We nodded, remaining outside. Beyond the streaked windows, I observed one of the robot shopkeepers step from behind a battered counter to greet Matt, gesturing animatedly with four mechanical arms. They were soon haggling loudly enough to hear through the glass.

  “I hope he gets enough for us to have somewhere to sleep tonight,” Ally said. "I'm beat."

  "Seconded,” I replied.

  After several minutes Matt exited the dingy shop tucking a long, gold stick into his coat pocket and looking pleased. “We’re in business! The bot had never seen a blaster like mine before, so it netted us enough for a couple of nights in a nearby motel and a few cheap meals. We can get cleaned up and grab some shuteye while we wait for things to calm down.”

  As if to emphasize the statement, a squadron of drones passed overhead, still sweeping the area. Was their hunt for a robot head starship continuing, or had they realized we’d gone to ground? I doubted their programming would be prepared to accept that the target of their search had vanished by shrinking to golf ball size. Hell, I had watched it happen and I could still hardly believe it.

  Matt led us along ever more decrepit avenues, the kind where I expected we might be jumped and mugged at any moment save for the fact that we were the only people around. Even the robots had thinned to near-extinction, soon transforming my fear of attack to a sense of foreboding aloneness. It was almost as creepy as Jackson Farm.

  The sparse skyline fell away, opening the view to an immense shipyard sprawling along the outskirts of Portus. A forest of mammoth gantries and loading arms rose in the distance, stark skeletons clawing at the darkening sky. Work never seemed to stop despite the hour, automated systems laboring endlessly to construct new starships.

  “The pawn-bot said the motel we want is just across from the yard,” Matt said. “It gets occasional occupancy from inspectors who come to check the builder-bots’ work, and clients who don’t want to pay the fees to transfer to the orbital dock for pickup.”

  “I don’t really get this place,” Alyssa said. “We passed thousands of empty apartment units on the way to pay for somewhere to spend the night.”

  “I think people still own those places,” I said. “They just don’t live there anymore, or maybe they just stay there when they visit.”

  Ally shook her head. “So weird how they all moved away from the city and left their service bots behind to do everything for them. Do you think that’s in Earth’s future?”

  “Not in our lifetimes. Anyway, if it is, I want to be like Levain. Getting my hands dirty. My parents didn’t raise me to be lazy and unmotivated.”

  “Work smarter, not harder, Noah-san,” Tee said. “If the opportunity ever arises, I’ll gladly send my robot off to work while I sit at home playing Baldur’s Gate.”

  “Even video games get boring after a while,” I said, realizing I sounded like Dad all of a sudden.

  “Blasphemy!” Tyler cried.

  “I think this is the place,” Matt said, pointing at a smaller building slumped between two taller run-down structures.

  Clouds of alien insects swarmed the light from an open green circle above the door, which I assumed meant they had vacancies. The reek of rotting garbage struck me next, mixed with the constant smell of oil and metal from the shipyard.

  “Charming," Ally intoned flatly.

  "Only the best for my favorite crew!" Matt replied with forced cheerfulness. “They probably don’t have enough live bodies staying here to warrant regular garbage pickups.”

  Compared to its grimy exterior the tiny lobby wasn't terrible. Faded carpet muffled our footsteps while hints of harsh cleaning solutions masked an underlying stale odor. I didn’t see a concierge or front desk attendant. Instead, we faced a computer interface accepting various forms of currency.

  "Two rooms please," Matt instructed the machine, inserting the gold stick he’d received from the pawn shop into a matching opening. "Adjoining if you've got 'em."

  Lights flickered atop a board displaying available rooms. A pair on the third floor lit up in green. With a whirring clunk, the computer spat two metal keys out into an attached receptacle.

  "We're in business.” Matt scooped up the old-fashioned room keys. “Shall we?"

  The elevators were out of order, forcing us to take the stairs up to the third floor. Our rooms faced each other at the end of the dim, low-ceilinged hallway. "Here you go, amigo.” Matt paused at the first door, handing me a key. “You and Ally try to get some sleep if you can. I’ll take this room with Tyler. We’ll figure everything out tomorrow after we’ve gotten some sleep and had something to eat.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to room with Ally?” Tyler asked him, knowing how she would react to the comment. Her face flushed, and she turned away. I wanted to smack him upside the head for being such a jerk. Even Matt looked annoyed. Tee shrugged. “Sorry, it was just a joke.”

