The rain followed them to Texas. It poured in Austin for the first four days that they were home. She got settled back into her house and into her routine, teaching classes and working on the artifacts and her expedition report at night. After much pestering by Joely, she found a doctor and started Lamaze classes. She asked her friend to be her Lamaze coach, and Joely had happily agreed.

Tuesdays were Lamaze days, and she was running late after class. She gathered up her lecture notes and shoved them into her messenger bag, then slung it and her purse over her shoulder. She fished her car keys out of her pocket and hurried as fast as she could waddle toward her car.

Bleaker Hall was packed with students, which made sense, since it was the middle of the day and the building was dedicated to first-year survey classes. Every class had at least a hundred students, her class included, and when class change came, all six iterations of 100-plus young learners thronged the halls.  They gave her a little extra space, though, respecting her baby belly even if they didn’t respect her faculty status.  The crowd parted like the Red Sea and let her get to where she was going.

Her car was a late-model Chevrolet with a broken tail light, the legacy of an inexperienced foreign student driver. It had been broken just before she’d gone to Mexico for dig season, and she still hadn’t gotten it fixed. Someone had been kind enough to tape red cellophane over the gaping hole, but it just made her car look even shabbier. She made a mental note to take it to the shop in her copious free time.

The drive to the hospital wasn’t far, thankfully, and she was meeting Joely there. Once the class was over, they’d get lunch and then go back to the lab to keep classifying and cataloging the bits and bobs they’d pulled out of Theyn’s pyramid. She rubbed at her naked ear, resenting again the way the US Navy or the CIA had taken her translation earpiece. She hoped she could learn Ylian well enough to not need it in the future, if she ever saw Theyn and Beno again.

The thought that she may never lay eyes on her mates again left her feeling sad and unsettled, and she mused on the dark possibilities that were still very much in the forefront of her mind. What sort of medical experiments were they running, and who were “they,” anyway? Beno had said that any pain that had been caused was accidental, so that implied that there had been pain. What kind? How bad? What had happened? She kept herself awake at night with just these questions, and she was well on her way to getting lost in them again.

A flash of red and blue lights in her rear-view mirror startled her and pulled her out of her bitter reverie. She pulled over and parked, keeping her hands on the steering wheel.  A police cruiser parked behind her, and a female officer got out and strolled to her driver’s side window.

“License and registration?” the officer requested. She leaned down and looked inside the car. “You got any drugs or weapons on you?”

“No, officer.” She reached into her glove compartment to retrieve her registration and insurance information, which she handed over. She got her license out of her purse and handed that over, too.

The cop inspected her documents and looked at her from behind standard-issue mirrored shades.  She looked back at her squad car, then leaned down to hand Sera’s paperwork back to her. As she did so, she slid her sunglasses down her nose, revealing a brilliant set of golden hybrid Ylian eyes.

“Theyn and Beno send their love and say they’ll see you soon,” she said.  She turned on her heel and hurried back to her car.

“What? Wait!” Sera unlocked her seat belt and struggled out of her car. By the time her feet hit the pavement, the cruiser was rolling past, beeping its siren at her once. She watched it go with her mouth agape. 

***

Her head was full of her strange encounter all through Lamaze class and the lunch she and Joely shared afterward. She could think of nothing else. Conversation was impossible while she was fixated on what the police officer had said.

She and Joely were sitting in a sunny street café, enjoying the bright day, when her assistant asked, “What’s that on your hand?”

Sera looked down at the back of her hand where her friend was pointing. She ran her hand over the normally smooth skin and shrugged. “Just a rash, I guess. Maybe I’m having a reaction to some sort of cleaning product.”

“Bullshit,” Joely said. “Those are scales.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m serious! Look again.” She leaned forward. “Scales, just like the tiny ones on Theyn and Beno. Your baby is turning you into one of them.”

She sipped her water. “I’m already one of them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m part Ylian. They did some sort of scan on my blood and proved it. That’s the same way we found out I’m pregnant.” She shrugged. “Apparently, someone in my family’s way-back really liked an alien boy. Can’t say I blame her.”

“Maybe it was a man who liked an alien girl,” her friend suggested. “You don’t know.”

“I know one thing. There’s a guy over there who’s staring at us.” she said, putting her glass back to her mouth to conceal her words. Joely turned to look, and Sera rolled her eyes. “Real subtle. Jesus.”

The man nodded to them and smiled, revealing a beautiful set of white, even teeth in his deep brown face. Something about the way the light played over his skin seemed odd, and his intense, bright green stare was unnerving. Joely turned back to Sera after waving to him.

