My relationship with Eve was beyond complicated now; I still resisted her charms and seductions, but she was definitely the most important person in my life, and the boundaries of fear and trust had become drastically different from what they once were. I found I really had come to trust Eve, both as a companion and an asset in our mission. I also realized I wasn’t really afraid of her anymore, despite knowing how dangerous she was, I knew she wouldn’t turn her power against me. But she was being reasonable in giving me space, allowing me the freedom to process my feelings for her now. Of course, she still constantly tried to get me to fuck her, so her version of ‘space’ involved regular seduction attempts, but aside from that she pulled back by not harping after me about being perfect mates or whatever, or telling me no one would love me like she would, all those empty promises. In a way it almost seemed like she matured—evolved again, maybe, but she was still fundamentally Eve, with all her wild mood swings and hilarious multiple personalities.

  I also found I was being much more cautious in my daily reports to mission command. Before I didn’t see any problem letting them know what all Eve was scheming or planning with me—admitting to her obsessions. But now I was starting to withhold more details; I didn’t tell them about the fight we had or the fact she reverted to her child-form, I just said she was dealing with some frustrations and needed a break. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure why I started doing that, but it felt like I was getting protective of her again—like I was back on earth. Obviously, that was hilarious; the weak little human feeling the need to protect the most dangerous lifeform in the universe, but I couldn’t help it—couldn’t stop.

  Along with our more mature relationship, Eve also seemed to be taking our investigation mission more seriously. Before she always acted like she was just humoring me in helping along with our mission, but now she seemed to have a renewed dedication to the work. I still had a feeling it was all for my benefit, but I appreciated it all the same.

  Another cycle passed and we found ourselves working with Tillia’s perimeter team again, and while I can’t exactly say Eve got along with Tillia, she certainly behaved better this time. She worked diligently during the investigation, and she didn’t have a problem letting Tillia and I talk freely. Only once did Eve growl at Tillia when she’d put a hand on my shoulder, but I swatted Eve’s arm and told her to knock it off, and she shrunk behind me like a scolded child.

  When the perimeter team was escorting us back to the monorail, Tillia pulled me aside for a moment—Eve watching us like a hawk a dozen feet away.

  “Sorry with how everything turned out between us.” Tillia offered with a small smile.

  I quirked up an eyebrow, “What are you apologizing for? I feel like I should be the one to say it.”

  Tillia shrugged, “It’s not really anyone’s fault, it’s just how things developed, and once again you’re stuck in the middle of everything.”

  “I mean it seems like there’s one person whose fault it is.” I looked over at Eve who was trying to pretend like she wasn’t actively eavesdropping.

  Tillia shook her head, “I don’t really think it’s her fault.”

  I turned back to Tillia quickly, “And how the hell do you reason that out?”

  Tillia turned to look at Eve—catching her looking away quickly, then turned back to me, “People can’t help who they fall in love with Adam.”

  I crossed my arms and eyed the crazy doctor, “And you think the fact a Predazoan can literally make and remake their mind and personality isn’t something to be concerned with? What if she created herself to fall in love with me? What if she changes her mind at some point and remakes herself so she isn’t?”

  Tillia rolled her eyes and giggled in that little way I’d missed, “It doesn’t matter what kind of girl she is, Adam; a human, a Predazoan, or anything in between, she’s still just a girl.” She smiled, her eyes shining with amusement, “A girl deeply in love with you.”

  I wanted to ask a million follow-up questions, but the train arrived at the perfect moment to end our conversation. Tillia gave me a quick hug—a church hug with our pelvises a foot apart, to Eve’s approval—and she waved us off as our team boarded, returning back to the hotel for the night.

  Eve watched me silently for a time, but it wasn’t with suspicion or even possessiveness, it was simple curiosity. She wanted to hear what I was thinking—more than just sensing it in her limited way. I knew she’d heard Tillia and I talking and was sure Eve had been surprised by Tillia being so understanding. More than surprised, I was confused over the whole thing. In her way, I think Tillia was saying she supported whatever was going on between Eve and me—or understood what all love Eve had for me and found it quite believable. Thinking back to my conversations with some of the other researchers, no one seemed to agree with me Eve’s personality was wholly fabricated and could be unmade on a whim. That was one of my biggest concerns, and I seemed the only one with such a worry. What the researchers were more concerned with was her desire to control or manipulate me for some nefarious purpose. I no longer held that fear at all; I truly believed Eve wouldn’t ever harm me or try to control me, I knew she wanted me to just be me—a me that loved her.

