I’m fourteen-Earth-years, and I’ve been growing blueberry bushes on Delta Pavonis Two for the last six. My dad thought it would be good for me to see how fast the planet is changing. That even if it isn’t as nice as Earth, maybe one day it could be. But now that there’s green grass, birds, and squirrels, I hardly remember what Earth is like. The only place I can remember is here. I draw a syringe full of air from the empty box trapping soil gasses at the base of one of my bushes, run the air through a handheld data collector, then move on to the next bush. My teacher thinks the soil is almost perfectly Earthlike. That the white flowers exploding throughout the rows means we’ll have fruit next year. That means I’ll get to move on to career training. I want to do botany, like her. Pavonis Two needs strawberries more than anything. I remember strawberries.

A rover is speeding across the field toward me, tearing up the grass. I bristle at the sight of it, wishing they understood how much hard work growing anything out here takes. It stops, and a pair of starcrew jump out. They’re wearing their black and silver uniforms and have rifles strapped over their shoulders. They’re young, and they look confused. The girl points at me, and then at my artificial leg.

“What?” I say, more irritably than I mean. I don’t like them tearing up the grass, and I don’t like how they’re pointing.

“Miss Baptiste,” she says. “Anything strange going on around here? With you or with your…prosthetics?”

“No?” But she’s still staring at something on her screen. My ship crashed when me and my father arrived on world, and medical would have taken an hour to get to us. I would have died, but my father had been studying aliens called “Silvers” that visited here before us. Giant, living war machines. He used their nanobots and coaxed them into repairing my wounds. They sort of took over, replacing my shattered arm and leg, my other wrist, and even some of my spine. No one could get the nanobots off without killing me. That’s the other reason I work in botany—it’s more comfortable for a lot of the colonists if I’m outside. Whatever. I like being alone. My mother screamed that he turned her baby into an alien… she’s probably happy she got to go back to Earth without me. Probably happy I won’t be back.

“Please, come with us. Your father needs to see you in the botany lab,” she says.

They follow my motorcycle back. At least I can make them drive on the path.

My teacher, Dr. Mars, makes me sit on the counter by the sink while she looks at my prosthetics through a pair of particle detection glasses. Dad is watching, arms folded defensively. He looks old and grey, even though he’s stronger than ever. Veins stick out on his neck, and he needs to shave. And have a big glass of water. And a new shirt. His old gym polo is threadbare. I wish I could give him a hug, but he’s on duty and acts so seriously.

“Mr. Baptiste,” says Dr. Mars, “your daughter’s implants appear to have created three new structures in her body.” I tense at that. No one really understands the Silvers’ alien technology, but Dad got them to heal me. Why would they do anything else to me? “One of them is an antenna routed through her whole body, and she’s transmitting an encrypted message on one of the frequencies Silvers are known to use.”

I meet Dad’s gaze and he’s crestfallen. She could have told him I had cancer, and he’d have taken it better. “Dad,” I squeak out, but he raises a finger to silence me.

“Keep her here until we figure this out.” He looks at me. “Baby, you are not in trouble, but the botany lab was built before this planet had a magnetosphere. It’s shielded to hell and back. Your nanobots can’t send anything out. Let’s keep it this way for a while.”

“Daddy,” I plead. I’m not supposed to be in here. “I’m busy, I—” Dr. Mars puts her hand on my shoulder, lovingly, but pulls back as if she thought of something that scares her.

“I’ll send a couple of people to get your things. Anything you want. To eat? From your room?”

I shake my head.

“Stay put,” he says as he touches the radio in his left ear, “This is Lt. Colonel Baptiste. I need everyone to meet me in the SCIF.” The hexagonal doors swish open and he’s about to leave me, when he turns to place a kiss on my head. I feel like it is the last time he’ll do it. I don’t know why I think that, but I just do, like he’s leaving me. Like Mom did. “I’ll be back soon. I love you.”

He never says that. Dr. Mars leaves right after him, and I’m crying.

There is no way I can sit here and do nothing. I have to find out what is going on. One of the closets is filled with drones and drone parts. I get this weird feeling like they’ll work for me—even the broken ones. A little dragonfly-like drone is sitting on a charging pad, dead and unplugged, but when I pick it up its blue eyes glow, and its wings start flapping. That’s you doing this, isn’t it, I think at my nanobots. What the hell is wrong with you? But they don’t answer. Maybe the dragonfly can follow Dr. Mars and see what she’s telling people about me. I could send it after Dad into the SCIF, but I doubt it will work in there.

