There were factions of people who were ready to go to war, and factions of people ready to give themselves over to their new monster overlords.
Most of us, of course, simply sat around and waited as information trickled in. They began appearing more and more in the streets, watching, staring, touching whatever came within reach of their long, willowy limbs.
They were gorgeous, too—otherworldly and kind of terrifying, but nothing about them seemed hostile.
If they had gender, it didn’t show on their bodies the way it showed in humans. They were flat-chested, long-limbed, tall, and had long hair in a wide variety of colors. Each of them had eyes like an oil spill over hot summer pavement—a rainbow reflection, like a galaxy over pitch-black sclera that locked onyou and didn’t let go. They had tails that they kept wrapped around their legs, thick and ending at a blunt point.
Their ears were slightly pointed, and long, silver hoops dangling from their lobes. Some of them had rings in their noses as well—and later, we’d come to find out some were pierced in their delicate places, but that information was withheld for quite some time.
Until humans started interacting with them in ways no one would have suspected anyone would be willing to do.
I was one of the more curious humans—wanting to venture out and maybe have an encounter, but I was banned from leaving my house to try.
They were always clothed in flowing robes, opaque but thin enough to make out their muscular outline, and their clawed feet were always bare. Some began adapting to human styles of clothing, which the news loved reporting on, but none of them would speak to journalists, and it left us to speculate. Why were they here? And what exactly did they want from us as they adapted to our society?
After they began showing themselves in public more often, the second announcement came, this time from an appointed global official who was handling the “monster invasion,” as my aunt and uncle were calling it.
“We’ve begun a human-alien integration program. The Vyastil are offering us technology that our world has desperately needed for some time, and in exchange, they’re asking to know us. But their requirement for this program is that the participants must be unmarried, semen-producing people over the age of twenty-one and under the age of sixty. We’ve set up a website, and everyone who meets these conditions is required to apply. Training will be provided, and the volunteers and their families will be compensated.”
Something in my chest jumped. A strange desire—an almost desperate need.
“The hell this is legal,” my uncle whispered, horrified. “There are going to be protests. People are going to stage a fucking coup.”
“I’m going to sign up as soon as I can,” I whispered.
My aunt stared at me in horror. “The hell you are, Everest.”
When I turned twenty-one, she wouldn’t be able to stop me, so I said nothing else as I watched the website scroll across the screen. My aunt turned off the TV as though that would hinder me from being able to absorb the information.
As though it wasn’t going to be posted to every website on every computer from now until the end of time.
The monsters, we would later learn, were hungry for something only we could provide. And they were here to stay.
As the first wave of volunteers signed up, so came the first gifts. Clean, renewable energy sources in brand new factories all over the world that replaced coal, petroleum, nuclear, solar, wind, and water power.
There were protests against that, too—billionaires who had invested in the infrastructure destroying our planet railed and raged, but it was a losing battle. The first year saw elections sweeping across the nation, ousting anyone who opposed the monsters from their political positions.
Things got more peaceful. Everyone returned to their lives and tried to achieve normalcy. I returned to school, though my aunt and uncle kept me on a strict curfew.
Just after my seventeenth birthday, the monsters gifted clean water for everyone—a filtration system provided to every person at no cost. The water crises across the globe ended.
Six days before my eighteenth birthday, as I sat at the kitchen table making quiet plans with Zane to move out and get our own shitty little apartment so I could be free of this house, they announced the next gift.
A cure.
For damn near everything.
Cancers, chronic illnesses, viruses that killed off millions in pandemics, and bacteria that were growing so antibiotic-resistant that people were dying of infections they used to fight off naturally.
We were humans, and our bodies would adapt, and there would always be a risk, but now there was hope.
“If they’d only come before Mom and Dad?—”
“Don’t you dare say it,” my aunt said, her voice tense. “Nothing like this comes for free.”
I knew that. I more than knew it.
“If you don’t think we’re anything more than zoo animals to them, getting our vaccines to keep us healthy enough for their entertainment,” she spat, “then you’re more foolish than I originally thought.”
