JESSIE

A few weeks passed in Terra — as I'd come to know the settlement. Luc came and went as he pleased, letting me know it was something he had to deal with. He often came back with fruit he'd learned I liked through trial and error in our early days together. I spent most of my time supervising Tali and Stacey, who were now no longer confined to the sick bay. She spoke to the Avian female in short phrases and words like I did with Luc, and they shared a room. Jargia was still saying very little, but Luc and Tali had helped write down the little she was communicating to us. Luke spent most of his time playing with her, now that she'd graduated from living in the closet and lab to a small room in the same hallway as the lab.

"I think we should get you an office," Petrova had said on a random day when I'd just finished a meeting with her. "Somewhere else to put your stuff, unless the room you have is alright."

I remember shrugging. "I spend most of my time in the sickbay," I admitted.

"We'll get you an office."

I was spending considerable amounts in the small room that had been cleared out for me — taking notes on a settlement-provided computer and communicating with the others without having to make a march to their offices. It felt a bit strange — like I'd been on-boarded into a company and quickly boxed into a role I was barely qualified for. What even was my role? Avian expert, who helped out at the sickbay sometimes? I didn't know. I just tried to stay busy.

Ola was the busiest of us all. She spent most of her time curled up in her office, flipping through files and listening to audio logs from Josephine. Rapid communication on a cellular or radio device was possible, but because of the thick asteroid ring that circled the Equiano, launching and maintaining satellite communication was a hassle and a waste of resources. Radio and cellular range remained small, relying on interconnected towers on the surface maintained on a much smaller scale. It meant settlement-to-settlement contact remained mostly in writing and audio-visual recordings.

I knew Terra, and a couple of other settlements had a mailing network of sorts — forwarding information to each other by having dedicated scouts hand deliver packages they drove from point A to point B. I wondered how long it took Ola to receive or share information with Josephine. It looked like she got a new package every few days based on the pile of cardboard boxes that showed up at her office door occasionally. An office that was right next to mine.

Luc left this morning with the same phrase he'd told me the first time.

"Nest. A while."

I'd smiled at him, nodding my head before helping him to reach Terra's cave entrance. I'd watched him leave, feeling a lot less overwhelmed by dread than I had the first few times he had done this. He'd always come back. This wouldn't be different. I didn't exactly know what he was up to, but it seemed important.

I sighed, resting my head on my hands before sitting up straight and staring at my laptop's screen. I raised a brow, noticing a message from Petrova.

Head up to the conference room. We need to talk.

I got up and left my office. I made my way to the room that I'd been in too many times now to keep count. Meeting with Petrova took up the bulk of my time here in Terra when I wasn't with Luc, helping at the sick bay, or talking to Ola about the Avians. I knocked on the heavy metal door, pushing it open when I heard a 'come in' in Petrova's voice. I stepped in, looking at Ola, John, and Petrova, and then at the couple of other faces I occasionally saw in the lab.

"You called for me?" I asked, referring to Luke calling me off duty at the sick bay.

"Yes," Petrova said, gesturing at an empty seat. "Take a seat. It's a lot."

"Okay..." I said, sinking into the metal chair as I squared my shoulders.

"You've been spending a lot of time with the Avians, and we haven't briefed you on some of our findings," Petrova said, looking from me to Ola. "I'll let her go first."

"So, Ola began, pounding the stack of paper she had in her hands against the table. Josephine and I have started making progress translating what Luc wrote."

I sat up. "Really?"

"Yes," she nodded. "We were having a hard time, until we focused on a word that appeared over and over again—" she paused, biting down on her bottom lip. "It's your name. We figured out how Luc was writing your name. It's helped with figuring out the phonetics of some letters and we're working backwards from that. We've even worked out some sentences."

My face warmed up, thinking of what Luc could have been writing about. A part of me wanted to see how he wrote my name — what it looked like in his native writing script.

"Can I see?" I asked, staring at Ola. She nodded, taking a piece of paper from the pile in her hand before slipping it over to me. My fingertips touched the end of the leaflet, pulling it toward the edge of the table I was sitting by. I didn't understand the strokes at all, but knowing that was my name made me burn the image into my memory. I wish she'd given me one Luc had written himself, and not just her rendition in her handwriting.

"Aside from that, we've been able to translate some of the words on the map you came with. We might even have an actual location for where some of the humans are being kept — if they're still alive, that is," Ola said, making me look up at her.

"Can we get to the more important bit?" John asked, making Ola nod before putting the pile of papers down and covering it with her hands. "When you gave me that sample of Luc's crop milk, I had some of our lab technicians take a look at it... as well as John..." she added, looking at the Asian man, who simply nodded. "Your theory about the Avians being able to break down nutrients humans can't was spot on, but we found something else..." she said, looking at John to continue.

"The crop milk is full of antibodies. He giving you antibodies and nutrients to better survive here on Equiano — that's a breakthrough. We could synthesize an all-in-one vaccine using the antibodies that are now in your blood," John said, getting more animated than I'd ever seen him. "We don't even know what most of the antibodies do, but we saw it help Stacey... and you said it helped you when you were taken. We've been on this planet for a little over seven years now... We've stuck to the surface and underground because we can't handle the pressure or the illness that comes with being higher up. This isn't earth. There are whole forests and biomes up in the mountains—"

"A lot of resources we currently can't access. All that's down here on the surface is fish, rock, weeds, and whatever earth-origin plants we've been able to make grow on this soil," Petrova added, leaning forward. "Humans are down here fighting each other for what's left of the resources that shipped with the Gallic-3 starship, but if we could go higher without dropping like flies, we don't need to do that."

