Slowly, I began to sort out what had just happened.

This alien zombie had me and Crick at its mercy. Then, Kira saved us. Now, I was sitting next to her and Crick on the forest floor.

From what I remember, the Starsnatcher injured me to the point of busting bones. Did Kira heal me with her stone's nanotech or did she alter my nerve receptors so that I felt no pain?

My eyelids felt like made of lead. Why even open them when I couldn't see? Most people in modern-day society have no idea how dark the night can be. We're used to having streetlights or flashlights by our side at all times.

The canopy blocked the moonlight overhead. Had Kira not held my wrist, I might have forgotten about her being even here.

Aliens crept through the surrounding understory.

With my flashlight, I shone over the bushes about to be trampled. Half a dozen aliens emerged, each taller and broader than a wrestling champion. Two of them carried spears. Why did I worry about that? Their sheer strength made spears redundant.

"It's too many," I said.

Kira sighed. "No shit, Sherlock."

Now that my flashlight was on, I realized she had taken on her helmet again. She lifted me by the wrist while her other hand held the unconscious Crick by their tentacles.

"You want to carry us both?" I asked. "I know, you're strong and all, but this seems unsafe."

"So what? I'll fix your bones if they break."

Kira sank to her knees and jumped into the air.

Now that I wasn't in a trance, the jumps felt far less graceful than before. The bottom canopy stopped our jumps like a ceiling. Each time we broke through it, its branches caught us and threatened to tear apart my suit.

Landing proved even worse. Jumping with Kira meant falling from a height of twelve feet or more. Even with a dampening spacesuit, these were the types of heights that sprained ankles without careful landings. Especially in Eden's gravity. And trust me, we didn't land carefully. Only Kira did.

Worse, each time she took off, my body had to endure the same force as during landing, only in the opposite direction. I wondered if my hand and arm remained connected at that point.

She slowed down when we reached the boulder.

Explosive shockwaves had carved a face into the rock that stared solemnly into the moonlight. The upper portion lost more parts than the lower, meaning Kira could climb it like a stairway. With less time pressure, she jumped carefully, making sure each jump was just high enough to reach the next step. This time, I and Crick weren't damaged upon landing.

We reached the boulder's top. For all their invincibility, zombie Starsnatchers demonstrated no climbing skills.

Once Kira let go of my hand, I realized just how much it hurt. No tendons remained intact in my wrist. Broken ribs punctured my ribcage like steak knives. I lay supine on the boulder's roof, gasping for air like a dying fish.

Kira took off my spacesuit gloves. Like my collar, my sleeves glued to my arms to protect my breathing mix from atmospheric diffusion.

With one hand, she took my left hand and put it over my right one to touch both at once. She did the same with Crick's six tentacles.

The more skin she touched the more nanobots came in. An army of trillions of invisible machines, none larger than a ribosome, swam into my body. Their tiny gears and arms stitched together torn muscle tissue and squished out pain by blocking neurotransmitters. Rebuilding me molecule to molecule took them an hour or more.

Kira was content to stare at the horizon most of that time. While she jumped down to eat on occasion, she came back every time.

To be fair, I doubt she had anything else to do. Her modifications probably decreased the need to sleep and it wasn't like she had any friends here. The boulder meant safety for her as much as for us.

Once I had enough nanites in my body, I took on my gloves again. Even so, I had to wait for the tiny robots to take effect.

Crick regenerated first. Their "skeleton" contained no bones and thus healed quicker.

From what I knew about the theoretical physics of nanobots, their small size meant they couldn't do everything at once. To cure Crick, Kira needed nanobots specialized in carbon. Healing my bones, however, also required rebuilding calcium.

As I still lay on my back, Crick's compound eyes loomed over me.

"Why are we still here," they asked and then transmitted a picture of Kira into my mind. "Why is it here?"

"She saved us, apparently."

Cut the "apparently", she saved us, period! I thought.