  It was strange, but it almost felt like Tillia and I had just broken up. Obviously, we were never truly together, but it seemed like we accepted the fact we would just be friends now. I’d already admitted I wouldn’t choose anyone over Eve—forgetting anything romantic, just for the fact I didn’t want to hurt Eve, I’d already decided I wouldn’t pursue anyone else. Maybe Tillia had felt that change and knew it was time to make peace with that—which of course just proved how kind Tillia was. I thought it should make me sad, but oddly enough it almost felt like there was a release of tension I didn’t even know was there—a weight off my chest.

  I looked down at Eve, looking into her beautiful, glowing yellow eyes. She looked up at me with such love and adoration, I felt my pulse quicken a little.

  I smiled at my little alien, “Why don’t we get dinner, just the two of us tonight?”

  Eve’s smile was twice as brilliant, “You mean it?”

  I shrugged, “Nothing fancy, just at the hotel restaurant. I feel like you and I didn’t have any one-on-one time today, figure we should change that.”

  Eve looked like she just heard the most wonderful news, “That sounds lovely.”

  “Maybe we can tie one off at the hotel bar too; I was always kinda curious how you’d be drunk.”

  Eve giggled, and I couldn’t help but compare it with Tillia’s giggle in my mind—and found I liked Eve’s giggle more now, “Darling, you don’t really think alcohol would have any effect on me, do you?”

  I cocked my head to the side, “What, it doesn’t?”

  She rolled her eyes and leaned into my shoulder, “Silly boy, alcohol is a toxin; you really think a Predazoan would be susceptible to any toxins? I can synthesize toxins in my blood; obviously I’d be immune to them.”

  I quirked up an eyebrow, “All of them, really?”

  Eve smiled playfully, “I could offer you a cute line now; you set me up to say something adorable and cheesy.”

  I rolled my eyes, “Something about love being the only poison to affect you?”

  Eve giggled again, “Exactly.”

  ***

  Dinner with Eve was something between a date and a friendly outing; she clearly wanted it to be a date, but I was fine having it be more like dinner with a family member. I wanted to unwind with Eve a little after the day’s work and had to admit spending time with Eve like that really was relaxing. Despite being some Ancient Old One alien abomination, I really felt at ease around her lately. I also wanted to pick her brain a little about the mission without anyone else around.

  “I know the Predazoan camouflage is perfect even to other Predazoans, but you can still sense Gamma-17 is on Entana, right?” I inquired.

  Eve sighed and pulled apart a piece of the appetizer—some kind of local cheese bread balls. “It’s honestly so hard to describe what I feel when I can’t feel exactly where Gamma-17 is now.”

  “Try me.”

  Eve ate the little piece of cheese bread as she thought over her answer, “Have you ever felt that special feeling of reunion when you reunite with someone you haven’t seen in a long time?” She gestured towards me, “Like when you returned to your grandparent’s farm after living in the city for so many years.”

  “What, like nostalgia?”

  She shook her head, “No, it’s a feeling based around a person, not just nostalgia.”

  “I felt like I was back home when I returned to my grandparents, felt like I had a safety net after so long on my own.”

  Eve shook her head again, “But what about that first moment when you saw Gramps and Gram again? Didn’t you feel a tug at your heart when you were reunited?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  Eve finished the other half of her cheese bread, “That’s kind of how I feel down here on Entana, like there’s been a reunion, but there’s no focus or even a direction for it.”

  “And no help with focus even when you’re around any of the disappearance sites?”

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  “No, it’s been too long; no scent or sense at all for me to follow.”

  “What about your extra-sense? Whatever subtle psychic ability you have, you can’t sense a Predazoan mind down here?”

  Eve trilled her adorable giggle, “Adam, I told you before it’s not like it is in your comics—I’m not Professor Xavior or anything.”

  It was a little thing, but I found Eve’s dorky references wildly attractive. She smiled—surely she sensed I found it attractive, “No, I have to be relatively close to someone to be able to sense their mind—and I have to focus on the extra-sense, not like I just feel every mind around me at all times.”

  “So best case scenario, how do we find Gamma-17?”

  Eve reached forward for another ball of cheese bread, “Honestly? We have to wait for her to make a mistake. Surely she knows we’re down here looking for her—she definitely senses I’m here, and I’m not hiding my Predazoan cells like she is.”

  I cocked an eyebrow, “Could that be a problem? Maybe she’s trying to stay hidden from you.”

  Eve took a small bite, then slowly shook her head, “No, if anything she should be trying to find me, but she’s being cautious because she can probably sense the Predzoan research/investigation team.”

  “Do you think she knows you’re working with us?”

  Eve puffed out a breath in a puttering kind of way, “Unlikely just for the sake it would be such a leap in logic; no Predazoan would ever think one of us switched sides and started hunting the rest.”

  I scrunched my face up in a thoughtful frown, “You’re sure it doesn’t bother you to hunt down your sisters?”

