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You could learn a lot about someone by watching them with their daemon. More than just the basic, surface-level information of whether they were predator or prey, whether they took up space or hid small.
Alex wasn’t sure when he’d started watching Michael with his Barbary macaque daemon, but it had definitely started when they were in school, and definitely after she had settled. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever noticed her before that. But there, in amongst the preponderance of local animals like coyotes and jackrabbits, in the confusion of bird calls from dozens of different species, standing out even next to the few kids who had settled with an aquatic animal that needed to be moved around in a tank or bowl, was a monkey.
How a person interacted with their daemon was revealing. Alex knew that the way he kept Mihiliz tucked close to him at all times let people know he wasn’t interested in socialising with them, and Michael was like that with his daemon too. She was much bigger than Mihiliz though – a monkey couldn’t hide up a sleeve or rest unobtrusively around the neck like a snake could. Michael’s daemon either walked at his side or rode his arm or his backpack. When they were in class, she would sit in his lap or hang over his shoulder, watching him work and whispering to him, clever hands wound in his hair or his clothes.
They spoke to each other in low, private murmurs, like they were completely alone, and that was telling. It showed a habit of self-reliance and understanding. Michael and his daemon were a complete unit, uninterested in anyone else. The monkey never engaged in any of the friendly (or not so friendly) rough-and-tumble with the other kids’ daemons. She kept herself apart from it, swinging up onto Michael’s shoulders to avoid it. The only daemons Alex had ever seen her relax with were with Max Evans’ pharaoh hound and Isobel Evans’ hummingbird.
He watched from the edge of the science building once as Max and Michael were laughing at something, and Michael’s daemon suddenly launched herself at Max’s, the two of them wrestling in such an open display of affection that it took Alex’s breath away. It was so different to the way Michael’s daemon usually behaved. She tugged on Max’s daemon’s big ears and made faces at her, and let Isobel’s hummingbird settle on her fingers, holding him as delicately as spun glass.
Alex still remembered that, years later. He remembered how it had felt when Michael had first kissed him, and Mihiliz had dropped herself out of his shirt and let Michael’s daemon pick her up. He never let anything close to Mihiliz if he could help it, but she’d practically thrown herself at Michael’s daemon. He remembered the echoes of her joy, being touched so gently and carefully. He remembered how it had felt like a gift when he learned Michael’s daemon’s name from her – Laithe.
Years later, he and Michael still kept their daemons close. Laithe was less demonstrative than ever, more likely to snarl and hiss at people than before. She’d looked ferocious, that first time Alex had seen her and Michael outside his trailer at the Foster Ranch. Skittering over with her teeth bared, looking for trouble.
Mihiliz had kept herself against his skin, tucked down his shirt, but he felt her desire to see Laithe. In uniform though, it wouldn’t have been appropriate. She hadn’t allowed herself to leave Alex’s side until that night at the reunion, and then it was like the first time all over again. It felt good, looking out of the corner of his eye at the way she twined herself against Laithe, black scales against golden fur, small hands stroking her so, so gently, cradling her like something precious. It soothed something in him that always ached, something he never even noticed until it was being healed.
Everyone had changed so much in the time he’d been gone. Jasper, Maria’s gray fox daemon, was quiet and watchful in a way he’d never been in school. Liz’s Alvar, who had been so chattery when they were kids, now stayed up on Liz’s shoulder, tufted squirrel ears pricked and tail a-quiver. Kyle’s Twill had changed the most. A long-tailed weasel was a small animal, objectively, but every time Mihiliz had been unlucky to be close enough, they’d been reminded that weasels could take down animals far bigger than them. Twill was vicious and fast, and her teeth and claws were painfully sharp. But now she was unobtrusive, almost cute. She rode Kyle’s shoulder like she had in school, but she never hissed at people anymore.
Alex wondered if he and Mihiliz seemed changed. They’d already been wary and distrustful, and she’d always kept herself close, so were any differences really obvious? He felt like they had changed a lot, but he wasn’t sure if it showed. She still coiled tight around his arm, squeezing when he needed a reminder to be civil. She still poked her head out of his sleeve or the neck of his shirt when she needed to show herself, tongue flicking out to taste the air. She still slept coiled on the pillow around his head, scales smooth against the back of his neck. She still alternated between total stillness and agitated twisting whenever Laithe was nearby.
