***

Rylie watched her da duck through the watership and out onto the deck.

She remained behind and programmed the cleaner bots to sanitize the ship. Her bare feet twitched and she rocked back and forth on her soles as she followed the bots’ movements with her eyes, delaying the inevitable and gathering the courage she needed to leave the quiet shell of the ship.

Who did he invite? It gnawed at her thoughts. Not Charlene...so not one of the local farmers. Maybe the manufacturers from the port? No, Rylie decided, a manufacturer wouldn’t suggest secrecy.

The law enforcement? She mulled it over.

What if he’s trying to find me a seed donor? Her eyes widened in horror. It wouldn’t be the first time he had tried to pair her with a local soldier or official, or one of her educational teachers. Da was fixated on growing a large family to rule Kepler like a Rockefeller. Rylie dug her nails into her palm.

She didn’t have an aversion to men. She just didn’t see their usefulness when her world revolved around the farm. What could a partner give her that a hired worker couldn’t?

She stepped from the watership and its glass gate closed behind her.

Janet can have them. And her sister had known all the men, and then some. Rylie found no appeal in a partner who had lain with her sister. She traversed the steps, stopping briefly to hose the sand off her feet.

She was at the top of the bluff before she knew it, and her nose filled with the escaped aroma of one of her ma’s elaborate dinners.

That’s when she saw the giant spaceship beyond her house.

Rylie took a step back before she caught herself. Oh no...

She gaped. It’s worse. So much worse. She would take a seed donor over what rose up before her. The government.

Rylie side-stepped her house until the ship that sat in the landing yard was unobstructed. All she could make out was power, overwhelming power, and it was almost too much for her. It screamed of affairs that she didn’t know. It was a stark contrast to her quiet life on a planet that she already thought had too many humans.

She licked her chapped lips and weighed the Earthian ship against what she expected inside her dining room: stodgy men and women, decked in uniforms, who had no right being in the wilds of Kepler. Rylie glanced at the large windows of her house and the glint of fractured light from within.

There was movement inside, shadows that crossed the depths of the house, but the people were obscured from the angle at which she stood.

“Rylie!” Janet’s voice screeched out of nowhere. “We’re waiting for you!”

Rylie sighed and made her way through the yard and into the shadow of her home until she stood before her sister.

Janet let her through with a smirk.

“Why are there officials here?” Rylie asked as she passed her by and entered the washroom. Her eyes landed on Da’s discarded clothes in the corner. “Please tell me it has nothing to do with me.”

“I don’t know. Ma won’t say a thing but she’s acting way too sweet to be deceitful.” Janet’s small smile faded and her voice lowered. “The men who are here... They’re, well, they’re from the EPED.”

Rylie stopped undressing. Her throat closed up and she parted her lips to say something, but no words came out. The EPED had structured Kepler into the habitable planet it was today. Her parents had worked extensively with them before she was born, and still did by selling them a portion of their stones each year.

The EPED never returned to a planet that was already settled. Never.

Not unless it has to be re-settled.

Janet met her eyes in the mirror. “I think they’re here about the crops,” she said.

Or because of a disaster. A plague. The loss of countless lives from something native. She kept her thoughts to herself.

Rylie looked away and quickly stripped out of her t-shirt and water-suit, not bothering to wash the ocean off her skin, and pulled on fresh clothes that Janet tossed at her.

“It can’t be good,” Rylie mustered as she shook her head and her hair fell out of its band and around her shoulders.

“That bad? I was hoping...”

“We only visited three jetties down south, all the stones were cloudy. Yours were too, then?”

Janet held the same job as she did, but had taken a liking to managing the homestead with their mother. She never went out as far as Rylie and the other workers. Her sister was as much of a people person as Rylie was a loner.

“No better. Da didn’t react.”

“He’s still in denial.”

“I can tell. I’m sorry, Rylie...”

“Why’re you sorry?” Rylie knew she wasn’t going to like whatever Janet had to say next...what she was apologizing for.

“There’s only two of them,” Janet said.

“Two officials? That’s a good thing isn’t it?” It can’t be that bad. Some of her anxiety lifted. Some. Maybe it is just about the crops. “I don’t understand why you’re sorry. I expected a dozen or more based on the ship I saw outside.” She stepped out of the washroom no cleaner, but presentable.

“Cyborgs.”

Rylie stopped.

“What?”

“The two here are Cyborgs.” Janet let out a short laugh. “They’re intimidating, that’s why I’m sorry. But can you believe it? We never had a Cyborg in the house, let alone two of them. Remember how Da used to tell us stories about them? Heroes, we have war heroes in the house!” She shook with excitement. “I could fuck a hero!”

