"His wife."

I perked up. That wasn't a very nice tone coming out of Lilly's mouth. I glanced between her and Sarah, for the first time noticing the crackling energy spitting between them. What? What was happening?

I reached out and set a hand on Lilly's shoulder. She jumped and looked at me. I cocked my head to the side quizzically, squinting. "What's the matter?"

Lilly snorted and shook her head. "Don't worry about it." She shrugged my hand off and went to lean against a nearby wall, placing her forehead against it.

Sarah stood with her mouth slightly agape. She shook herself and regained her composure, stepping towards me. "So then. His brother and his wife. Not who I expected to rock up to the gates today."

"No? Why not?"

"Well, he doesn't ever talk about his past, for one. There has never been a mention of a brother, or anywhere he's lived before. Two, Alec isn't exactly the cuddly type. A wife was not on my Alec Bingo card."

"Shit happens to people," I said softly.

She nodded. "Yeah, that's true. It does. Like whatever must have made him abandon his community."

"It... Ah, it's not like that. Don't think badly of him. Wasn't his choice. Was ours. We thought he was dead and moved on. It wasn't until we found some signs of him on a return trip that we realized our mistake."

"Oh. That's..."

"Yeah."

Nolan stepped up, stuffing his face with a piece of bread. "Honestly, this all makes perfect sense to me," he said, smacking his lips. "Like I said, dude is a fucking ninja, comes out of every fight on top." He swallowed. "So, like, I'm not surprised there was some situation where you thought he was dead, but he just walked away from the explosions like a badass. You ever see that movie Equilibrium? Alec is like that with guns."

He pantomimed finger guns blazing, an idiotic grin on his face. "Bam bam bam! Everybody's dead, and here he comes, walking back through the gates like nothing happened. I love that dude! And Alec is a weird guy. You guys are weird guys. I can see it. You know what's really weird though? Dude loses his shirt a lot. Like all the time, he comes back with no shirt. I saw him walk back in after going scouting literally buck naked once, dick swinging in the wind. Bro gave no fucks."

"Because he gets wounded and doesn't want to come back covered in blue blood and tattered clothes," I thought. Excitement welled up in my chest. "It's him, it's really fucking him."

Nolan walked away, still chuckling to himself. "Bam!"

I looked about, noting my companions' positions as the crowd around us began to disperse, their interest lost.

Molly was sitting in a nearby stairwell, humming and braiding her hair.

Sarah was standing beside Lilly, speaking softly. "How long has it been?"

"Two years."

"I'm sorry..."

I wandered over and sat beside Molly. "How's Ragger doing," I asked in a low voice. "Any luck?"

Molly shook her head. "I can't hear him anymore. He last said that he smells like you."

I sighed and leaned back, resting my elbows on the stairs behind me. Molly went back to braiding her hair. We were so close!

Molly scooted closer to me and leaned her head against me.

At first, the little changeling Vit had given me the creeps. Molly and Ragger weren't the only shifters we'd encountered, not by far. They weren't even the first friendly ones, even though we hadn't quite known it at the time.

But knowing they could hulk out at any second and literally rip my head off was not a comforting thought at any juncture. It had taken a long time to get used to them. To trust them. But we had all agreed early on that there was no way we could hold a prejudice against them and then convince Alec that we had none against him, when and if we ever were able to find him.

After we discovered the footage of Alec changing on the tapes, our understanding of our enemy had undergone a vast adjustment. Just five of us went to find him: myself, Amanda, Lilly, Mathis, and Irene.

Whiskey had wanted to come, but as she was getting on in years, she couldn't keep up. She'd set out with us, but after a particularly close call only two days into the trip, she just kept saying that "she'd gone soft watching the little ones" and to give him her love when we found him.

Things weren't easy. Lilly and I did not get along, compounded by Amanda and Lilly being best friends.

It seemed she'd never forgiven me for throwing her off the top of that car, which, well, yeah, Alec was probably going to punch me in the face for, too. I really hoped he realized he had super strength by this point, even when he was human. I rubbed my jaw, anticipating broken teeth.

The changelings were interesting. As far as we could tell, they were created by a Vit possessing individuals who specifically had genetic forms of cancer. Most infected individuals turned into the typical subspecies related to their host: Reavers, Prowlers, Silencers, Mirefiends, and so forth.

The changelings, however, could swap between their original host's appearance and their Turned forms.

Molly was one of the first we'd encountered. Hiding in the ruins of the hospital where she'd first been infected, we hadn't realized she was any different when we first met her. She'd called out, warning us about a large group of Turned just down the road.

We'd thought of her as a little girl, urging her to come with us. She refused repeatedly, and we thought she was just frightened. She invited us to stay a night and then move on.

It wasn't until we did a pin test—a rather underhanded trick we'd developed with new folks—shaking their hand or grabbing their arm with a little thumbtack hidden between our fingers—that we realized she was infected.

She had cried and begged for her life, explaining that she wasn't like the others. It was a behavior we'd seen before, but it turned out that, unlike Liam in the forest, it was tough to shoot a child actively begging for their life.

"She's still alive in here, too; I did not kill her, please, do not kill us," had taken us a little aback. We had never known that the Possessed didn't die after infection, that their minds could be kept prisoner indefinitely until the Vit inside them decided to kill them off. It was honestly a little heartbreaking to learn.