By the time he and Michael were talking honestly for what might have been the first time in their lives, Mihiliz felt comfortable enough to laze in the sun between them. She was a racer snake, more than fast enough to reach him quickly if she needed to, but it was still new, not having her close enough to touch in the company of another person. Laithe looked relaxed too, sitting in the chair next to Michael’s and watching him with clear golden eyes.
Michael was an alien. Alex had…well, not suspected exactly, but he’d considered the possibility that his dad was right about that at least. And if Michael was an alien, Max and Isobel Evans were too, and Alex was still wrapping his head around that.
“I can erase your mind if you regret what you know now,” Michael joked, and when Mihiliz shifted closer to Alex, showing their alarm, Laithe jumped down from her chair to sit closer to her. Not touching, not even reaching out, just sitting close by in the sun.
Alex wanted to keep this as far away from an interrogation as possible. He was curious, insanely so, but he made himself ask Michael about who he was rather than what he was. And when Michael recounted his time in the system so casually, Mihiliz moved. Alex glanced sideways and watched her slide across Laithe’s lap, and felt the echoey shiver of pleasure as Laithe picked her up, hands always so gentle. Michael didn’t react at all.
He tilted his head and smiled that careless smile, his chair bouncing under him as he gestured wide. “I showed you mine, now you show me yours. How’d you know about me?”
Mihiliz coiled around Laithe’s arm, and Alex took a breath. “Massive government conspiracy.”
Michael snorted, but when Alex just raised an eyebrow, his smile dropped immediately. Laithe froze, then shifted slightly as though she wanted to leap over to him but didn’t want to let go of Mihiliz either. Mihiliz made the choice for her and slid away, and Laithe sprang up, appearing in Michael’s lap so fast Alex wasn’t sure she even touched the ground. His hands twisted in her fur, holding onto her tightly for a second before relaxing a bit. “You’re serious?”
Mihiliz slid over his good foot, and Alex leaned down to pick her up, her scales warm from the sun, her muscled weight familiar in his hands. She coiled in his lap rather than hiding up his sleeve, and he rested one hand over her protectively. “Yeah, I’m serious.”
Michael stroked one hand down Laithe’s back, face a mask, and she was the one to ask, “Are we in danger?”
“Not anymore.”
Michael frowned. “What d’you mean?”
“I sent my dad to Niger, and he’s going to request a transfer out of Roswell when he’s done there.”
Laithe jerked, like she was tensing to spring, and Michael rested his hand on her back again. “You sent him to Niger?”
Mihiliz bumped her head against the palm of his hand, and that was his cue to tell Michael about Project Shepherd. Michael kept up his steady stroking of Laithe’s back as they listened, and Alex felt Mihiliz’s swell of sympathy and realised only then that he’d never seen Michael do that before. It was a steadying gesture, probably meant to reassure himself, maybe a regular habit of his. It was just another reminder of how little they really knew each other.
“You’re sure he won’t come back?” Michael asked when Alex was done, voice low. He and Laithe were both still and tense, her hand gripping the fabric of his jeans in a tight little first.
“My dad’s legacy is everything to him.” Alex shook his head. “A dishonourable discharge would destroy that forever.”
“He’d still be here though,” Michael said quietly, and Mihiliz slid forward so her head was on Alex’s good knee.
“He’d be powerless,” she said, and Michael blinked and looked at her, then away quickly like he’d been caught looking at something illicit.
“If you say so,” he muttered, and grunted when Laithe pinched him, then jumped off his lap and started to pace back and forth, roving restlessly at a distance from them, then a further distance. Ten feet. Fifteen feet. Alex’s eyes went wide as she jumped up onto the boom of the crane and leapt onto the roof of its cab. Mihiliz’s vision was excellent, and she lifted her head up to stare as Alex did, pushing into his hands in agitation as he held onto her.
“Guerin…”
“You’re freaking him out!” Michael shouted at Laithe, who swung upside down from the crane boom and ignored him, obviously working off some of the nervous energy he was hiding.