Why would Cyborgs be here?

Her sister’s humor didn’t make Rylie feel better. And her disbelief was thrown out the window when Janet gripped her arm and pulled her into the house. Everything she had previously guessed turned to dust.

“One of them is very attractive,” Janet continued as Rylie dragged her feet.

“Stop!” she yanked her arm out of her sister’s grip. She needed to temper the excitement that radiated from Janet. “You can’t treat them like the men here. You’ll get yourself hurt,” she pleaded, snapping her fingers in front of Janet’s face. “The stories also mentioned how dangerous they are. They’re killers, mechanical killers. Don’t tempt one, please. Promise me.”

Rylie noticed how dressed up Janet was then, hair piled atop her head and gloss on her lips. She whiffed and her nose wasn’t filled with salt water and sunscreen but lavender, cloying lavender from Earth.

“Who do you think I am? I’m not a fucking slut,” Janet hissed.

“Then what’s with the perfume?”

“None of your god damned business.”

Janet turned toward the closed door that led to the kitchen, her hand stopping at the handle.

“Don’t make us look like fools.” She was through the door in the next second. Rylie sucked in her stomach, her back going straight.

The smell of lavender vanished under the wafts of food that came through. The sound of Janet’s receding steps and several unknown voices inundated her.

What’s Da hiding? She knew the only way she would get answers was to join the dinner party. And in that moment she hated Quinten Montihan with every anxious fiber of her being. Rylie gritted her teeth and went through the door.

And stopped short at the sight of the giant, truly gigantic, blue-grey man hunched over the kitchen island.

In an instant, she turned around and escaped before the door had a chance to close, her Ma’s voice lost under her heavy breath. There’s a large blue man in our kitchen. Rylie closed her eyes and counted to ten before going back through it again.

The stranger was now staring at her with a knife in his hand.

“What’s gotten into you?” Ma frowned at her. “This is one of our guests. Netto, this is my daughter, Rylie. Rylie, this is Netto. He’s been sent here by the government and has come a long way at your father’s request.”

Her mother’s voice faded into background noise.

“You’re blue,” Rylie said lamely.

“Yes.” The man turned away from her and focused back on what he was doing. Her eyes followed the knife as he ran it across a whetstone. She vaguely heard her mother apologizing, but it fell on deaf ears as she looked at the bizarre man.

He was the largest human she had ever seen, towering, and so incredibly out of place in her ma’s kitchen that she forgot he was anything more than a badly-created machine. Rylie joined him at the island and watched him sharpen the knife.

He didn’t look at her.

“Why are you blue?” she asked. She had never been good with people, so why start now?

The Cyborg shrugged. His muscles bunched as the movement tightened his blazer across the entire upper-half of his body. Her eyes landed on the EPED tag and it brought her back to reality.

“Why are you here?”

“Rylie!” Ma scolded her from across the room. Rylie flushed with embarrassment.

He continued to sharpen the knife in easy, fluid movements, the wisp of the metal against the stone her only answer for the next minute. When he let go of the knife to move onto the next one, she picked up the finished one and pressed the side of it against her thumb, judging his work. Perfect. It was perfect.

When she looked back up, the Cyborg was watching her. Grey eyes pinned her to the spot.

A shiver went through her as her neck strained under his intimidating gaze. Even the sounds of her family, the distant conversations throughout the nearby rooms, and the clicks of items being moved couldn’t unpin her. Rylie wanted to look away but he held her, unmoving. She wanted to leave.

His jaw ticked as if he was about to say something and it was enough to break the spell of his eyes. She dropped her gaze and reached for a modicum of control. She set down the knife and turned right into another man.

Oh no. A hand settled on her shoulder to balance her. She peeled herself from under it in a matter of seconds but backed right into a hard wall. Oh god.

Not a wall, she realized, but the blue Cyborg.

“Woah, calm down. You okay? Your heart is beating way too fast,” the new man muttered. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

She was on the other side of the room the next instant, her heart pounding and her brow slick with sweat. Rylie ducked into the nearest bathroom and splashed her face until the red blush she sported cooled.

Fleeing had never seemed more attractive. She would take a dozen dates set-up by her parents over her current, rapidly growing embarrassment.

The Cyborgs were not what she expected. They were so much worse, and she found herself letting out a breathy laugh as she wished she was dealing with an entire crew of officials instead: stodgy, judgemental officials.

The blue one was unnerving and unusual. He was hard for her to grasp. She hadn’t wasted any time looking at the other one.

When she entered the dining room, Da was already sitting at the head of the table conversing with the other Borg whose name she didn’t know. He looked up at her and smiled, revealing eyes that were almost too bright to meet. They glowed, a piercing radioactive green. Rylie turned away and sat next to her youngest sister on the other side of the table.