I blinked, listening to her speak. "What about the Avians?" Sure, heading upwards sounded like a good idea, but that would mean more run-ins with the Avians. I couldn't even conceive what would happen if we encroached on their territory. I knew they'd been carefully planning around possible ways to retrieve human beings that had been taken once they figured out where to, but planning a one-and-done rescue mission was very different from planning a long-term human expansion into the mountains. "Do you think they're just going to let human beings set up camp in their homes?"

"That's where you come in," Ola said. "We're decoding their language. The faster we can get it done, the faster we can talk to the Avians on equal grounds. I know it doesn't seem like it, but your interactions with Luc, Tali, and Jargia have made it clear the Avians can be communicated with, and it's worth trying to talk to first and understand their ideas of ownership before putting our lives in danger by encroaching on their territory."

I thought about Ola's words for a bit. "So, is there a reason you waited for Luc to take off for the day before dragging me in here?" I asked, looking at the faces I recognized in the room before fixating on Petrova's. It wasn't like I didn't trust Petrova or her settlement. It was that I knew at the end of the day they were humans, and humans needed to supersede whatever fondness or tolerance they'd grown for the Avians over the past few weeks.

"Actually, yes," Petrova said, nodding her head as she stretched out her robotic arm. "We reached out to Prime-1 with the data you got off the black box. They said they'll relinquish a small portion of their seed storage and medical cache to keep it under wraps."

"That's good," I said, starting at her push away a piece of her blond hair away from her neck. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Yes..." she trailed off, looking over at John. "But they asked for something else when we demanded a bit more to work with."

"They want us to turn you in," John said, shrugging his shoulders. "We don't know how they know you're here, but they want you back. Something about needing an Avian expert. They assured us it wasn't about extraditing you for a prison sentence—"

"You know that's bullshit, right?" I asked, cutting John off. Even if the military wanted my knowledge of the aliens, they'd just torture it out of me in confinement. I'd seen it before — I had been sometimes in charge of people not dying from their torture wounds.

He seemed to think about it for a bit before nodding his head. "Yes, I know that. We argued with them on that and they backpedaled, saying they'd be fine with relinquishing for supplies if we just handed them an Avian. They've been trying to get a few, but it hasn't been going well... There's been a of casualties when they escape or get too angry."

I felt the blood drain out of my face as I put two and two together. "You can't be serious."

"We weren't planning on ever doing that," Petrova jumped in. "We just wanted you to know... I don't know how they know we have you here, or how they know the Avians are here. Information gets around somehow."

"I just wanted to bring it up in case the other option was something you were okay with." John shrugged. "We have three of them. We don't need three Avians."

I glared at him. "All of you know how strong Avians are. Between Luc and Tali, half this whole place could go down if you got one of them angry enough. You wouldn't be asking me to do something so awful if you could do it yourselves, and I don't know how I feel knowing that."

Petrova looked at John with a frown. "We already talked about this."

"Someone doesn't want me here," I said, staring at John. I didn't talk to him much, but I had the impression he was very... practical. He didn't care about the Helli. I knew that. He just wanted to do what would get him closer to preventing humans from getting picked up and helping his settlement. No hard feelings. I understood that, but — still. I didn't understand why everyone — even Ola was having a hard time conceptualizing the Avians as full people. I didn't get along with them because they were my 'pets' and they listened to me. One wouldn't get set off to get tortured by the militarist just because I asked nicely.

"I'm not saying people in this room — it could be — but I'm speaking in generalities. Someone in this settlement doesn't want me here," I said.

"They might just be worried about the Avians—"

"I never wanted to be here long term in the first place," I said, cutting Ola off as I gestured to the Terra-settlement jumpsuit I was wearing. "I wanted to deliver the black box, ask some questions, and leave with Luc, but now I'm running an alien daycare where I have to work as an intermediary communicator because no one wants to talk to the Avians like they're people. I don't know what you're thinking John, but none of the Avians are going to a military-grade prison just because I asked them to, and you'd be out of your mind if you think I'd do something that cruel to one of them just for seeds."

I knew I was losing my temper, but I was getting frustrated.

"Fine. I was just providing an alternate solution to the one of putting you up for arrest," John said as if he was doing me a favor. The room was silent for a bit.

Petrova coughed, making everyone look her way. "I know you're berating us for making you do all this, but I needed to ask you another favor."

I rolled my eyes. "Great."

"Could you get Luc to take us to the Gallic-3's crash site?" Petrova asked.

I raised a brow. "Why?"

"There are useful things probably locked up in storage that no one bothered to take. Also, if we can get an eternal battery on board with some technicians, we might be able to get the computers working again to do some digging," Petrova said. "I know we're asking you a lot of favors—"

"While also letting me know that you could just ransom me or one of the Avians out to Prime-1 if you feel like it," I said.

"We're not going to do that to you... or them," Petrova said, pointing at me with a robotic arm. "I'm being serious. John and I already talked about it. I'm not sure why he brought that up."

"Sure, I'll ask him," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "The thing about Prime-1 wanting me or an Avian hostage, though — never bring that up again."

A few people in the room nodded, but I noticed John was not one of them.