  “Maybe you should think about your jokes a little more before you release them to the world,” Matt replied before turning back to me. “You two try not to stay up all night telling ghost stories." He winked and headed for the other room, leading Tyler inside.

  I smiled sympathetically at Ally. “Sorry we couldn’t get you your own room.”

  “You’re actually my first choice of roomies, given the options,” she replied.

  “Really?”

  “I think I’d end up choking Tyler in his sleep. And if Matt were here, I’d probably say something really stupid to embarrass myself.”

  “I’m not convinced I’ll make it through the night without puking, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “A little. At least you’ve held it back this long.”

  “Let’s go in,” I said, unlocking the door and pushing it open for her.

  The small room was cramped but clean, with faded yellow wallpaper and a scuffed wooden floor. Two narrow beds occupied most of the available floor space, glossy red blankets lending the only real color.

  Kicking off my boots, I sank onto the edge of the mattress nearest the door with a heartfelt groan, squinting against the harsh overhead light. My bed proved lumpy, but I was too beat to care. I barely resisted the urge to face-plant across the garish blanket without bothering to undress. A hot shower would feel incredible, but that meant moving.

  "I call first dibs on the bathroom,” Ally declared.

  I raised my head reluctantly, taking stock of her disheveled state and haunted eyes. Weary lines bracketed her forced smile. “No problem. Take your time. I think I need a few minutes to process...well, everything."

  She nodded sympathetically and ducked into the tiny attached bathroom, closing the door behind her. I was glad she trusted me enough not to lock it. In moments, water ran.

  I shifted onto my back, eyes tracking cracks spidering across the ceiling. The weary groan of old pipes mingled with pounding and banging from the shipyard. So normal, so pedestrian compared to the sound of plasma blasters and Ixy’s alien melody, the last thing I thought about before sleep completely claimed me.

  A thunderous knock on the door jolted me awake, reaching for the sidearm I’d placed nearby. Ally rose from her slumber at almost the same time, grabbing her blaster from beneath her pillow and swinging it toward the door with quicker reflexes and greater precision.

  “You two decent in there?” Tyler asked, voice slightly muffled through the door.

  Ally groaned and shook her head, lowering the blaster. I climbed out of bed, still fully dressed. I’d fallen asleep and stayed that way all night. Ambling to the door before Tee could pound on it again, I yanked it open just in time. His raised fist hit nothing but air.

  “Goooooodddd morrrrnnninnnggg!” Tyler sang. “Wakey, wakey…”

  Frowning, I glanced down at my pants pocket, suddenly aware I couldn’t feel the normal weight and bulge of the Aleal. Gently reaching in with a finger, its typical greeting never came.

  “Uh, guys,” I said, getting their attention. “The Aleal is gone.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “What do you mean, the Aleal is gone?” Tyler asked. “I thought we lost that thing back at Levain’s, after it sucked the brains out of the Mandalorian.”

  “No, it came back to me,” I replied. “It was in my pocket when I laid down, but now it's not there." I shoved my hand deep into the empty pocket, finding nothing but the smooth lining. After everything that had happened yesterday, the thought of that thing loose and unsupervised struck me with irrational fear.

  "Maybe it just crawled under the bed to hide,” Ally suggested.

  We scoured the room, lifting the thin mattresses and shining our comm badges into the shadows beneath and behind every crevice large enough to shelter even a fraction of the Aleal’s mass. No luck.

  “We need to make sure the Aleal hasn’t slipped off in search of another meal,” Tyler said.

  I froze, my heart thumping as a potential destination for the little booger dawned on me. “Matt!” I cried, pushing past Tee and Ally to get out of our room and across to his. Matt and the Aleal had already been in one altercation, and it knew he wanted to toss it out of an airlock. What better way to defend itself against that happening in the future than to turn Matt into breakfast? “Matt!” I shouted again, shoving his door open and barging in.