“Guerin.” Alex was holding onto Mihiliz too tightly, but she was coiling around his hands right back, crushing one of his wrists a little. She was all muscle and ribs, stronger than she looked, and she was using all that strength right now. “What the hell?”
“Alien.” Michael looked embarrassed, but shrugged and gestured to himself like Alex should’ve expected it. “We’ve got bigger range than humans.”
“How big?”
“Last we checked?” Michael looked over at Laithe, who’d climbed up onto the roof of the covered work area, well over twenty feet away. “Maybe fifty feet or so?”
Even thinking of Mihiliz being that far away from him was terrifying. Alex held onto her even tighter as Laithe barrelled over and skidded to slow down before leaping onto the back of Michael’s chair. “That’s nothing,” she said, baring her teeth. “You won’t believe what else we can do.”
“Laithe,” Michael said, looking back at her and shaking his head. “C’mon.”
“Show us.” Alex found his voice, and Michael looked at him, rare uncertainty in his eyes.
“You sure? It’s worse than that.”
Alex tilted his chin, feigning coolness, and Michael sighed as Laithe dropped down into his lap. “Watch this,” she grinned, and vanished.
It was worse. It was so much worse. Mihiliz tightened around his wrists like handcuffs, and only the pressure of her body kept Alex rigidly still. Laithe was gone, and Michael sighed and spread his hands wide like a shitty stage magician. “Ta-da.”
“Where is she?” Alex asked, barely keeping his voice level.
“In me.”
“In you?”
“Yeah.” Michael tapped his chest. “Like, I absorb her or something.”
“Bring her back!” Mihiliz snapped, and Michael shifted in his chair. Laithe reappeared in his lap, exactly where she had been, and Alex thought that this time he’d caught something in the air, like a shimmer of heat, but it was gone so fast he couldn’t be sure. Michael was blushing, the colour faint on his cheeks.
Laithe hopped down and Alex could feel Mihiliz’s desire to touch her, to check she was alright. He wasn’t ready to not be holding her though, and kept his grip strong on her body.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Laithe said, like it was nothing, and Alex looked at Michael for confirmation.
He shrugged. “We can’t do it for long. I think it’s some kind of defensive thing, to protect her. We can’t be pulled apart if she’s in me, and she can’t be hurt by anyone else’s daemon. We present a smaller target, y’know?”
Alex vividly remembered Laithe’s animal shriek of pain when his dad had brought the hammer down, mingling with Michael’s scream. The way his dad’s wolf daemon had sunk her jaws into Laithe’s side and flung her against the wall, the awful sound of the thud of her body on the wood, and the sound of the hammer coming down a second time, a third, a fourth. They’d both been crying out, Laithe and Michael, and Michael had screamed again as Pave got between him and Laithe and bitten her again, horribly quiet as her jaws closed threateningly around Laithe’s neck.
Suddenly, the idea of Laithe being able to vanish to somewhere safe seemed better. Alex loosened his grip on Mihiliz at last, and she slid very slowly down his leg, keeping the end of her tail against his foot as she inched forward to bump her nose against Laithe’s hand, lifting up to coil around her wrist. Laithe had to shuffle closer to hold her, and Alex swallowed at her proximity.
“Can Max and Isobel do that too?” he asked, making himself look at Michael, not his daemon.
“Uh huh.”
“When you say she goes into you, what does that mean?”
Michael shrugged, a wry expression on his face that said he understood Alex’s frustration. “No idea. Physically, she vanishes.” Between them, Mihiliz left Alex completely to wrap herself around Laithe, pressing as much of them together as possible. “But she’s not gone.”
“Is she…” Alex couldn’t look at their daemons right now, not if he wanted to keep his composure. “Can you still talk to her? In your head?”
Michael smiled, crooked and infuriating. “Well, how much do you talk to your daemon anyway?”
“All the time.” Said daemon was about five seconds away from making him blush, and Alex forced himself not to squirm in his seat.
“Well.” Michael shrugged. “It’s like when you’re just on your own and she’s there with you. You don’t need to talk, but you can let each other know things anyway, y’know?”
