When I woke up that morning, I expected to go about my usual routine. Drink some watered down coffee (I’m really trying my best to stretch my caffeine supply for as long as possible), wash up, say good morning to Rocky, and tinker around in the lab for a few hours. 

I was not expecting to be pulling a bloody man three times my mass from a crude hole carved into a submarine spaceship that was covered in human blood over 17 lightyears from Earth. 

But. Here we are. 

Golly, this guy was filthy! It made sense since he was covered in a tacky layer of blood, you know, in a way that didn’t make sense at all! 

Whatever! It’s fine! It's only the first time I’ve touched another living, breathing being in the last several years! No biggie! 

By the time I had dragged (floated) Blood Guy from the airlock to ARMando (with Rocky whistling and trilling from his xenonite tunnels the entire way), the man had begun to show signs of life. 

Which, on one hand, thank god! On the other? Please don’t be aggressive, please don’t be aggressive…

The gurgly, phlemmy groan that rattled out of Blood Guy’s chest didn’t sound very conducive to a healthy prognosis. 

“Of course he’s not healthy, you moron!” I thought to myself with a slightly hysterical huff. “He’s a walking biohazard!” 

Setting Blood Guy down on my bed (that would be a nightmare to clean up later), I took a moment to really get a look at the man. 

As I noticed earlier, he was massive. Well, maybe not massive in height, I’m fairly certain I’m taller, but definitely insanely massive in density. His biceps are huge! Beneath all of the bloody rags was clearly a compact frame of thick, corded muscle indicative of a life of hard, manual labor. His hair was matted with coagulated blood (obviously) so it was difficult to place exactly what his hair color and type were. If I had to guess, it was probably pretty dark, maybe black? What was most interesting about the man was the strange injury to his cheek and the missing arm -

Wait, missing arm?!

Oh GOD this guy is missing his whole ARM! 

Thankfully, ARMando didn’t need to waste any time processing what it was looking at and was already well on its way applying a tourniquet. 

And thank god for surface tension, or there would be a LOT more blood just floating about the cabin. There was already too much as it were. I might as well clean up while ARMando had things covered. I’ll go crank up the centrifuge, get some gravity going, calm down a little… yeah. Good plan, me. 

Besides, I have a disgruntled alien bestie to console. 

—

Blood Guy ended up sleeping for the rest of the day and well into the night. I tried my best to stay awake, but by the third time I messed up on some simple algebra, Rocky shooed me off to get some sleep. 

Only problem with that was I didn’t have a bed. 

Well, sure, I technically have two other sleep pods to work with, but I already feel bad enough about wearing my dead friend’s clothing and eating what would have been their food. I didn’t want to add to that guilt, nor did I want to experience the suffocating nightmares that would follow me to sleep. 

The pods felt a little too much like coffins… 

So, I climbed up to the cockpit and curled up in the pilot’s seat. 

“You’ll tell me when he wakes up, right?” I mumbled drowsily into my quilt. 

“Stupid question. Grace sleep now, Rocky watch new human and Grace both. Will wake if anything happen.” Rocky’s huffy chords filtered up from the dorm. I laughed. It felt weird sleeping so far away from my best friend, but I did find comfort in Rocky watching over our newest member. 

But how could I possibly sleep? There were so many questions to be had! 

Whose blood was that? Was his arm still somewhere in his submarine ship (seriously, what?), or was it disaggregated into the copious amounts of blood somehow? 

And how on earth was this even happening in the first place?

Maybe I was having some sort of psychotic break… 

What must have been only a few hours of restless sleep later, a shrill cry snapped me awake. 

“GRACE HELP!” Rocky screamed. 

I had never moved so quickly before in my life, not even when Stratt had me chased down. In just a few Earth seconds (and several banged limbs and almost-curses later), I was in the dormitory, heart lodged in my throat. 

The hunched figure of Blood Guy towered over Rocky in his ball. The man’s fist came down hard against the xenonite shell, an animalistic growl rumbling underneath the sour notes of fear that Rocky screeched. When that did nothing to the ball, the man lunged, mouth ripping open to reveal the extent of the strange protrusions from the injury to his cheek (fangs??). 

And he bit the xenonite. 

I ran forward before the guy could break his teeth (and probably get even more angry) but before I managed to move even a single step forward, there was a devastating crunch. Not a second later, the sound was followed by a shrill hiss and rush of ammonia as Blood Guy’s teeth punctured the xenonite shell! 

“ROCKY!”

The man staggered backward, retching violently at the mouthful of boiling hot cat-piss perfume he received for his troubles. 

I launched myself between my friend and the stranger. Thankfully, the sheer strength of the xenonite panel prevented any catastrophic decompression. Who knew xenonite could maintain structural integrity with a hull puncture? Not me! Heck, not even Rocky, the stuff had never been punctured before! They were, however, spewing out Rocky’s boiling, smelly atmosphere like water vapor from a tea kettle. Mary’s contamination alarm began to scream. 

“Get back to your tunnel! Hurry!” I gasped. 

“NO! GRACE GET AWAY FROM MONSTER!” Rocky warbled. 

“It’s okay! Just go! Go!”

I whipped around to see where Blood Guy had gone - and immediately came face to face with wild red eyes. 

Not red sclera, something that made sense, but red irises. 

Blood red irises. 

Inhuman irises embedded in a human body. 

Oh. So this is what the uncanny valley feels like. 

Somewhere deep in my bones, hardwired into the very fabric of my DNA, a primal fear felt by my ancient ancestors back when humans had more than one species to contend with. 

I was looking at someone who, somehow, was very nearly human, yet just off enough to make the hair on the back of my neck prickle and a cold sweat break out on my brow. 

“Oh…” I breathed. 

Then those bloody eyes widened, color shifting from that chilling red into a human coffee brown. 

The broken shard of metal dropped from his fist to clatter onto the ground (how did I not notice such a major threat? Did my hindbrain seriously clock the man’s near-humanness as more threatening than an honest to god shank?!). The man took a staggering step toward me. Rocky screeched in terror, the ship’s alarm still blaring, but I might as well have been def to it all. 

All at once, the man shot forward, skidding on his knees until he was prostrate on the ground at my feet, singular hand snagging into the fabric of my pant leg. I jumped, an aborted attempt to dodge the man, but he was just so fast! 

And now, through the roar of blood in my ears, I heard the man’s voice. 

A continuous ramble of noises, words, English! 

He was speaking English, he had to be human! 

"The blood of the flesh, given to thee, pray, we call upon you, oh Great Tree, oh Creator of Life, forgive us our sins..." the man choked out an endless stream of near-senseless ramblings that sounded an.. awful lot like a prayer.

Oh. OH. 

I was being prayed to. 

"Oh, gosh, this is very disorienting," I wheezed, awkwardly trying to pull away from the man's iron grip on my jumpsuit. 

"GRACE WHAT HAPPENING, QUESTION?”

Okay, I am feeling VERY overstimulated now, and the steadily increasing stench of hot ammonia is not helping. 

“Mary! Silence alarm! Rocky, get back to your airlock, patch up your ball.” I glance down. The man’s broad shoulders were trembling, and his muttered prayers were broken up with little hiccuping sobs. “I’ll be fine alone for now. I don’t think he’s going to hurt me.” 

“But -” 

“Rocky,” I cough, the ammonia starting to burn my eyes a little, “your atmosphere.” 

With a stream of choice Eridian chords, Rocky rolls away to his airlock. Mary’s life support works to filter the air. I sigh, temple throbbing.