Nothing I wanted to admit though. It was bad enough to rely on the Seizers. The fact that she had to save me, too, showed I wasn't self-sufficient. It showed that, for all my training, I was still weak. No amount of training made me exceed the human body's inherent limitations.

"Had it shared the enemy's information with us, we would not have needed to bring ourselves in danger. Our target is not running away. Interrogate it now. This is your only chance to save your reputation."

I rose to my feet. On a better day, I might have asked Crick to help me up. You know, had I been foolish enough to believe that experiences like that humbled them.

Kira stood at the boulder's edge with her helmet off. What a luxury. I didn't have lungs that could morph to protect me from oxygen toxicity on Eden.

I wasn't afraid of heights normally, but with my limping gait, I couldn't trust myself to stay on my feet. I wasn't gonna ask her to support me. She was still the enemy. She saved us only because the Starsnatchers tolerated it.

She watched the forest burn down below. Sparks of the inferno Crick's rifle had caused lingered between the woods. The clearing carved by the explosion shone like a silver halo in the moonlight. Without chirping birds, it was the flames' crackling that brought the forest to life.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Kira asked without looking at me.

I didn't care. "Why did you do this?"

"Do what? Save your sorry asses?"

Much like her, I only looked at the woods as I spoke, even as my voice rose. "Don't play dumb. You said you're our enemy. You said you worked for the aliens we're fighting!"

A patch of trees burst into flames. Meanwhile, a fire expired to the clearing's right. Cycle of life.

"Consider it a favor," Kira said.

"A favor?"

"Indeed. When your alien buddy attacked me, you stood up for me. I hated that. I'd rather have had it shoot me. I decided I owed you something. So, I repaid my debt."

"That's also why you healed us?"

"Part of the debt. We can safely be enemies again."

"I see."

White lie. Quick answer. I "saw" nothing.

What she said didn't make sense. Nothing made sense.

"Why do this," I said. "Why work for these monsters?"

"I'm not working for them. The less you understand, the better."

She looked at me, even though her body still faced the forest. Another sideways glance.

"Don't even think of capturing me or fighting. I took away all your weapons larger than your small gun."

I glanced at my palm pistol.

"If the battle from before has shown anything, it's our imbalance in power. If I wanted to throw you two down, who could stop me?"

I stepped away from the boulder's edge.

She faced the forest again. "You're weak, Lucas Anderson, and you know it, you're out of your league. Better give up while you still can. An old friend of mine is on this planet, too. We're working on the same side, technically, but she's angry at me and probably angry at you. Don't get in her way."

Kira jumped down.

I hurried to see how far she had gotten. She took two of these oversized rock steps at once and reached the ground moments after I looked.

Did she mean Layla with that friend of hers? Was she sent in another dropship? Or in that Firefly Rover?

I fell on my knees and punched the ground. My ribs hurt.

She was so right about this. I was a weakling and I'd always remain one.

"So," Crick asked me from behind. "You failed again. How many more attempts will you need? On how many future encounters with this entity are you counting?"

"Shut up," I translated, then hastily added a respectful "Captain".

The alien and I strolled back to the boulder's edge. It was a steep slope, no doubt. A couple of ledges jutted out of the wall, most seven or eight feet apart. With luck, we could use them ad a ladder downward. It was risky, of course, especially without Kira healing us.

"Where is Doctor," Crick asked conversationally.

"They left," I answered. "When after you got shot, they ran. Grabbed their scooter and drove away. Where exactly, I don't know."

"I see."

No flickering, no judgment in their mindwaves.

"I cannot blame them," Crick continued. "We are here on behalf of my order. At least you are still loyal."

"Em, thanks."

Crick and I circled the boulder's roof, searching for the best spot to jump down.

"Don't blame yourself!" I transmitted. "We learned a lot about our enemies. It was the first time we saw them in flesh and blood. We learned what they look like, what they move like, and what they fight like."

"Tell me."

Right. I forgot that Crick was out of commission when the zombies revealed themselves. I sent Crick a transmission of all I saw. I transmitted how some aliens had more eyes and arms than others, how they healed from all damage, how they turned into a formless mass of flesh, and how they were motivated by little more than sadism and hunger.