“Right.” How the hell Michael was so relaxed, Alex couldn’t understand. Laithe was stroking Mihiliz firmly, reassuring her that she was fine, and Alex could feel Mihiliz melting in her hands. “You said you can’t do it for long?”
“Yeah. Longest we managed was maybe half an hour, and it was kind of a strain.”
Alex nodded slowly. “Is there anything else that makes you obviously alien?”
“Not that we know of. Laithe,” he called, and Alex couldn’t suppress a shiver as Mihiliz slid through Laithe’s hands like silk, flicking her tongue against her fur one last time before coming back to Alex. He leaned down, palm open to let her slide into his sleeve, and opposite them Laithe swung up onto Michael’s arm and shoulder as he stood up. “There is something else though.”
Alex waited for Mihiliz to get her head out of the collar of his shirt, body wrapped securely around his arm, and then pushed himself to his feet. “Okay.”
If he hadn’t been so on edge, and if they’d been better friends (or friends at all, he wasn’t sure he and Michael had ever been anything as casual as friends), Alex might have been able to make a joke about the number of bunkers under Roswell. But he just watched in silence as Michael pushed his trailer sideways with his mind, all twenty-seven feet of it, and revealed the hatch they would be climbing down.
He went first, and Alex took the opportunity to press his jaw against Mihiliz’s head and whisper, “Did you have to be so obvious?”
Her tongue flickered against his chin. “She was just being nice.”
“The phrase ‘putty in her hands’ comes to mind.”
“Like you wouldn’t be putty in his if he asked.”
Alex grunted irritably and went to climb carefully down the ladder. Bunker ladders had swiftly become one of his least favourite things.
He felt even worse when he had to climb out of it. He sat in his car for a minute, just holding the piece of alien glass Jim Valenti had left him in his hands, Mihiliz resting her head on the top of his wrist.
“We should give it to them,” she said quietly.
“Yeah.”
They didn’t move.
It made sense, was the thing. If he was Michael, he was sure he’d have been looking for fragments of the ship his whole life too. And if anyone could figure out how to fix the console and make a working spaceship, it was Michael Guerin.
“You’d need all sorts of materials though,” Mihiliz said suddenly. “Wouldn’t you? Space travel’s really dangerous. Even if his people did know how to do it safely over long distances, humans don’t, and our technology is all he’s got to work with. He’d need a hell of an engine just to get out of the atmosphere.”
“Yeah.”
She huffed and bumped her hard, flat nose against his knuckles. “He can’t leave.”
“Definitely not without this.” He ran his fingertips over the purple glass and watched as it shimmered, then shoved it back into his bag.
“Alex.”
“Shut up.” He started his car and pulled out of the junkyard, heading back to town. “I don’t want him to leave,” he said after a couple of miles.
“Then give him a reason to stay,” Mihiliz said reasonably.
Alex imagined turning the car around and going back, handing Michael the alien glass. What sort of mixed signal would that send, giving him a key to his escape just after he’d told him he wanted them to start over and build a relationship on solid foundations? “He’d just think I’ve changed my mind again,” he muttered, torn. “Wouldn’t he? He’d think I was telling him, you know, go, for all I care.”
Mihiliz started easing her way out of his sleeve, and he let go of the wheel with his other hand to help lift her into his lap. “Or it might show that we trust him.”
“We already trust him,” Alex huffed. “It’s not about trust.”
Mihiliz settled herself in place, quiet for a moment. “You’re just scared.”
She wasn’t wrong. Alex gripped the steering wheel harder, and headed for the Wild Pony. He really needed a drink. And he needed to talk to Maria as well, because now he was pushing all the alien stuff to the back of his mind, the memory of Michael tipping Maria’s necklace into his hand and frowning at it was replaying over and over in his head.
If he imagined Laithe touching Jasper, sandy fur against grey and russet, imagined Michael cradling Maria’s face with the same care he cradled Alex’s, he would lose it. So he thought of Michael alone instead, and imagined him and Laithe as they were right now, still down in the bunker below the Airstream.