  Matt stood near the center of the room, Head Case on the table in front of him. His comm badge LEDs indicated he was talking to someone on board. Probably Ben or Meg.

  “Noah?” he said, reacting to my panicked entry. He pulled his blaster, ready to defend us from whatever threat I’d come to warn him about.

  It definitely wasn’t the kind of threat he expected.

  “What’s going on? Are you okay?” he continued.

  “We’re fine,” Tyler said. “We were worried about you.”

  “What for?” Matt asked, lowering his gun.

  “Matt, is everything okay out there?” Meg squeaked through Matt’s comm. “Our renters look like they saw a ghost.”

  My eyes shifted to the golfball-sized starship, my mind still trying to accept that the engineer was still in there, shrunk to the size of a grain of rice and likely watching us through the forward transparency.

  “Not quite,” Tyler answered for me. “Noah’s pet attack octopus is on the lam.”

  Matt’s entire body tensed. “You brought the Aleal with you?” he accused.

  “Yeah,” I replied sheepishly. “It was in my pocket.” I paused, nervous to admit the truth. “Until it wasn’t.”

  “We searched our room already,” Ally said. “It’s not there. So we thought maybe it came over here, looking for…uh…” Looking him over, she hesitated. “...something…to eat.”

  “Or someone,” Tyler added. “Well, you actually. It doesn’t like you.”

  “The feeling’s mutual,” Matt said. “But I haven’t seen it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t somewhere else in the motel, searching for its next victim.” His angry glare made me feel as small as Head Case. “You should have let me airlock the thing when we had the chance. If it absorbs anyone, it’s on you.”

  “It already did,” Tyler said. “Back at Levain’s. It attacked the guy who killed Noah’s parents.”

  “Wait, what?” Matt said, unaware of the events leading up to our escape.

  “It already sucked the brains out of his guy, Jaffie,” Tyler repeated. “He’s the one who ran the red light and slammed into Noah’s car. And then ran away.”

  “What the hell was he doing in Warexia? Or what the hell was he doing on Earth?”

  “We didn’t get a chance to find out,” I said. “Levain attacked us after the Aleal killed Jaffie. He would have killed me if not for the Aleal.”

  Matt shook his head, obviously frustrated with the alien’s disappearance and annoyed with me for enabling the whole complication. “Well, standing here complaining won’t find it any faster. Meg, let me know as soon as Ben wakes up.”

  “Copy that, Boss,” Meg replied before Matt disconnected the comms and picked up the ship, gently placing it back in his coat pocket.

  We split up to quickly yet methodically search the tiny motel one room at a time. I spent the entire time anxious and worried, terrified we'd stumble onto the grisly remains of another victim. After twenty tense minutes, we finally regrouped at the stairs with no luck locating the alien blob.

  “This place is mostly a ghost town,” Tyler said. “I only came across a couple of rooms besides ours that were occupied.”

  “Do you think the Aleal could have slithered inside beneath their doors?” Alyssa asked.

  “Probably.”

  “Show us the rooms,” Matt said.

  Tyler led us back to his section of the search area—the lower floors near the back corner—and pointed out the first occupied room. Matt tried the door. Locked.

  “Should we knock?” I asked.

  “If the Aleal is inside, I don’t want to give it so much notice that we’re here.” Matt positioned himself in front of the door. “I’ll kick it open on three. Tee, you and Ally go in, guns drawn. Noah, hang back.”

  “Are you sure that’s the right move?” I asked. “The Aleal listens to me.”

  “I don’t intend to collect it. I plan to kill it.”

  “You can’t⁠—“

  “I can, and I will,” Matt hissed, cutting me off before I could finish my complaint. “You already saw what it can do firsthand. And you still think it isn’t dangerous?”

  “No, I know it’s dangerous,” I answered. “But it’s on our side. It saved my life.”

  “It looked to me like it saw a chance for a more satisfying meal than dead rat and took it,” Tyler said.

  “You’re not helping,” I snapped.

  “Come on, man. I’m trying to help us not be its next victims.”