The big laboratory doors open for me, and I wave to Dr. Mars who’s a good hundred feet down the two lane throughfare. She waves, and when she turns her back, I let the little drone go. Its tablet is charged as well, miraculously. I land the dragonfly on the back of her shoe.

Through the tablet, I can’t see anything but the floor, but I can hear Dr. Mars talking. She’s talking to my dad on her radio.

“David,” she says, “command already knows about your daughter. They are about to order a full evacuation….no, I know…I agree it’s hasty….listen, you can’t take her…. I’m just telling you the truth….everyone needs….ok….ok….calm down….I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

My dad is going to leave me? Like mom did? Because of my stupid nanobots? I slump to the floor. They must think my nanobots are talking to the Silvers, and everyone is going to abandon the colony before they come. Everyone but me. I’ll stay. I don’t even want to cry. Or leave. I just feel numb.

***

My dad comes back, sweating and frazzled. He’s dressed in his black field uniform and looks ready for war. He’s stuffing things from the lab in his shoulder bag. Dataskirts. A bonded pair of office drones. Boxes of neural recording contact lenses. Repulser chargers. A box of dinners. Sun pills. I ask him if the Silvers are coming here, and he just gives me this weird look. I don’t know if it means I shouldn’t know, or if I should feel guilty, or if he’s not allowed to tell me. “Listen to me.” He always talks to me like that. “We can’t go on the colony ships. We need our own. Stay here until I call. The Silvers won’t be able to detect you in this room. I’m going to bring the jump shuttle to the main door—”

“The door by the diner?” There were three doors.

“No—yes, the door by the diner.” He aims a dead pistol at the corner floor, slams in a battery, and holsters it before turning to face me. I don’t know what the pistol is for. Silvers are too big. Maybe it’s so no one else tries to take the shuttle. “It will only take a few minutes. Do not leave until I call.”

My chin quivers. He’s in such a hurry, and I don’t want to cry, but I can’t help it. “Do you think they are coming for me?” The jump shuttle isn’t very fast either. How can we run from aliens in it? It’ll take months to get to Earth.

“I am the only one coming for you, and in two days, we’ll be eating croissants with mom in Paris.” He hugs me so tightly like no matter how old I get I’m still just a baby to him. His arms are as big as my waist, and he kisses my wet cheek. I feel like a baby. There’s no way we get back in two days unless he thinks we can draft a colony ship. Sounds like something he’d do, and I smile at that. “You got this.”

I nod, and I let go even though I don’t want to. The Space Navy probably won’t even let me off the ship when we get back. Maybe they’ll blow us up when we get to Saturn. No one wants an alien cyborg on Earth. Dad hugs me again, but I’m so stiff, I feel dead. I want to believe him so badly, but I know he’s leaving me too, like Mom, and Dr. Mars, and everyone. He’s promising too much. “Baby,” he says, “it’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.” But I’m shaking and crying and know it isn’t. He lets me go again. “Do not leave until I tell you to. Stay here.” I nod, barely, but I nod, trying to pull myself together. “Stay.” He’s picking up his bag and opening the door. “Sit still.”

“Dad!” I call as he runs out the door.

“Stay! I mean it!”

“Dad!”

“I will be right ba—”

The blast doors seal behind him and I’m alone. The lab already looks abandoned. Tablets scattered all over. Soil samples clutter the dirty sink. The centrifuge sits open with little containers of red, brown, or yellow fluid waiting in neat rows. A warning sign: “Danger—Nanobots: contact may cause generalized bleeding, psychosis, infertility, death, undeath, green skin, or the desire to eat brains.” I don’t even smile. They aren’t even funny. My nanobot aren’t dangerous…

“T-minus eight minutes until launch,” the AI says over the speaker in its old-fashioned voice. Dad had looked so sad when he hugged Dr. Mars goodbye. They said they would see each other again, but it sounded like a lie then, and it feels like one now. All this work, wasted, they had said. A hundred years of terraforming and for what, to give the planet to the Silvers? My dad was teary when he told them goodbye, and I’d never seen him like that. It wasn’t like him. The only thing he ever cried over was leaving Mom behind, and…

Me.

“T-minus seven minutes until launch.”

The realization grabs me like a tractor beam. He isn’t coming back. He’s going to the colony ship without me! They don’t need me, no one does. Not Mom and not him. I have to stop him. He can’t do this to me. He can’t leave me here!

The lab’s blast doors open as I flee down the grand corridor. An empty forklift idles up ahead. I jump on the back. “It’s an emergency! Get me out of here!” The AI obeys and speeds toward the warehouse. With one hand gripping the frame and my metallic foot on the bumper, I stretch into the air out of habit, not knowing what I will do if I catch up to him. If I even can catch up. I don’t know where he went. Both the rail to the colony ship, and little jump shuttle’s landing pad, are close and he could have gone to either. What if he really went for the small shuttle like he said? If I go to the rail, I might miss him.