He wondered how long they’d spent down there since Michael had found it. Long enough to hook it up with ventilation and electricity, to put in lights, to assemble furniture. The clutter down there spoke of long hours holed up, working. Alex remembered how focused Michael and Laithe could be, when they wanted.
In his lap, Mihiliz caught the edge of his thoughts and snorted, and that just sent his brain in completely the wrong direction.
Oh yeah, they could be very focused when they wanted to be.
He could tell from Maria’s face that it hadn’t been just a hook-up when he finally told her in the bar who the fabled Museum Guy was, and he hated that he both understood and resented her for it. Michael had his charms, plenty of them. But how typical that someone else had finally noticed right when Alex was trying to get his act together, and how unlucky that that someone had to be one of his best friends.
He considered telling Kyle about it a few days later, when they were in the Project Shephard bunker going through the last of the files together. A lot of stuff was only on paper, and it took time to sift through. They had a routine going by now, meeting up in the afternoon after work and heading down with coffee and takeout.
It was better, doing it with somebody else. He and Kyle were still finding their feet as adults, but the time together helped. Mihiliz still wouldn’t come out of Alex’s shirt while Kyle was around though. Alex had accepted Kyle’s apology and his obvious commitment to moving forward, but Mihiliz still refused to go anywhere near Twill.
“This time?” Alex muttered to her as he descended the ladder, Crashdown burgers wrapped up in his backpack.
Mihiliz tightened around his arm. “Not likely. If she’d bitten you, maybe you’d feel differently.”
“That’s not fair.”
Mihiliz buzzed her tail against his wrist like a rattlesnake and he sighed. He was trying to move forward, but all Mihiliz remembered was Twill’s vicious teeth. To be fair, he remembered how scared they’d both been the first time Twill had attacked her. When she’d settled as a weasel, Alex had been stupidly relieved that she was so tiny. There were rats bigger than Twill, after all. But weasels were crazy fast and wickedly strong.
They’d been in the changing rooms, Mihiliz on the ground at his feet while he got into his gym clothes. Gym class itself wasn’t so bad, but the changing rooms were an ordeal every time. Alex always changed as fast as possible, and kept his eyes averted from everyone else. It was one of the few times it was too dangerous for him to get mouthy and fight back, because there was no adult supervision in there at all, and every asshole got their hackles up about the possibility of the gay guy checking them out with their clothes off. Alex had given up on showering after class completely, because the risk was just too high.
He hadn’t been expecting it. Mihiliz, on guard as she always was in there, had been surprised that first time. Weasels were fast, and she hadn’t had time to react at all before Twill was on her. Alex had staggered into the wall and cried out, and everyone had laughed, they’d laughed as Mihiliz twisted and twisted and twisted and couldn’t get Twill off no matter how hard she thrashed. Twill had dragged her away from Alex, terrifyingly strong, and Alex had felt those sharp teeth like they were in his own body.
He didn’t really remember what had happened after that. Probably a variation on the usual – Kyle making some idiotic joke, his friends laughing, but Alex not snapping back for once, not with Mihiliz in pain and him unable to help her because if he’d tried to grab her and accidentally brushed even a single hair on Twill’s body, the other boys would have killed him.
But high school was over, and Kyle had apologised. He was waiting in the bunker’s main room, sitting at the table with a flask of coffee and documents already spread in front of him. Twill was on the table too, and Kyle was stroking her red-brown fur absently with two fingers.
“Tell me you got sweet potato fries,” he said without looking around.
“I think you mean Scully’s sweet potato fries,” Alex said dryly, swinging his backpack onto the table.
“Whatever, just gimme.” Kyle sprawled pathetically across the table and made grabby hands at the backpack. “All I had for lunch was cookies.”
“Is there something ironic in a doctor failing to eat a healthy, balanced diet?” Alex mused aloud as he unpacked the food.
“Listen.” Kyle sat up and pretended to glare at him. “You know how hard it is to find time to eat some days? It’s a miracle I’m not smoking a pack of cigarettes a day like most of the other doctors in there, I’m healthy enough.”
“He says, as he prepares to chow down on a triple patty blast-off burger,” Alex said dryly, pushing said burger across the table to Kyle, who unwrapped it eagerly and took a bite without even giving Alex a snappy comeback, which meant he really was starving. Alex put the fries and flying sauce between them and sat down to unwrap his own burger, pulling the nearest folder towards him.
