Tobias was fine…

  A bit of medication, and he had walked off right as rain.

  Those aliens were never walking anywhere again.

  I could still hear the gunshots when I closed my eyes. I still felt the splatter of warm liquid against my fur. Nicole’s fury was a silent one. A burning intensity. She was disgusted by humans. I remembered that now more than ever. She probably felt just as horrible; I had simply yet to learn to turn that horror into rage.

  “They’ve started a war,” Nicole muttered later in the women’s bathroom of the bridge, where a simple shower system had been set up. “I cannot imagine they will take such an act of aggression lightly.”

  I nodded. I… assumed. Mostly, I was just antsy to get the blood off me,

  “It’s just so… stupid. So utterly stupid. I told him not to eat it,” she practically growled. “They still haven't found the saboteur either. I don’t like any of this.”

  I whined, motioning to the shower handle. The blood was still soaking into my fur, sticky and congealing. Panic-inducing. Nicole mercifully turned on the shower for me.

  I ducked under the water, uncaring of the shocking cold as I tried to scrub it from my fur.

  It wasn't working. It wasn't coming out. I couldn’t even reach it all, my arms too stubby. I would have burst into tears long ago if I had been capable. I just felt like I would explode.

  The thought of using my tongue made me gag. What did I do? What was I supposed to do, covered in blood? I whined in frustration.

  “Let me,” Nicole offered gently, stepping into the spray and lathering her hands with soap.

  I nodded, a relief to let her handle all of this. I did a double-take, my brain finally processing what I was seeing because obviously she wasn’t wearing her old white suit.

  Nicole was nude.

  That made sense. That was how you showered.

  But Nicole was naked.

  So was I… but with the fur it hardly counted. Or at least I had hardly counted it until now. Now I felt very naked.

  Nicole was… human. Beyond the occasional seam or exposed sliver of something, she looked so very human. Literally a human suit over her machinery.

  I had never seen her look so small. She was thin, unnervingly so, with no meat in her bones. Her uh… chest was very small, not that I was looking, of course. She was utterly smooth and hairless, even under her arms and between her… thighs.

  No real human had a body like that.

  I immediately felt bad for thinking it. Nicole had even less control than a human would over her appearance. She didn’t… grow.

  Still, the attempt to mimic humanity was… unsettling. The fact that they had attempted to uh… this degree was confusing. What purpose did a synthetic having nipples and such things have? Why create something like that?

  I knew the answer would not be a pleasant one. I wasn’t stupid.

  Why else would you give a robot sexual characteristics? Now I felt doubly nauseous. Had Tobias… I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think about her like that.

  I stuck my face near the nozzle and let the water blast me in the face.

  Nicole said nothing as she crouched beside me, kneading the soap into my fur. It felt really nice, but I wasn’t about to get distracted.

  Nicole was clever. I knew she had caught me looking. If I had a mouth, I would have told her she was beautiful, not because of whatever body she was in but because she was Nicole. Instead, I just chastised myself.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  I felt like I had done something wrong.

  I was suddenly exhausted. I just wanted the blood out of my fur.

  Nicole peeled off a piece of fleshy goo. She inspected it before tossing it away. I ground my teeth to keep my stomach contents down. I was already hungry again. It never seemed to stop.

  The door swung open. I jerked in surprise, panic coursing through me at being caught so exposed. Nicole just tisked at me and tugged me back to where I had been. “Stay still,” she said.

  I looked over at the woman who stared at the two of us with befuddlement. A synthetic and a furry dinosaur in the shower. What a pair we made.

  “I’ll come back,” she decided before slipping out.

  Nicole said nothing, but a smile quirked at her lips. That made me smile… dinosourily.

  “There,” Nicole finally sighed, rinsing my fur. “I think that’s everything.”

  I nodded, nuzzling against her leg as thanks.

  I felt a million times better. Except the gunshot still echoed in my ears. The… splatter. Maybe just a hundred times better.

  Nicole washed the soap off her arms. After towelling off, she got dressed. I tried not to watch.

  I… didn’t try very hard.