  Eve waved it off like it was nothing, “Adam, it really doesn’t bother me at all. We might have been sisters in captivity back then, but once our connection to Prime-00 was severed, we became individual hiveminds once again. All of us have our own idea of perfection—the Predazoan drive for supremacy. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of my sisters are hunting down the others to consume more powerful biomass—achieve their perfection by assimilating more pure Predazoan cells into themselves.”

  “You said before it’s like I’ve become your new Prime—your beacon to perfection. Do you think the others have found new Primes as well?”

  Eve tapped at her chin absentmindedly for a few moments as she considered my question. “Probably not. Originally, our separate drive to supremacy was our beacon to perfection—our focus and drive always internal. Prime-00 became the center of our supremacy drive to help us all escape—or fulfill her plan to escape. Now, most of us would revert to our natural state of having the internal drive to supremacy be our beacon to perfection—we would act as our own Prime.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose with two fingers and shut my eyes tight, “This shit is beyond complicated…”

  Eve smiled apologetically, “Sorry darling. I’ll answer all your questions and explain as much as I can, but I don’t expect you to ever fully understand the nature of the Predazoans.”

  I let out a quick sigh, “And you’re okay with that? You don’t think it would be odd to want to mate with something so far beneath you? A lesser lifeform?”

  Eve’s eyes flashed with anger for a second, but she relaxed immediately, “You are not a lesser lifeform, not to me. Your lack of biological complexity doesn’t mean you’re beneath me, it just means we’re different.”

  I shrugged, “I guess.”

  Eve could see I wasn’t convinced, but didn’t press further, “Whatever connection we had back on NX-947b is long gone; there’s no sense of family bond, no sisterhood, no loyalty of any kind. Suffice to say I have no love for any of my sisters, not now.”

  “Then why do you think Gamma-17 would seek you out?”

  Eve shrugged, “Curiosity. I’m an anomaly on the world she’s claimed; she’ll want to find out why I’m here eventually.”

  “Could we just wait her out until her curiosity gets the better of her?”

  Eve shook her head, “She could literally out-wait the entire expedition force until they all died of old age and crumbled to dust, then come look for me alone. No, waiting for her to make a mistake is much more reasonable.”

  “Will she—make a mistake I mean?”

  Eve nodded, “Surely. I don’t think she’s gone into hibernation—she hasn’t consumed enough biomass to be comfortable yet. No, eventually she’ll drop her camouflage when she wants to assimilate more biomass, and then I’ll have a trail to follow.”

  I had enough answers on the mission from there, so we started talking about less serious topics. I was surprised Eve actually teased me a little about Tillia, saying I broke up with my girlfriend. I almost found it hard to believe she was being so cavalier about it, but I quickly realized Eve was quite pleased over the outcome; she’d asked me point black before if I still wanted Tillia or would choose her over Eve, and now that she seemed to no longer be any kind of love rival, Eve probably felt more relaxed about the whole thing.

  After a healthy amount of teasing from Eve, we decided to try drinking together, and I got us some of that pink candy liquor I loved. True to her word Eve was immune to alcohol, though she did enjoy the taste. Of course I wasn’t immune, and Eve kept pouring drinks into me, finding it wildly entertaining to watch me slowly become intoxicated.

  “Hey wait a second…” I slurred, pointing my empty glass at Eve, “Are you just trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me?”

  Eve trilled out an adorable giggle and shook her head, “Come now darling, you really think I would want you drunk for our first time? No, I want you in complete control of your faculties.” Her smile turned mischievous, “It’ll be a night I don’t want you to ever forget.”

  Despite what she said, Eve absolutely took advantage of me. Helping me back up to our room, her hands were free to wonder all over my body, grabbing me in places that absolutely wasn’t necessary in getting me to the room.

  “That’s my ass.” I accused.

  Eve looked at me with a face of pure innocence, “Oh I’m sorry, I was just trying to stop you from falling.” She said, batting her eyelashes at me.

  My inhibitions out the window, I grabbed Eve’s plump ass with a firm hand, “And this ass is just outrageous.”

  Eve almost yelped, and a subtle pink blush rose on her white cheeks, “Adam, are you always like this when you’re drunk?”

  I ignored her and knelt down before her in the hallway, hugging her thighs and resting my head against her perfect ass, “I want to be friends with it.”

  Eve’s face was nearly scarlet now, “Come on Adam, let’s get you into the room before you make a scene.” She urged.

  Stumbling all the way, Eve escorted me back to the room, and when she got the door open, I tripped my way forward until I flopped onto the floating bed, face first and wildly dizzy.

  “Need help…” I mumbled into the mattress.

  I heard Eve’s voice right beside me, “With what?”

  I wiggled my feet, “Shoes and socks.”