They finished a couple of hours later, and sat slumped in their chairs in silence for what felt like a long time.
“Caulfield,” Kyle said finally. “You notice there’s barely any mention of it in any of these files?”
“Could be Facility 1-A,” Alex said tiredly. Mihiliz was coiled around his neck, smooth and heavy, her head resting on his shoulder. “Could be that redacted bit in the blue file we looked at last week.” And really, wasn’t it incredible that his dad was so paranoid that he’d gone through his own files in his own secret bunker and used a black marker to erase chunks of information he’d decided were too incriminating or sensitive?
“Facility 1-A is a dump site,” Kyle sighed. “You said so yourself.”
“Yeah.” That document had mentioned a river too close by for it to match up with what they knew about Caulfield.
“Fuck.” Kyle leaned back and ran his hands through his hair. “Fuck.”
“Easy way to find out for sure,” Twill said, scampering up his chest to perch on his shoulder and nip his ear. “We’ll just go there ourselves.”
Kyle let out a breath and dropped his hands, looking at Alex. “Could we?”
It was still strange, and kind of cool to have Kyle look to him for leadership. His bullshit machismo would never have allowed him to do it in school, but Alex was really beginning to see him for who he was in the present now, not filtering everything through the view of the past.
“We could,” he agreed. “You free next Tuesday?”
“I can be.” Kyle sat up straighter, eyes brightening. “You wanna go then?”
“We’ve learned all we can here.” Alex gestured to the paperwork spread across the table. “And Caulfield is mentioned in here enough times that I don’t like it. I haven’t found any money trail that suggests my dad was paying anyone a regular salary, but there are dozens of accounts set up and money being withdrawn from those often enough that he might’ve been paying people in cash.” It was primitive, but irritatingly, there was only so much Alex could figure out without an electronic trail to follow.
“I’m ready if you are.” Kyle had the fire under his tail now. Caulfield was the only clue he had about his father’s death, and Alex nodded slowly, wanting him cooler.
Kyle had no weapons training, and no combat experience. If Caulfield was an active military site, Alex would be 100% responsible for his safety, and the only firearm he had was his issued weapon, which he absolutely could not use on a private excursion. He could buy another, but he really didn’t want to.
He’d think that over later, he decided. “I’ll do some recon, but let’s say Tuesday’s the day. For now, I’m ready to head out.”
“Same.” Kyle stood up and stretched, groaning. “God, I hate this place. You’d think your dad could’ve sprung for some better lighting down here.”
“Right, because my dad’s always been so focused on the aesthetic appeal of his surroundings.” Alex stood too, flexing his residual limb in the prosthetic’s socket to gauge whether he needed to put on another stump sock to drive home. It felt good enough, so he scooped the trash into the carrier bag the takeout had come in and stuffed it into his backpack. “Let’s get out of here.”
He came back down the next day to boot up the computers, Mihiliz gliding along the floor at his side for once, since they were alone. He liked seeing her out, stretched out to her full length instead of hiding in his clothes. He remembered the day they’d raced daemons in basic training, just for fun, back when he was learning how to have fun again. No one had expected Mihiliz to be so fast, and he’d smirked when she beat most of the other daemons, picking her up and looping her around his neck smugly. “They’re not called racers for nothing.”
The satellite imagery of Caulfield prison showed it to be an empty, abandoned husk. At the edge of their eight-foot range, Mihiliz lifted her head to look up at the screens. “Convenient.”
“Right?” Alex muttered. There was nothing obviously wrong, but gut feeling and knowledge of his father’s way of doing things made him settle down to work at it anyway. An hour or so later brought vindication, and heat signatures. Weird ones.
“Not many people, if those are people,” Mihiliz remarked, back around his neck. “Could they be animals? Coyotes?”
“They’re too hot for coyotes.” Alex frowned at the screens and pushed himself back in the chair. “And there are too many of them. Coyotes don’t travel in packs that big.”
“Could be pups?” she suggested. “When’s coyote breeding season?”