  It wasn’t some lecherous peeping. Just… curiosity, admiration. I was making sure she wasn’t covered in blood, too.

  Nicole buttoned up her shirt and slipped a leather strap thing over her shoulder. As she turned, I saw the gun she had holstered under her arm. Oh… I didn’t think I liked guns anymore. I hadn’t even known she had one.

  Not since those first few moments of my existence…

  Nicole was used to this violence. That’s why she was horrified. She had carried it out. She had been the one to pull the trigger. How could she be angry at Tobias if she had… done the same?

  What other secrets did she have? I trusted her so much; she had never failed me, but how much did I really know about her?

  That wasn’t fair. I knew plenty. More than most.

  I shook out my fur, hoping it would dislodge the knot of unease that had tangled in my stomach.

  It didn’t.

  Everyone looked worried. Apparently, Tobias had increased security. People weren’t just watching, but there were armed guards about. We were “prepared for an attempt at retaliation,” as he had said.

  Construction on a wall had begun, which somehow involved digging a moat. The robots had been directed away from building us a comfortable shelter in favour of digging. There was so much to do, but little for people to do. That left everyone buzzing around nervously.

  A small group had trekked out to the edge of the jungle to begin cutting more logs, guarded by officers with guns.

  As far as I knew, there had been no sign of the aliens since our… first encounter. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  One thing was becoming increasingly clear. I couldn’t take the communication barrier anymore. Lessons were getting me nowhere. I just needed a mouth that could speak.

  But that meant a human mouth.

  Or an alien mouth.

  Somehow, that felt worse. We had already killed two of them for no real reason. I couldn’t just body snatch one of them in the hopes I could pronounce something close enough to English to be understood. I certainly wouldn’t be able to fly under the radar.

  No, I needed a human body. The only question was… who?

  I had no answer to that question. Every time I started considering someone, I thought about them too much as a person, and it all fell apart.

  It was hopeless.

  Nicole was so much quieter; it was driving me crazy. But even if she couldn’t hear me, I was still here. We had fallen into a new routine, one I didn’t much care for.

  There were things I needed to tell her, wants and fears. And I tried, and she tried. My frustration only grew.

  I couldn’t sleep anymore. Not with that violent moment haunting me. I didn’t know a person could be erased so effortlessly. I wondered about the man whom Nicole had killed. He had a family. What were they like?

  I couldn’t even be angry at Nicole because I couldn’t begin to express why. My body was a whole new kind of prison; my gratefulness was overshadowed by resentment. I was more than my helpless blob of a body, but I was so much less than I had first been.

  That became ever clearer with each new test, not only of my body but also the host I inhabited. Nicole started bringing me to a different tent. This one wasn’t medical, but it still housed all sorts of fancy machines. I put up with the scans, the pokes, the blood tests, even the little hammer that made my limbs flail uncontrollably.

  Fun wasn't the right word. But it gave me things to do, and it was close to fun. I was both learning about myself and helping Nicole with research.

  Apparently, the host’s bones were semi-hollow, hence why I was so light despite my size. Nicole hypothesized that the host lived in small packs and was likely a carnivore of small creatures.

  Were there other little furry dinosaurs missing this one?

  Another time, Nicole put me in a giant machine that made terrible metallic thumping sounds. I almost immediately vomited; the pulsing pounding made my skin crawl. I scrambled out of the machine, imaging be damned. I was dizzy, stumbling to walk in a straight line as Nicole hurried over to me.

  “What’s wrong?” She asked as she always had.

  I didn’t have words to explain.

  The MRI machines used magnets and electromagnetic waves. Something about it had caused a reaction. I didn’t interfere with my control of the host, just… sent my little blob body into a panic.

  We stopped for the day after that. One bad reaction was more than enough for me.

  We snuggled in Nicole’s tent; my bed had grown ever more into a proper nest as Nicole had collected soft things.

  I tried to pay attention as Nicole scribbled in her notebook and ran calculations in her head. But I still wasn’t feeling great, neither physically nor mentally. I settled for her silent company, at least until I regained my voice.