"I will send Pilot my report," Crick transmitted. "We must get to our rocket first. Our only intact radio station rests there."

"Don't you want to discuss what happened?"

We paused.

"I'm willing to listen," I transmitted. "You know more than I do."

"What likely happened," Crick transmitted, "is that their civilization fell prey to an interstellar pandemic. The mutually harmful behavior you described is akin to what we observed among their spaceships. It is likely that the spaceship that rammed this planet also acted as a vector for the pathogen to enter. It is not coincidental that one of the first infected enemies we saw lived near a debris crater.

"It might also solve a paradox. Before they attacked, they never made a serious effort to colonize our worlds."

My guts tightened. I always forgot that if they colonized Shadowmoon, Earth would fall next.

Even worse, besides the wormhole to Shadowmoon, there was another wormhole that linked Earth directly to the Starsnatchers' civilization. Was it possible that Earth got invaded right now?

I remembered I was in the middle of a conversation.

"You're right," I transmitted. "The wormholes orbited Shadowmoon and Earth for decades. Maybe they wanted to keep our worlds as they are for the same reason they kept this planet natural. To have space reservoirs and all."

"Indeed. And when the pathogen got out of control, their aggression increased."

"There is only one big hole in this theory."

"Hypothesis."

"Only one big hole in this hypothesis, sorry."

We transmitted simultaneously. Our minds focused on the same image of an egg-shaped, asteroid-sized starship. Starsnatcher itself.

"This ship was so organized," I transmitted. "It hid from humans and orchestrated my abduction with minimal bloodshed. Then, it set up a careful plan to spy on you. These aliens are rational."

"Presumably, this ship has not been affected by the pathogen," Crick transmitted. "They fled to your planet as it exists at the periphery of their wormhole network. The interstellar pandemic has not caught you yet."

"What are they doing right now?"

"Still orbiting the space station. Still trying to establish contact with it."

I made a mental note of that. Trying to establish contact. A language barrier separated the crew of Starsnatcher from whoever lived on that station.

"So, we solved the riddle?" I asked. "I mean, we know why they kill each other."

"Correct. You did not fail. I am very grateful for your services."

They paused to let that sink in. Crick thanked me!

"However, at least two questions tangentially related to our mission remain. First of all, we do not yet know what your abductors want."

They were right. "Any hypotheses?"

"A benign interpretation would be that they are searching for a cure to the pathogen. Perhaps something they learned from our civilization helps them."

"And a less benign interpretation?"

"Well, my interpretation does not account for one specific observation. The start of the invasion coincides with the transmission gathered from your stone."

"So, you believe my abductors set up this whole Starsnatcher/Seizer war?"

"It is possible."

Damn you, Kira, why don't you tell us more?

"What is the other question?" I asked.

"The other question would be how it is even possible for a pandemic to spread across interstellar distances."

My pulse quickened a step. Some of those astronomy videos I watched were factories of existential crises. I used to watch countless videos on how the universe could end at any second without any of us knowing.

By far the scariest question was that of the Great Filter. If aliens exist, scientists asked, where are they? Shouldn't some race have already colonized the Milky Way in its billions of years of existence? I knew the Seizers had deliberately stalled their development due to their fear of AI. The Starsnatchers, however, did not.

The Great Filter posited an element in the evolution of any technological race that eventually wiped them out. All of them. Like a grim reaper that comes for people whose days are numbered.

I took these videos very seriously. One thought, however, comforted me. I thought that species-scale extinction was only an issue as long as we were confined to one planet. Once a species spread across multiple solar systems, nothing could kill it. If one planet died in a global thermonuclear war or got polluted, well, you had thousands of alternatives to choose from.

The Starsnatchers' alleged pandemic destroyed this idea like a sledgehammer.

To be fair, we had no evidence yet that the pandemic affected their entire interstellar empire. Yet.