“Spring?” Alex tried to remember his dad’s lessons about desert survival. “I don’t know. Animals breed in spring, right?”
“Just Google it.”
He smiled and pulled his phone out. “Midwinter,” he said a minute later. “That’s when they get into packs to pair up anyway, so pups later? Either way, it’s too early. And the signatures are still way too hot.”
“You know who else runs hot,” she said suddenly, and Alex looked up at the screen with a fresh sense of foreboding. “We should bring him along.”
“Another civilian?” Alex twisted his head to look at her. “Are you crazy?”
“He isn’t defenceless like Kyle though.”
Alex remembered Michael’s trailer, the twenty-seven foot Airstream pushed aside without even a gesture from Michael, with no visible effort on his part. And he and Laithe had their huge range and their vanishing trick, which was a hell of an advantage for them.
“He deserves to know about this,” Mihiliz pressed. “Remember his face when he said he was relieved Max and Isobel had a better time than him after they got adopted? He’s been looking for traces of his people his whole life. We could give this to him! Prove we trust him in a way that isn’t giving him a way to leave. It’ll bring him closer instead.”
“Alright, Mil, I get it.”
She bumped her nose against his jaw, and he sighed. She was right, and there was definitely part of him that wanted to bring Michael closer. But bringing not one, but two unarmed civilians into an unknown situation was risky as all hell. Going alone wasn’t an option, not with Kyle so fixated on finding out the truth about his father’s death. And if Michael found out that Alex had investigated potential alien activity without him, what sort of message did that send? They were meant to be starting over, doing things better this time. He wanted an end to the secrets between them.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll ask him.”
Mihiliz tightened around his neck happily, and he smiled.
He was very much not smiling when everything at Caulfield went to shit.
Flint’s coyote daemon’s claws clicked on the floor as they fled with the folders he’d grabbed, the alarm blaring around them. Twill was tense and bristling on Kyle’s shoulder as Alex shoved his backpack into his hands. “Grab everything you can,” he said, heart hammering. “Hard drives, anything!”
“Okay, but Michael’s in the holding area.” Kyle seemed remarkably steady for a guy who’d just heard they had ten minutes before the building would blow. “Down the hall to the left, you’ll see the staircase. 7A.”
“Okay.” Alex grabbed his arm, careful to avoid his daemon, and Mihiliz slid her head out of his sleeve to briefly, just for a second, touch her nose to Twill’s.
“Make sure that you get out,” she ordered, and then Alex was running.
He was normally much cooler in a crisis. But the alarm was still wailing, and when he burst into the holding area he could hear Michael banging on one of the cell doors, trying to free one of the aliens. Panic was death in a situation like this, but he couldn’t think straight, he couldn’t think beyond the terrifying possibility of losing Michael. Mihiliz dropped out of his sleeve with a painful thud and raced to Laithe, who was pressed to the glass of the cell, agitation in every line of her body.
Alex was scared and desperate, the alarm counting down. He’d lost too much time on the way, no longer able to run too fast without losing his balance. He didn’t know what hurt more; Michael shouting that he didn’t love him, or Laithe trying to push Mihiliz away from her. The pain dulled as he heard the alarm tell him they had one minute, and accepted his fate. “You’re a miserable liar,” he told Michael, voice shaking, and hoped that however they were going to die, it would be quick.
Priorities shrank, in situations like this. He didn’t care about Kyle, or the files, or shutting down Project Shepherd. He didn’t care about the aliens around them who had been tortured for decades, or his father who had been the one torturing them. They were going to die, and all he cared about was making sure Michael wouldn’t be alone.
There wasn’t time to grab Mihiliz when they ran – she coiled around Laithe instead and held on tight, and Alex clung to Michael as they hurried up the stairs.
“Leave her,” he gasped to Laithe. “Run, you need to get out!”
Neither she or Michael replied, but Michael wrapped an arm around his back and ran faster, letting Alex lean into him as they started to sprint. They let go of each other as they reached the main entrance, Kyle just in front of them, and barely made it to cover before the building blew up. The whole time, Mihiliz stayed on Laithe. Even as they got back into the Jeep and Michael got in the back and sat with his head in his hands, Mihiliz stayed with Laithe.