“Do you think he’s CIA?”

She shook her head. “No.” She looked at him over the top of her glass. “I think he’s a hybrid.”

“Can’t be,” her friend objected. “His eyes are all wrong.”

“Depends on how hybridized he is.” She put her glass aside. “This is weird. Let’s pay and get out of here. Besides, the sun is getting really hot.”

Joely flagged down their server and got the bill, which she paid without letting Sera contribute. She helped her get her very-pregnant self out of the chair and said, “I’ll drive, mamasita.”

“Thanks.”

They walked to Joely’s car, which was closer than Sera’s. It was a green VW, even more battered than Sera’s Chevy, and when they arrived, there was an envelope tucked under the windshield wiper blade. Joely plucked it loose with an exasperated sigh.

“Worst thing about living in a college town,” she said, opening Sera’s door for her. “All the damned flyers.”

“That’s no flyer. Can I see it?”

Joely handed it over, and Sera opened the envelope. There was a tiny device inside, shaped almost like a hearing aid, very similar to the translator unit that Theyn and Beno had given her. A tiny handwritten note accompanied the earpiece.  “Put this in your ear.”

She showed the note to her friend, then obeyed. The device slid into place and clicked once. A woman’s voice came over the line, speaking in liltingly-accented English.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Nima. I work for the Ylian Resistance on Bruthes. Nod if you understand.”

Slowly, Sera nodded, her eyes scanning the buildings around their parking place, looking for someone on overwatch with a sniper rifle or binoculars. She saw no one.

Nima continued. “We need your help.”

“If you’re trying to find Theyn and Beno, I don’t know where they are.”

“We know where they are,” the watching Ylian said. “We’ve been in contact with them. We need your help getting them free.”

Sera looked at Joely, who was watching in confused frustration. “Tell me what to do.”

“Go home. Get some rest. There will be no more time for sleeping soon. We will come and pick you up after dark.”

She put her hand on her baby bump. “I’m not in any condition to get into a running firefight…”

“No, but you’re the only one with a mate connection to the prince and his companion. You can help us find them despite the silencing devices your CIA is using.”

Sera’s teeth clenched. “Are they being tortured?”

“Not tortured, but misused. And it’s time that they were free. We need their help.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Good.” She thought she heard another voice behind Nima, a man’s voice, and then the Ylian woman said, “I will see you tonight.”

The line went dead, and Sera turned to Joely, who said, “What’s going on?”

“Get in the car,” she answered with a non-answer. “I’ll tell you on the road.”

***

Despite Nima’s direction to get rest, she couldn’t relax once Joely got her home. Her friend insisted on staying with her when she heard what was going on and what had been said, and she’d even called Asa to come and keep watch with them. Sera suspected that Joely and Asa intended to go along with her when Nima and her compatriots came, and that was all right with her. She could take care of herself, she knew, but it would be good to have some people there that she knew she could trust.

Joely made tacos and they ate dinner together, chatting about coworkers and students and television shows, anything except what they were preparing to do. Sera wasn’t even sure what that “something” was, but she was certain it would get pretty rough, pretty fast.

They sat together in Sera’s living room after dark, watching Jimmy Fallon and trying to keep from checking the windows every thirteen seconds. Sera was nervous and agitated, jiggling her leg so constantly that she was making Joely seasick from bouncing the couch.

Her friend grabbed her knee and held it. “Seriously,” she said. “Stop.”

“Sorry.” Sera began chewing on her thumbnail, unable to quell her nerves. “When are they coming?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Asa said, even though he knew the question had been rhetorical. He took a sip from a long-necked bottle of beer, one of a six-pack he’d brought along. He and Joely had decimated it and he was slowly killing the lone survivor. “Do you think they’re going to show up in a car, or is this going to be more like an alien abduction thing? And if they come in a flying saucer, do you think the neighbors’ll notice?”

She chuckled. “Mrs. Santana will get her phone out and film everything, then try to get on the news. I’m sure of it. Of course, she’d probably do that if they showed up in a car. She’s a nosy old thing.”

Jimmy Fallon gave way to Seth Myers, who eventually gave way to Carson Daly. Joely and Asa were napping on the couch, Joely’s head against Asa’s shoulder. The light from the television flickered over their faces and made them look like extras in a ghost movie. Sera paced a path from living room to kitchen and back again, with frequent detours into the bathroom. The baby had made herself comfortable sitting on Sera’s bladder, just another part of the glamor of being pregnant. Sera was considering moving her bed next to the toilet if Nima didn’t show up soon.