We'd taken her with us, and to my shame, we kept her in a cage for a while. But she'd proven invaluable; even though she'd "Cut the Hive connection," as she and others like her put it, she could still sense the minds of other Turned nearby, alerting us to the danger of them.

Her answer was simple when asked why she would side with us instead of her brethren: "They would kill me before they killed you."

After a few weeks, we decided she could be trusted, so we let her out.

Almost immediately, she'd run away, which was probably to be expected.

However, about a week later, we woke up to her sitting outside by the fire, cooking breakfast, and she had been with us ever since.

In addition to being a biological early warning system, she could actively communicate with other Visharath, even ones that weren't capable of shifting. While all Turned could speak, many found it tiring or difficult. And most of them found it completely pointless, as most humans would just shoot them anyway. Having a relay between our species opened a whole new world to our eyes.

There were literally hundreds upon hundreds of Turned who were not part of the Hive. Every one of them had their own unique motivations for becoming traitors, from independence to wanting to murder freely (we did our best to avoid them)—apparently, that was not their goal as a species.

Their overarching goal was, in fact, quite interesting and far from what any of us had imagined.

As Molly, and later, Ragger explained, the Visharath were not mindlessly invading worlds. Their Empress and Council claimed that there was a significant threat to the universe, something called the "Abbrakor," or "one who follows" in their tongue, that was hellbent on exterminating all life. The Visharath sought out planets with life and invaded to protect those worlds.

They went from world to world, leaving behind a considerable population of Turned to fight this behemoth when it arrived and a decent amount of the original population to carry on after they pushed the Abbrakor out of the system. Then, supposedly, they would teach the remaining inhabitants about their technology and follow on to the next world, constantly harassing the Abbrakor on its way to the next system. This way, they pre-emptively protected worlds and drove the Abbrakor away from planets they might have overlooked.

I didn't buy it, and most Turncoats (our name for the Turned... Turned) didn't either. Ragger said flat out that he knew it was a lie but wouldn't explain much beyond that.

Ragger was an entity unto himself. The other Turned held him in deference that I was hard-pressed to find an analog for within human society. He was more than a king or a ruler; hell, as far as I could tell, the Turncoats respected him more than any Christian I'd ever met respected Christ himself.

In fact, I was pretty sure he might be older than God. Bring up a historical fact? He'd correct you as if he was there. Hindenburg? "Actually..." Ancient Rome? "Actually..." I was ninety percent certain that if I found a copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ragger would sit there correcting the fucking grammar.

"How's it look," Molly asked me, snapping me out of my contemplation. She held up a small braid. It looked terrible, but I rubbed her head and told her it looked great.

"You're lying," she said, pouting. I could never tell if I was talking to Molly or her Vit, Shanta.

They took turns being in control, as many Turncoats did. One would rest or sleep, and the other would be up and aware. Seemed to be something they all did to ensure they were never captured. Apparently, their punishment for treason was incredibly severe, something to which immediate death was preferable.

"I'm not lying!" I exclaimed, feigning hurt feelings. "I would never!"

She stuck her tongue out at me. I chuckled and rubbed her head again. Yeah, it was Molly.

Lilly moved away from the wall where she had been chatting with Sarah and came to sit beside us, shoving her hip against mine and squishing me into the middle. "Oi!" I grunted. "Just say please."

"It's him, Kendall."

"Yeah, I know it is."

She shoved me. "Why aren't you more excited?"

"Because I'm tired. We're almost a thousand miles away from home now. He keeps moving. He's never come back towards us. Lilly, I know it's a hard thing to say now, when we're on the edge of things... Sitting in front of his apartment, but... Have you ever considered that he's moved on?"

She glanced at Sarah and lowered her voice. "Sometimes. But that's not true. We know he murdered every Turned within fifty miles of us. He still cared about us. Cares about us. I think."

"I'm not saying he doesn't. I'm just saying he doesn't want to be found."

"Because he thinks we'd kill him if we knew what he was! But we wouldn't... We could never... Even that day in the woods. You couldn't. I know I couldn't."

"And I'm sure he wants to believe that, but Alec is a survivor above all else. I'm pretty sure that if he knew we were here, he would lose his shit. We left the colony. I left Mom and Allie..."

"Hey," Sarah interrupted. "We don't have any place for you guys to stay, and this rain will only get worse. Marlene might be able to get something prepped, but it would take most of the day. Where's your camp?"

I didn't reply, pursing my lips.

She raised her hands. "Hey, nothing meant by it, just trying to see if it would be easier for you guys to go home for a while."

"We aren't leaving," Lilly spat. "We will sit here in the rain until he gets back if we have to."

Sarah snorted lightly. "Your funeral."

"Can we go inside?" I asked.

"What, into his place?"

"Yes."

"I mean..."

"We really are his family," I said. "We've been looking for him for a long time."

"I've never even been in his apartment."

Lilly grinned suddenly. What was her... Oh...oh! Okay, yeah, that would explain her attitude.

"Are you gonna force us out of town at gunpoint?" I asked.

"Of course not, we're not assholes."

"Then there's really nothing stopping us from just going in after you leave. Unless of course, you wanna sit here in the rain with us."

She rolled her eyes again. "Yeah, you two are fucking related."

I laughed. "I wasn't lying!"

She waved her hand at the door of his place. "Yeah, go in, I guess. Don't come crying to me if he comes home and finds you there and kicks your ass."