The drive back was cold and silent, and Alex felt like there was a hand around his throat the whole way. Laithe wasn’t pulling Mihiliz off of her, but she wasn’t paying any attention to her either, and Alex was horribly aware that Mihiliz’s presence was preventing Michael and Laithe from touching. When they got back to the junkyard, Michael and Laithe got out before they were even through the entrance, and Alex barely had time to stop the car before Mihiliz was at the edge of their range.
“Stop,” he gasped, stomach lurching as he wrenched his seatbelt off and stumbled out of the Jeep. “Guerin! Stop!” He didn’t, and neither did Laithe, though she got up on her back legs and started trying to yank Mihiliz from her body. It didn’t work, and Alex stumbled again as a stab of pain went through his chest.
“Michael!” Kyle shouted from the car, and Alex barely stopped himself falling to his knees as Mihiliz coiled even tighter around Laithe’s body, refusing to be budged, and their range stretched to its limits and a bit further.
“Fuck, Mil!” he choked, and gasped in relief as Michael and Laithe finally stopped, mere yards from the Airstream.
“Get her off us,” Michael said harshly, without turning around.
Alex didn’t know whether he was more embarrassed or hurt. “Mil,” he whispered, going down on his good knee. It had snowed while they’d been away, and the fabric of his jeans was soaked instantly. “Please, stop.”
“Leave us alone,” Laithe snarled, little hands tugging at Mihiliz’s body, nails digging in. “Get off!”
Mihiliz finally allowed herself to be pried loose, and Alex gasped again as Laithe pushed her to the ground and leapt away, catching the hand Michael held out for her and swinging up onto his back. Mihiliz jumped into Alex’s hands and let him cradle her against his chest for a second before sliding up his sleeve, curling around his arm and filling him with sorrow.
Michael was almost at the Airstream, and Alex pushed himself to his feet, his stump aching. “Guerin.”
“I’m not interested, Manes.”
Michael had never used his last name for him before, and it stung fiercely. But Alex went after him anyway, and grabbed his arm just before he could open the trailer door. “Wait, Guerin –”
“What?” Michael whirled round so fast Alex took half a step back. Michael’s jaw was clenched, and Laithe’s hands and feet were twisted into the fabric of his jacket so hard that she was shaking.
There was a lump in Alex’s throat, and he had to swallow around it before he could speak. “I’m so sorry.”
Michael tried to hold it together, but his chin started to tremble, and then a second later his face crumpled. Alex moved forward, and Laithe jumped out of the way just in time for him to wrap his arms around Michael and hold onto him tightly, feeling him start to shake with sobs.
Behind him, he heard the sound of an engine start up, and then fade as Kyle got in his car and left them alone. Michael buried his face in Alex’s shoulder and clutched the back of his jacket, and Alex lifted the arm that didn’t have Mihiliz up the sleeve so that he could rest his hand very carefully on the back of Michael’s head.
At their feet, Laithe made a sad cooing sound, and Alex lowered his other arm so that Mihiliz could twist around and poke her head out. Whatever reception she got must have been alright, because she slid forward carefully, and Alex felt the echo of Laithe taking hold of her before she could touch the cold ground.
Alex closed his eyes and concentrated on Michael, lifting his arm to wrap around his back again, hand firm between his shoulder blades. Michael was trying to stop crying, gasping wetly into Alex’s shoulder, sucking in huge, shuddering breaths that shook his whole body. Alex didn’t want to tell him it was okay, because it wasn’t. Michael had found his mother and had her snatched from him before they could even touch each other. There was nothing okay about it.
“I need.” Michael lifted his head and pulled back a little to drag the back of his good hand across his face. “I gotta do something. Check…check something.”
“Let me come,” Alex said without thinking, only knowing he didn’t want to leave Michael alone. When Michael didn’t respond, he added, “Please,” softly.
“Kay.” Michael swallowed and sniffed, wiping his face again. “We’re taking my truck.”
“Okay.”
Alex didn’t let go until Michael did, and followed him when he started walking. Mihiliz stayed wrapped around Laithe, and this time it felt right.