled down at me. I loosened my grip on him and smiled back. “Did I finally stump you?”
He laughed. “Maybe.” He made a show of scratching his head. “Let’s see…Every day it’s different. First, everything was sensory. Light. Sound. Smell. Taste. The feel of things. The vibration of your voice. Then there was movement. The fast sound of a heart in my ears, and the feeling of it thumping inside my chest. The way the earth spun when I moved my feet. The way the wind wove itself around us.” He smiled again. “Then I experienced other things. Humor. Surprise. Anxiety. And most of all desire.”
I blushed at the word, and he ran a finger over my collarbone, making me shiver.
“Nick,” I gasped.
“Yes?” He was up in half a second, detangling himself from me so quickly I had to grab him to keep him in place.
“I'm sorry.” I shivered, clutching his wrists to ensure he didn't leave.
“For what?”
My throat constricted in a weird half-sob. “I'm sorry things haven't been good here. And I'm sorry about...at that place.”
“Milo...Milo. It was my fault—all of it. I’m sorry. So sorry. I should never have gotten you involved.” He kissed my mouth again, firm and sure, and then he drew away, looking down at me with his wavy, auburn hair hanging around his face. I pulled him down, and the weight of his body on mine was thrilling. He ran his hands down my arms, wrists to biceps, and placed a quick, soft kiss on my collarbone.
I closed my hands around his wrists and slid them up his hard forearms. My head spun with my awful craving.
“What would happen to you?” I whispered. “If you can’t convince Vera? What would happen if you disagreed?”
“It’s not going to come to that.”
“But what if it did? When they arrived, the two of you would have some kind of show-down or something? Would that make you a traitor?”
“Milo, please don't worry about me.”
“I can't help it.” I whispered. I hated the idea of him away from me, light years away, being judged by some…I wasn’t even sure how to imagine it.
He slid his fingers through mine, pressing our palms together. “I’ll be—”
I silenced him with a kiss, a hard kiss that left him breathless. My hands were frantic, smoothing down the sides of his shirt, beneath which his abs were hard and ripped; he pressed down on me, stroking gentle fingers down my belly as I writhed beneath him.
He broke the kiss, breathing hard, and I wrapped my arms around his back as he dropped his head down near my throat. Then he lifted off me, panting hard, and slid out of the sleeping bag. He sat beside me, knees pulled up, staring at the rough, blue fabric of our tent.
My heart boomed in my ears. “Nick— What's wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Ok, seriously, did you not—I mean, was—”
“I like it, Milo, I promise,” he said. “It’s—It’s too much.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re more than I can handle, Milo.”
“But—”
“Milo, please,” he asked, sounding like he just couldn’t handle another word. Another touch.
So I stayed quiet.
MORE THAN I can handle.
I had a lot of time to wonder what that meant. A lot of time during which Nick sat stoically beside me, waiting, I assumed, for me to fall asleep.
There was the obvious meaning—that what we’d been doing was too much—but I worried maybe he meant the whole experience, or the effort to save the planet, or something else bad.
The ‘something else bad’ part opened up another can of worms entirely, and I spent what felt like hours ticking away the seconds in my head. If he couldn’t change Vera’s mind… If he changed her mind, and then they disappeared… When they disappeared…
I think I passed out eventually out of sheer exhaustion, and when I woke up the next morning to sunlight shining through our tent, Nick was holding me. I felt like nothing could go wrong ever again, and I wanted to stay that way with him forever.
Finally, I put my hand over his and squeezed his fingers, and our eyes met. His were warm. “How did you sleep?”
“Not bad.”
“So…bad?”
“At least I slept a little. Unlike someone.”
I looked pointedly at him.
He smiled “I did sleep a bit.”
“Yeah right.” I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of his strong arms wrapped around me. I asked, again, about what had happened when he got to Earth, and I lay on my side with his arm around me as he explained it all again in detail: how he was set to go to Silicon Valley, but he'd had his 'eyes' trained on me.
I looked back at him, and he grinned sheepishly. “I'd become...a little obsessive in the time I spent evaluating your planet.” He looked almost bashful when he smiled, and I found myself smiling, too. “I was already transitioning when I scanned Gabe DeWitt’s body. I thought I could re-write all of the data I wanted when I made the switch. I was wrong, obviously. Certain things came through—like the tuxedo, which was coded to appear no matter what vessel I used—and the whistle, another non-organic item created and ‘pinned’ to me. But when I tried to write myself over his brain, I hit a snag when I got to the memories. You need precision to translate our data into a human memory, and I, uh… well, I’m embarrassed to admit this,” and he really was, because he leaned in and whispered, “but the short story is, I just ran out of time.”
That didn’t seem like such a big deal to me, but I guess a dude who used to be part of a giant computer program would care a lot about that. “I wonder what it would have been like if you’d remembered from the beginning.”
He shook his head. “I imagine not like this.”
“No.” Would he have just checked me out, satisfied his curiosity, and split? We certainly would have avoided the DoD. Speaking of… “Did you break the wind turbines?” I asked, stroking his fingertips. “I won't be mad. I promise.”
He hung his head, and I turned around to punch him in the shoulder.
When he looked up, his eyes were solemn. “I can pay you, if you want. I'm good with...you know...the ATM.”
“With fraud?” I laughed. “No, we don't need your money. How did you break them, though? That, I want to know.”
“My...arrival tweaked the atmosphere within a certain radius. Another result of my change of plans. Originally I planned to arrive on Earth in an organic vessel. Instead I transitioned in a state that scrambled the electromagnetic field. A sort of spiral followed me to your property, and, well...”
