The laparotomy had gone well, and Nicole had been able to stop the bleeding. His liver had been damaged and required repair. However, that worked… whatever a liver exactly was, I wasn’t sure. This was just what Nicole told me. I didn’t want to know the gory details anyway.

  The food issue was tremulously solved. Not only was there still a supply of neutralization tablets for whatever they were putting in the stew, but success had been achieved with using some fancy machine to fix the acid problem somehow. Now the main issue was just sourcing food.

  The fruit that had been gifted to us was perfectly edible, except for the human immune system's slight overreaction. No one bothered to try to find their origin despite their high pH compared to most plant life.

  Small greenhouses had been seeded with what had been brought back. The abundance of oxygen wouldn’t be a problem for them; the only question now was whether they would have survived the vacuum of space. Based on previous research, Nicole was optimistic. Which made me optimistic.

  Power was the new problem. The shuttles only had so much fuel, and with the return trip draining them substantially, they were little more than big batteries now.

  I didn’t quite process the implications of that. Until Nicole pointed out that they would not be able to launch again.

  We were trapped. We're stuck on the planet’s surface. When they ran out of fuel, no more sealed environment, except for the bridge, but it also had limited power. But more than that, no more power, no more medical equipment, or research equipment, no more construction robots. Everything would grind to a halt, and eventually, mask filters would run out. Everyone would die of hyperoxia.

  Except Nicole and I… but that wasn’t exactly a victory.

  In response to this, Tobias halted the construction of a wall, instead using our wood supply as fuel for a trio of wood-fired generators. Thanks to the extra oxygen, they were extra combustible and thus extra efficient. Still, it was a band-aid solution; we only had so much wood. The robots had been diverted to constructing solar panels, which would use the shuttles as batteries to store the power they produced. The only problem was that certain minerals and materials were required that we didn’t have, so smarter people than I were discussing what to do next. In the meantime, it was just a downward spiral of wood procurement.

  It was always one thing after another.

  I was just glad I wasn’t responsible for dealing with any of it. I had seriously considered the logistics of just running off to live in a hole somewhere. I could eat… bugs?

  Perking up when Nicole suggested investigating the radio waves I seemed to emit, I followed her through camp towards the tall communications tower that towered over us towerily. It was big.

  No one really paid me any mind anymore. I had yet to cause any problems, and people certainly had more important things to focus on than my presence. So mostly I came and went without issue, but I still did my best to stay out of the way. I especially stayed out of Tobias’ way; he certainly did not like me. Despite my sharp teeth, I much preferred to stay close to Nicole for protection. I could watch her back, and she could watch mine.

  I didn’t even know if I was good at biting. I didn’t imagine I would be able to do much if it came down to it, at the very least I could screech in alarm…

  As much as I didn’t like it, Nicole did have a gun.

  We reached the chainlink fence that the robots had welded together. Nicole scanned her badge, and the gate beeped open. She held the door open for me, and I trotted in, inspecting the place. Just a few days ago, it had been nothing but a patch of dirt. Now there was a permanent structure here. It smelled of metal and oils, fumes and chemicals, industrial big cubes of metal all wired into the criss-crossing tower that narrowed into a point.

  A big, glorious flag standing tall, announcing our presence to the world.

  It was kinda ugly.

  “Oh, hey,” a man glanced up from the console. He was clean-shaven with shaggy dark hair, his officer’s jacket oversized and ill-fitting. He wasn’t young or old. Was it mean to think of him as generic-looking? Probably.

  Nicole nodded at him.

  “I’m just finishing up here. She’ll be all yours in a second,” he smiled, hitting a few more buttons. “There… I think that worked,” he chuckled with a grimace. “I swear you put me in front of a screen and I turn into a troglodyte.”

  Nicole smiled flatly, both of us waiting for him to go away. I didn’t know for sure if we were allowed to be doing this, but I also kinda doubted it.

  The man froze as he finally noticed me. “Nice uh… pet? What’s its name?” he asked awkwardly, as he turned to leave.

  Shit. We hadn't come up with a cover name. I couldn’t exactly just be Elizabeth the furry dinosaur. Though… It wasn't like anyone would assume I was the furry dinosaur. Actually, maybe it didn’t matter.

  “Why would I name it?” Nicole frowned. “It’s hardly domesticated. It would probably eat both of us if I didn’t keep it well fed.”

  The man swallowed. “I’ll just… I’ll get out of your hair,” he huffed, turning and walking off with a shake of his head.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Nicole watched him go. “Well, that was underwhelming.”

  “What?” I signed, having a look around the place. There were all sorts of tubes leading into the central console, which was wired into the communications tower under a little roof thing.

  “I believe that is our saboteur,” Nicole replied, stepping up to the screen

  What? My head snapped in the man’s direction as the gate clanged shut behind him. Was she just letting him go? How did she know?

  “The uniform he was wearing doesn’t fit, and his haircut doesn’t abide by regulations,” she explained. “Though it was quite excellent social engineering, I wouldn't have realized it if I didn’t have the profiles of every single officer on board downloaded to remind Tobias who is who. That man is not an officer, and I cannot think of a reason for the deception that is not nefarious.”