“T-minus six minutes.”

With a hydraulic hiss, the pentagonal doors of the warehouse open. I ride between the shelves and through the bay door into the street beyond. The stars are out. No rocket trails, human or otherwise. “Stop the forklift!” I yell way louder than I mean and jump off. My motorcycle is parked across the alley, still covered in mud from the blueberry fields when everything was normal.

A searchlight falls on me. Maybe Dad had gotten the jump shuttle after all. I look up. One of the Silvers towers over me, and I can’t stop staring. The top of its head is even with the four-story warehouse. Like us, like most aliens, it has two arms and two legs, but its head is just a face in the middle of its chest. Its four eyes and thin line of a mouth are expressionless. Somehow, that makes it more frightening. Getting on my bike feels weird, like my body is moving on my own, but I guess that’s what it is like to be scared.

I hit the start button and silently zip around the corner. It watches as I go, like I’m a fancy bird. Maybe that’s what I am to it. Maybe it doesn’t eat meat. Probably eats nails or anti-matter or something.

In no time, I’m out of the camp and riding over the surrounding hills, tearing up grass that had only just begun to grow. But what do Silvers care, or anyone else. I’m the only one who ever cared.

The only one.

I can’t believe Dad left me!

Back at the base, a second Silver lands like an anti-gravity rocket and joins the other. I glide to a stop to see what they are doing. One of them points at me, and suddenly they are lurching after me like a pair of enormous gorillas. They move with sloppy, gummy steps as if their limbs are made of rubber. It’s haunting and gross. I spin the bike to flee. Maybe I can get to the caves. They’re too big to follow me underground.

Rockets roar as they launch from far behind the base. I twist my neck to look. Everyone I know is leaving me behind, just like that. The bike slides out from under me, and I’m screaming as I roll down a hill—should have been watching the ground. Wow, I messed that up. My ear hurts. So does my back and my knee. Whatever. Back on my feet, the Silvers are getting close, bounding toward me with impossible strides. Each step shaking the ground. Everyone was right! I’m the one those things want. I have their parts, and they want them back! Oh god, they are going to pull me apart, I know it. I scramble away, but one of them hangs over me while the other one stops at the bike.

A hand reaches for me. The heavy, metal fingers are almost as long as I am tall. It’s going to crush me. “No!” I cry out, holding up my hand and a blue field of light appears, radiating from my nanobot wrist brace like the defensive barrier on a spaceship. My arm goes cold as Silver pulls its hand back. Ripples travel across the surface of its metal skin. I think I hurt it! I didn’t even know I could do that!

Both are looking down on me. When they speak to one another in whistles, I can understand them.

“It has our properties but it’s not Us.”

“Not part of Us or lonely for Us.”

“That is regrettable.”

“But lovely. Look at the little thing. It…she I think…is communing with Us. They are one. What an experience!”

“Should we leave her like that?”

The blue egg of Dad’s jump shuttle whistles past and hovers silently behind me. “Dad,” I cry out. He came! He really came. I thought he left me and he’s here. I’m on my knees, shaking, afraid that the Silvers are going to kill him. They shine their finger lights on his ship.

“That’s my dad,” I say, whistling like them. My face feels strange, like I’m covered in static, but I’m not crying now. “Can I go?”

“The other humans are afraid of her. It is cruel to leave her like that,” whistles the Silver.

Dad lowers the steps and waves frantically for me to come, but I have to hear this. I’m speaking with aliens.

“The humans make artificial limbs. Change.” With its whistle, my prosthetic leg and arm mutate so that they look like the modular ones other people have. I can’t believe it. I could hide what I have and be normal! No one would have to know about my nanobots.  My smile is so big, even the giants can see it. “Better camouflage. Hard to detect by their primitive systems. See, she understands the value.”

“Let’s retrieve her constituent parts after her natural life span has passed. We can see what We learned.”

The Silvers backed away, slowly, like they were watching a little bird. They weren’t here to attack. They were just curious. No one had to leave!

“Come on,” I hear my dad say. He’s waving at me, mouth hanging open like he saw a ghost. “Get on, get on.” He takes my hand and pulls me into a huge hug so that my feet are off the floor as the ship’s doors close behind us.

“I thought you left. I’m so sorry, I thought you left Daddy,” I say. He’s crying to.

“I would never, ever leave you.”

Art by Mariah Ahern