Kalea grabbed her drink, and followed me to the living room. I could barely hear her behind me. My eyes darted over my shoulder.

  She moved, cat-like, with a kind of aloof grace. Or maybe not too gracefully. Her elbow tagged a vase on her way in. She caught it with one hand, and deposited it back on the entry table without slowing. I felt myself smiling for some reason.

  “Watch it,” I said, “you break anything, and I’ll have to write a strongly worded letter to the Dreadnaught.”

  She just chuckled, and continued to follow.

  Was I really that funny, or was she just humoring me? You know what? I just decided it didn’t matter.

  I sat at the piano. She sat on the couch. She sipped her soda.

  “Nice place,” she said.

  I made a show of examining my house as if I’d never seen it before.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “You’re being modest.”

  “I’m sure it’s not like the Dreadnaught.”

  “You’re right, there. Nothing like the Dreadnaught,” she spread out on the couch in a distinctly unwomanly way. As short as she was, she certainly knew how to take up space. “They don’t have rooms like this though. Only the big shots get rooms like this.”

  “Right,” I said. “So you’re not a big shot?”

  “I certainly carry a big gun,” she replied.

  There was an awkward silence that hung in the air. As if trying to find something to say, Kalea glanced around the room looking at the walls. With the light shining on her the way it did, it sent her green skin shimmering. Every breath she took, put more of those spores out into the room, damn near sparkling in the beam of light she’d situated herself in.

  I knew that the fungus was mostly harmless, more than that, it was considered a blessing. The galaxy revered the Somnifer for their technology, sure, but their bodies themselves let people communicate easier. After spending time with them, even the humans could communicate with a look. People also reported just feeling happier, with more energy.

  It still seemed weird to me. Fungus in the air usually just made you sneeze. Or worse. I also wondered how they were able to walk around on earth without a Knight suit. Wouldn’t they get sick? Further, why didn’t they make us sick? None of this made much sense to me, but I wasn’t a xenobiologist.

  “What’s with all the needlepoint?” she asked. “Your mom a big homemaker?”

  I tried to keep my laugh in, and ended up snorting. Somniferian understanding of human culture could be a bit textbook at times.

  Kalea gave me a quizzical look.

  “I’m sorry, just the thought of my mom being a homemaker is funny. Nah, they’re mine. It’s, uh, I like to keep my hands busy while listening to my podcasts, and stuff.”

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  “All of them?”

  “Yeah, every one.”

  “Even the one that says ‘Jesus is my only drug?’”

  “That was a gift to my grandma.”

  “Ah.”

  This conversation was starting to make me nervous. I felt like I was making myself look like an idiot in front of the maybe hundreds of years old Alien.

  “You want me to play the song?”

  “Whenever,” she said with a smile. Her smile was mostly in her large brown eyes. They were very dark. I was used to seeing brown eyes more like mine, with flecks of other colors in them. Her eyes were just dark, and wide.

  “So, anyway,” I said, “this song is called ‘Morrigan.’”

  I began to play. ‘Morrigan’ wasn’t a very complex song. It had a simple chord progression, and a catchy leitmotif. But the song built on itself over time, bringing in more complex chords. I was fairly proud of it. Now — I know that this was all supposed to be magic, but it still didn’t make sense to me yet. The music just sounded like music to me.

  Kalea sat transfixed. I stopped playing, and she kept up the tune, humming a previous phrase.

  “Now, that’s something,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  Her eyes bored into mine.

  “Do you know about the Prophecy?” she asked.

  “Um. I’m not super big on church.”

  “Says the girl that needlepoints for The Jesus.”

  “It was for my nona!”

  “Anyway, It’s not a religious thing. Or well. At least not to me.” She blinked and seemed to snap out of whatever feeling that had a hold on her. “I better go talk to Paula.”

  “Am I in the clear?”

  Kalea chuckled.

  “None of us are, yet.”

  I followed her to the porch. Paula was already there, at the steps. She was still in her suit, but she hadn’t closed her mask yet. A sheen of sweat covered her neck and brow. A panel in her gorget was left open, exposing her clavicle. Again, I wondered if it was vanity, or if she just wanted to cool off. Maybe those suits were hotter than I imagined.

  “She tell you about the song?” Paula asked.

  “She played it for me.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s legit. Sargent Gallagher may have—”

  “Let me worry about Emma.”

  “Right.”

  Paula looked past Kalea, to me, then back to her apprentice.

  “We should head up the road to talk.”

  Kalea glanced back at me briefly before turning back to Paula and saying, “okay.”

  “Besides. If what Emma is saying is true, we should do a sweep of the area anyway.”

  Kalea put her back to the armor, and it slid over her body quickly, and carefully. They both ran off down the road, large steps bounding.

  I watched them leave.

  When they wanted to run, they could sure run. Their gait was long and loping, but it took them quickly down the road, and before I knew it, they were gone.

  I waited for a second, trying to parse what all this meant. The wind swept in from the west, and sent my hair dancing. I tried to ignore it and enjoy the wind.

  Prophecy? And who could be waiting in the woods for us? What had Kalea heard in the song? It couldn’t have been important. Maybe it was Morrigan? Maybe Morrigan was more advanced than we thought?

  I walked towards the barn. Auntie Em slid the door open before I could put my hand on it. I started.

  How did she do that?

  “Get in,” she said. “We need to finalize the design.”

  “What happened with Paula?”

  “I told her what she wanted to hear.”

  “The truth?”

  “A version of it.”

  “What did you say?”

  “She believes in some kind of prophetic ‘Savior of the Beacon’ that is destined to destroy the robots for good.”

  “Okay, Kalea said something similar. How does that help us?”

  “I let her believe it's you.”