She finally settled down in her recliner and fell into fitful sleep. She dreamed of Theyn and Beno, and of cold rooms filled with metal and sinister equipment.  The dreadful visions chased her back into wakefulness.

She could hear a soft humming sound, like a very large refrigerator running in the night. She had never heard the sound before. She struggled to her feet and went to the front window. The yard and the street beyond were dark and deserted, but still the humming persisted. If anything, it grew louder.

A sharp rap on the back door startled all of them. Joely straightened with a yelp of surprise and Sera hurried through the kitchen to the rear entrance. When she opened the door, a full-blooded Ylian woman in a gray jumpsuit stood there, her green eyes glowing.

“Nima?” she asked.

The woman nodded. “Yes. Come with us.”

“Hey!” Asa rose. “We’re coming, too.”

Nima looked at Sera, who nodded. “They’re friends.”

“But are they combatants? They’d be coming into a war zone.”

Joely argued weakly, “I’m her Lamaze coach.”

Sera looked at her friends, then said, “They can hold their own as well as I can.”

Nima hesitated, clearly uncertain, but she finally said, “Fine. Come quickly.”

She led them outside, where an Ylian shuttle was resting on the grass of Sera’s back yard. The hatch was open, and Nima waited for them all to climb aboard before she joined them. The hatch closed with a quiet click.

At the controls, Commander Elina turned to face the humans. “The prince and his companion are at a facility in the northern hemisphere, in a place called the Yukon. We’re going to go and get them.”

Sera and the others took their seats, which conformed around them to hold them steady. “I thought you were loyal to Queen Apfira.”

“I am. But I am loyal to my people first and foremost.”

Nima nodded to Elina. “Go.”

The shuttle lifted off and sped northward. Once they were underway, Nima told Sera, “Your mates have been able to convince the human governments to invest in a second camouflage unit. Technicians from Itzela have been helping to construct it, and the unit is nearly complete. Earth should be safe from the Taluans in a short time.”

“That’s good, but you said they were being misused.”

Nima nodded. “In return for the governments’ cooperation, they were required to submit to medical and other testing. One of the technicians saw what was happening and notified Queen Apfira. She in turn notified us, and now we’re here to help.”

Asa asked, “You came all the way from Bruthes?”

Nima nodded again. “Our people are in a desperate condition, and we need the help of the last of the true bloodlines to unite us to face our common threat.”

“The Taluans?” Joely guessed.

“And the Bruthesans, who have been more than happy to sell us to save their own skins.” She shook her head. “But there will be time to discuss that later. First, we need to free the prince and his companion. And that is where you come in, Dr. Cooper.”

The shuttle banked sharply, and Sera’s stomach lurched. She grabbed onto the seat and felt herself going pale.

Joely asked, “Do you have any barf bags? I think mama here might need one.”

Sera shook her head. “I’m fine,” she lied.

“Sorry about that. There was an unexpected large avian I had to avoid,” Elina apologized.

“Why don’t you just say ‘big bird’ like everybody else?” Joely complained.

Once her stomach had stopped rebelling, Sera asked Nima, “How can I help?”

“We know the building that they’re in, but we can’t find them inside. They’re too well hidden by a test version of the camouflage unit. Their telepathy is being blocked, as well. Because of your mate bond with them, you should be able to locate them.”

“How?” She frowned in confusion.

“Ask your child to find her father. She will lead you.”

She repeated, “How? I don’t understand. Are you talking about bat noises?”

Nima shook her head. “It will be something much more subtle, an emotional urging to go in a certain direction. Your child is more than half Ylian. Her blood will lead the way.”

Asa’s brow furled. “Her blood? It makes it sound like you’re going to cut the poor little kid or something.”

“It was figurative.” She looked exasperated, like a teacher dealing with a particularly obtuse student.

The shuttle increased speed, and the engine’s hum sharpened in pitch.  Elina’s hands danced over the controls, and she informed Nima, “I’m activating concealment. We’re almost at the drop point.”
“Drop point?” Joely echoed. “Like, we’re parachuting out of this thing?”

Nima sighed. “Again, figurative. I had no idea humans were so literal.”

Sera rubbed at the scaly patch on her hand. It itched, and it was getting bigger. She examined the profusion of tiny scales, exactly like the ones on her lovers’ skin. A patch of companion scales was beginning on her other hand, as well. She wondered if she would be covered with them by the time the baby was born.