  “The Aleal isn’t a mindless killer. It attacked Jaffie because of my anger toward him.”

  “Enough arguing,” Matt whispered. “Ally, Tee, get in position.”

  They drew their blasters, moving to either side of the door. I stayed out of the way, unhappy but resigned. Maybe the Aleal was too dangerous to keep around. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. It could have eaten my brains or Ally’s in our sleep and hadn’t. But if it had killed some unsuspecting innocent in their sleep…

  Matt counted to three before kicking the door in, the force of his blow easily overwhelming the simple lock with a loud bang of the door against the wall. Tyler and Ally rushed into the room with their blasters up, quickly vanishing into the bedroom.

  Matt and I entered the room, my heart in my throat over what the pair might find.

  “Uh, guys,” Ally said, poking her head back out of the door. Her tone sent a chill down my spine. This couldn’t be happening.

  My guts churned while we headed toward the bedroom. Nearing the door, I glimpsed a slim, hairless figure slumped upright in the bed with his back to the headboard and his hands clasped loosely atop a book in his lap. His eyes were closed.

  Tyler approached slowly while I held my breath, reaching out a cautious hand to grasp the figure's shoulder. Abruptly, he shook the man and stepped back in alarm as the body started sliding sideways, head lolling limply.

  My stomach lurched.

  Then the figure snorted awake. Sitting back upright, he snatched his bed sheet up to his chin and held it there with both of his three-fingered hands as if it would somehow protect him from us. “Please, don’t hurt me!” he begged, blink owlishly up at us, terror obvious in his oversized anime eyes.

  Matt exhaled heavily, relaxing in relief.

  “Sorry, we thought you were someone else,” Tyler said, lowering his gun and backing away. “We didn’t mean to scare you. We’re leaving now.”

  The bleary-eyed alien said something the Warden’s pill couldn’t translate as we slipped out of the room.

  “We thought you were someone else?” Matt asked Tee, unable to stifle a laugh.

  “It was the first thing I thought of,” Tyler replied with a shrug. “The other occupant is just down the hallway. Hopefully, we can settle for pissing them off, too.”

  “Which will still leave us short one Aleal,” I said.

  “Let’s just hope it hasn’t left the hotel,” Matt replied, sparing me a guilting response.

  We hurried to the next room. This time, when Matt kicked the door open, I snuck ahead of Tyler and Alyssa, hoping to cut them off in case we found the Aleal inside. Not because I didn’t want them to kill the little blob but also because I knew they couldn’t. Levain’s crimson guards had tried and failed miserably. I’d only agreed to let them go first into the last room because I didn’t want to see the aftermath. Since this whole episode was my fault, I’d decided to do the right thing.

  “Noah!” Matt snapped as I raced into the room, which didn’t have a separate bedroom like the last. Immediately, my eyes fell on the woman I had just startled awake, her mouth open in the beginning of a scream.

  Probably not because of our intrusion. The Aleal perched on her chest, tendrils already inside her nose, another pair stretching toward her eyes. It had lost its blood-hued coloring, once more a clear, gelatinous form.

  “No! Stop!” I shouted, hopeful but unsure.

  The scream emerged, blood-curdling and terrified, even as the Aleal withdrew its appendages, rolling backward like a tumbleweed to get clear. Tyler came up behind me, swinging his blaster toward it, unable to shoot while it was still on the bed.

  "Come here! Right now!” I ordered, holding my pocket open. “Bad Aleal!”

  It twisted in my direction and hesitated, leaving me to momentarily wonder if I’d gone too far in bossing it around. It quickly made up its mind when Matt entered with his knife out, lunging across the room to my chest. Grabbing onto me, it slunk back into my pocket, noticeably heavier than before.

  The woman suddenly burst into tears. “What the hell is that thing?” she sobbed, clutching her blankets tightly.

  I glanced at Tee, waiting for his thought-you-were-someone-else apology.

  “Our apologies, Miss,” Ally said. “We’re exterminators. We have everything under control.”

  “Exterminators?” the woman murmured, sniffing. “You didn’t kill it. He called it over and it responded. What kind of exterminators are you?”