  Okay. There were lots of good reasons. Those were pretty sound reasons. Why exactly were we letting him get away??!

  Nicole frowned at the console. “42 seconds ago, an encoded message was sent out to a specific coordinate within this solar system. We should inform Tobias… after we finish our little experiment. Guards will certainly be posted.”

  Oh sure, tell Tobias about the traitor later while he was walking around camp!!

  Absolutely not. The man had killed hundreds of people. This couldn't wait. Personal feelings aside, this was more important than some stupid experiment, as promising as it might be.

  “Here,” Nicole said, continuing, hitting a few buttons. “These are the ambient signals being received by the tower. Considering its size, it can pick up all sorts of frequencies, but if we focus on radio specifically… Whoah.”

  The little line on the screen was zigzagging all over the place.

  And… she was already distracted. For fucks sake.

  I had no way to tell Tobias or anyone, for that matter. I just really didn’t want to wait. What if he was going to blow up more stuff? Even more people would die!

  “Are you angry with me?” Nicole asked, finally turning to look at me.

  Not really. Maybe a bit frustrated. Now that I was aware of it, my turmoil quickly dried up. I didn’t want to be angry with her over this, but I also… kinda was. I gave a nod, not an enthusiastic one. I held up two fingers with a small gap between them. A little.

  I glanced at the screen, and the line had dropped back down.

  “Be angry with me again,” Nicole said, fixated on the screen as she turned a big knob.

  I glared at her. I couldn’t just get angry. What a stupid premise.

  “Perfect,” she nodded, squinting at the monitor. “See, look,” she said, turning to me as she tapped the screen. “This is ambient noise, regular cosmic disturbances. But look at this signal, it starts off as a consistent, very low frequency wave, and then rapidly speeds up with your anger, and now has slowed right back down.”

  I nodded slowly, happy she had found something while the traitor was getting away, at least. Though I didn’t really understand what any of it meant. “What?” I signed again, more insistently.

  “Quite honestly, with the understanding we have, I have no idea how your species can interact with and produce electromagnetic waves that are 10s of kilometres long ambiently,” Nicole sighed. “But with such low attenuation, you could probably sense another member of your species on the other side of the planet,” Nicole went on. “This is… baffling. This is… I mean, it’s genius. Fast bursts for short local communication, slow waves for announcing your presence. It would be utterly undetectable if I didn’t know what to look for, and without this giant thing. For a parasitic species, it’s a very clever tactic. We must then assume your species is highly social and coordinated.”

  Why in the world would something like that be put into xenocytes? I waved to get her attention. “Why?” I signed, before tapping my chest intently. Then I shook my head, trying to mime a person. Xenocite was a word I had no idea how to communicate, so I tried to include a little blob thing as a second brain in my performance.

  Nicole just stared at me dumbly. We continued this game of charades until my question was finally narrowed down.

  “The Imperium might not have known, or you’re just growing. We have no idea of the life cycle of your species. Perhaps the desynch has allowed you to continue development rather than being hijacked for the purposes of the Unxor body. If that's the case, you may be in a sort of… larval stage. It’s impossible to know, and well, anything is possible to some degree,” Nicole chuckled. “I am now seeing why xenocite development is so heavily regulated and controlled by the Imperium. They are messing with alien life and poorly attempting to control it.”

  Wow. I didn’t even know how to feel about any of those possibilities. Was it a good thing I was branching out and becoming whatever I was?

  Was I going to grow a permanent inhuman body and never be able to speak again? That premise was somewhat terrifying.

  What if I grew into some horrid slime mould or giant bug? At least this furry dinosaur was mammalian. There was some reassurance in this just being a possible explanation, but it was immediately made less reassuring by the fact that we had no idea as to the correct explanation either.

  “I know it’s overwhelming,” Nicole offered gently, shutting off the console. “But focus on this. We know you emit radio waves. If you emit the right higher frequencies in the right direction, my radio will pick them up. The very low frequencies won’t be as useful, but we can practice and figure out different signals and patterns for different meanings. It’s not language exactly, but it is verbally adjacent. I am too high-tech to have a radio receiver built in, but it wouldn’t be impossible to install an antenna either.”

  That just sounded exhausting. I could already speak, I just didn’t have the right mouth. And her solution was for me to invent a whole new language? Forget reading, this seemed even more impossible. I couldn’t even control the radio waves; they just happened.

  I just wanted to speak again. I wanted the world to look the same.

  Nicole was looking at me so hopefully. I couldn't refuse her attempts to help. But they were hardly a solution. How long until I forgot what my voice sounded like?

  Nicole’s smile faded at my lack of enthusiasm. I felt bad. I just… I wasn’t trying to be ungrateful. But just like wood burning, this felt like another band-aid solution.

  I couldn’t keep doing this. Not short-term.

  I needed a body.

  But that meant taking one…

  The traitor would be killed, and he had a mouth I could use. The idea of body snatching him didn’t make me feel quite so guilty after everything he had done.