We found a point to climb down. Crick started with the stone-hopping. Their build was sturdier than mine and they dealt with the ledge-falling better than I ever could. Maybe that was why they healed faster.

I followed, throwing myself from rock to rock. After each fall, I paused to check if any of my fixed ribs had re-broken. I would double or triple-check before wagering the next jump.

Only when the rain came did I hurry. I didn't want to wait until everything became slippery.

As we walked back into the clearing, Crick and I exchanged hypotheses, each scarier than the other. Assuming such a powerful pandemic existed, it couldn't have arisen naturally. It required a creator. Was there a third alien race to blame for the pathogen? Did the abductors create it, perhaps? If so, naming these aliens Starsnatchers was a misnomer.

I hate all these name switches, but I guess I'll refer to the aliens I previously called "Starsnatchers" as "Primogenitors". Dunno why Primogenitor. Just sounds cool and is a mixture between "Primordial" and "Progenitor", referring to the fact that they set up the ancient wormhole network. Plus, dying dramatically just screams "precursor aliens".

That also cleans up confusion between "Stasnatcher" the ship and "Starsnatchers" the species. Don't worry, I'll make another cast page if I live long enough.

Given their aimless nature, we correctly guessed that the infected Primogenitors got bored and left. They weren't persistence hunters.

We reached the clearing safely. Helix greeted us near the crashed car, their scooter leaning against it.

I decided against sarcastic remarks on how Helix betrayed us. Most would have done so in this situation.

"You survived," Helix transmitted.

"We did," Crick answered.

No reassurances if we were fine. A very direct species.

We sought protection from the mild rain under a tree.

"You saw what the enemies are capable of, did you?" Crick asked.

"I did."

When we shared our pandemic hypothesis, Helix answered they came up with similar ideas.

"Damn, it seems like your suicidal plans brought us results, Professor," Helix transmitted. "I just hope we're done now."

"We are, I would like to research the underground settlement I postulated near the channel."

"You and your exobiology addiction. Well, after your success, I guess you earned yourself a little break to do what you love. First, it's time to look at my greatest discovery though."

Helix pointed at the dropship. It was open. In its silver hull lay a slit that opened it like a cracked egg.

An army of healed robots encircled it. Our nanofactory was shielded against EMPs. Once it fixed the bushbot, the bushbot repaired all the other robots.

"I used our small drones to get footage from the dropship's inside," Helix transmitted.

"Hang on," I transmitted, "how on Earth did you crack this open."

"Well, the human in the black armor came. I thought it wanted to fight, but it used its AI stone to open the ship for me. We couldn't communicate, so I had no idea why they helped."

Neither did I. It contradicted all Kira had told me about her intentions.

Helix transmitted the footage. The cameras recorded control panels, computer screens, and levers; what our scans predicted, basically.

Strangely, our recordings confirmed the paper poster on the wall, too. It depicted a pencil-drawn representation of the Virgo constellation.

The Zodiac signs as we knew them were only visible from Earth. The stars aligned themselves differently based on your vantage point. For someone from Shadowmoon, this star sign had no meaning. Neither did it for my abductors. Did Kira draw this herself? If so, why? Was there anything interesting to her in the Virgo constellation? Well, she watched Cosmos. Maybe she was as much of an astronomy nerd as I was.

"We take a break now," Crick transmitted. "When the Sun rises, we research the channel."

Everyone agreed. I jumped into our car and threw myself on its hard ground.

Something in me refused to believe that Kira drew that map. This something told me that my abductors made observations from Earth and that whatever was in the Virgo constellation was important to their plan.

Much like Kira, the Seizers had little need for sleep. They chatted outside the car.

"I think I forgot something," Helix transmitted. "There is a small piece of paper that used to hang below the poster, but fell off. The drones found it under the control panel. It has nonsense in an alien language scribbled on it. Wanna see it?"

Helix transmitted the image of a paper piece so small, it might have been torn out of a notebook. Written over it were intelligible letters from the Latin alphabet.

"CIPHER"