“That’s my daughter, Rylie.”

“We met in the kitchen,” the other man said. “My name’s Zeph. Sorry if I startled you earlier.”

“You didn’t,” she lied and turned toward her baby sister, ending the conversation before it started. “What’s that on your screen?” she asked Lily.

Lily shook the device. “Space pirates,” her face lit up with neon color as an animated rainbow nebula appeared on the screen.

“Is it fun?”

“Fun.”

Lily wasn’t going to save her. Already, Rylie noticed movement at the periphery of her vision as the rest of her family entered and sat at the table. She didn’t want to look up from Lily’s screen to save her life, but the sound of the chair on the other side of her forced her attention away.

She expected to see Janet but instead, an arm filled her personal bubble because it was too large for its own. It was the blue Cyborg and he took up all her space.

Janet had taken the seat next to Zeph, putting her in-between both Cyborgs. Ma came in and sat down on the other side of her da, leaving the next two seats between her and Lily open.

She wondered who the other seats were for as Steven entered. He wasn’t family but was close. His da was like an uncle to her.

“Sorry, got tied up at the facility,” Rylie watched him enter and sit down. “My dad won’t be able to make it.”

“Why? Did something happen?” Da asked.

“He’s got a cough, not feeling well enough to venture out tonight.” Steven’s eyes landed on Janet, absorbing the sight of her sister between two frightening Borgs.

“Lily, lose the tablet. It’s dinner time.”

And for the next few minutes, everyone helped themselves to the platters of food in the middle, the quiet falling like a wet blanket over the party, and Rylie felt the atmosphere stifle under the tension. She picked at her salad and observed.

Steven was brimming with jealousy; it was written over his face. Da was stuffing his face with food. Her baby sister was ignorant to everyone as her game kept her interest, having never put it away. Rylie filled Lily's plate and cut up her meat before helping herself. Ma poured half a bottle of wine into her cup, without offering any, and Janet was smiling.

Zeph was smiling back at her.

His plate was filled with a little bit of everything while Netto’s had one cut of meat—meat he didn’t seem to want to eat.

The oppressive silence continued. Rylie focused on not knocking her elbow into the Cyborg. The Cyborg who, even when sitting, was a head taller than her, who radiated enough heat to suffocate her, and who intimidated her into a puddle of nerves.

“Why is he blue?” Lily broke the silence.

Everyone stopped and looked at her baby sister, who was openly staring at Netto.

“Sweetheart, you can’t ask—” Ma was cut off by a burst of laughter.

“He’s blue so he can hide in the water,” Zeph answered.

“I want to be blue.” Lily set down her tablet with the game still running and crawled into Rylie’s lap to get closer to Netto.

“Now, honey—”

“You can’t be blue,” Rylie hugged her sister.

“Yeah, why are you that way?” Steven shot out, an edge to his question. “Why would the government make you that way when you’re meant to kill aliens?”

Netto’s head tilted, giving Steven the same horrible stare down that she herself had received in the kitchen. Rylie held her sister tighter, feeling a wave of guilt. He must hate humans.

Everyone was looking at Netto while Rylie was looking at Steven. His eyes widened as his bravado died.

“You tell me?” Netto said under his breath as a pulse of violent intimidation emanated from him. Rylie shrank away.

An eruption of voices sailed through the air.

“What the fuck! Your teeth...”

“Steven, that’s enough! You should go.”

“I want teeth like that,” Lily bounced in her lap. Rylie hadn’t seen them. Her mother topped off her wine.

“Oh my god, what are you?”

Da slammed his fist against the table, the flatware shook. “That’s enough!”

Everyone fell into silence except Lily, who grabbed onto Netto’s sleeve, adoration in her eyes. “Can I have teeth like that?”

“I think we should adjourn,” Zeph said. “Thank you for the delicious meal.”

“I agree, let’s go down to the docks.” Montihan stood up, followed by Zeph and Netto, the latter still having not eaten a bite of his food. “Rylie, Janet, come with me.” Da turned to Steven, “You should go. Tell your dad we’ll speak in the morning.”

Ma came over and took Lily from her arms, who continued to struggle to get closer to the Cyborg.

“I want to be a blue Cyborg when I grow up. Can I be like you?”

Netto canted his head at Lily but didn’t answer her. Instead, he held out his hand to help Rylie stand. Rylie narrowed her eyes and after a moment, feeling another twinge of guilt, took it.

And let go the moment she was up. He didn’t react, he didn’t respond at all, except to turn toward the front door and leave.

She waited a few minutes before she followed him outside.