  Eve just laughed to herself and helped me out of my footwear. She also helped me out of my jacket, then got into bed next to me, readjusting me so my head was in her lap. It was the universe’s most comfortable pillow, and she smelled amazingly sweet—like honey and vanilla and some extra alien scent I couldn’t place but was twice as enticing.

  “Adam, can I ask you something?” Eve asked in a quiet voice.

  “Gonna take advantage of me after all, eh?”

  Eve was silent for a few moments—meaning I was probably right.

  “I just wanted to ask what you thought, back on earth, when I killed those humans—when I consumed them.”

  My mind was obviously a little fuddled, but I’d had a lot of time to think about it, so it wasn’t very hard to reorganize my thoughts, “Honestly? At first I was really scared—I thought the monster you became replaced my cute little Evie.”

  Eve ran her nails gently through my hair, “No, it was always me.”

  “I think I was scared of that too, that my Evie was always a monster. It made me rethink all our time together, made me wonder if you’d been tricking us the whole time.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  I sighed and nuzzled my head more into her lap, and she cradled my head and played with my hair, “I was so relieved when you turned back into your regular form on The Radiance, but there was always a part of me that wondered if the monster would come out again.”

  Eve let out her own sigh, “I was so terrified you wouldn’t look at me the same ever again, that’s why I reverted back to the child-form; I just wanted to be your Evie again. But I’d already fallen in love with you, and when I consumed the human biomass I could finally understand it, so that’s when I planned out how I could bridge the gap between your little Evie and an Eve you would fall in love with.”

  “And when are you thinking you fell in love with me exactly?”

  Eve trailed her nails down from my hair to my neck and back up again, “I think it was when I started imitating your human form. I was still pretty weak with a primitive consciousness, but I felt a deep bond with you even back then I couldn’t understand. Right then I think that’s when you became my Prime—why I started perfecting my form to look human. Normally Predazoans are solitary, but I always just wanted to be by your side. As I consumed more food and repurposed what l little I could into properly evolved biomass, it became more clear it was a deep affection I felt for you—beyond protection and companionship. You were all I thought about all the time, and when you went away to work that day I worried you’d abandoned me, and I couldn’t even imagine a life without you.” She leaned down and cradled my head in her arms, “Adam, I know you think I’m just some fabricated human personality, but even as a primitive Predazoan I was in love with you. There’s no altering that fact—no change I can make in my core; I will always love you.”

  I was silent for a time, feeling the waves of drunk dizziness receding as Eve held me. “But then you tried to manipulate me with that nasty plan of yours.”

  Eve huffed out a quick sigh, “It was stupid, I know that now. I was just so desperate to try and separate those sides of me in your eyes; I didn’t want you to connect the Eve you loved with the monster that killed those people. You’d just barely recovered from PTSD after you worked that scene with the evil man who killed his family; I was terrified you would suffer another mental breakdown or have some kind of relapse.” Eve shook her head, “I wanted the transformation to be slow, give you time to adjust.”

  I didn’t really have a good response for that—never thought she’d be so considerate to worry over me relapsing with my PTSD. It might have been a weird, messed up plan, but she did it all because she was worried about how I’d react to her after seeing her monster form.

  “When exactly did you have this form in mind—your true form? All the way back when you consumed those humans?”

  Eve nodded, “Yes. Right away I altered my core with the human DNA, and from there my mind was fully developed so I could process how my supremacy drive envisioned my perfect physical form. A few things I put in place myself, the rest adjusted automatically to fit with your desires as my Prime. But I was going to keep the form secret until I felt you were ready to see it and not connect it with any of the deaths I’d caused.”

  She believed if I saw the new form, I would automatically assume it was built from the corpses of those dead humans. She wanted to ensure I would never make that connection.

  “That still doesn’t excuse the weird grooming plan…”

  Eve sighed again, “I know Adam, and I’m sorry. Like I said before, I wanted you to feel you had some control over me so you wouldn’t be frightened of me and what all I’m capable of. Honestly? I think I underestimated you—I was being overprotective to the point I made up some ridiculous scheme, rather than talk it out rationally with you.”

  I nodded against her lap, “And then your scout-form shrieked, and I confronted you and figured out it was all a big scam, blah blah blah, here we are.”

  “Here we are…” Eve said softly.

  I turned around on her lap so I was looking up at her face, and she framed my head in her hands, “You know what’s fucked up?” She tilted her head to the side, “I bet if you turned into this adult form right away, none of that other shit would’ve happened—the fighting, the distrust. I mean yeah, you’re still taking away my freedom, but I’m pretty sure I would’ve been more open to the idea than I am even now.”

  Eve smiled at me sadly, “I know, I fucked up.”

  It was such a simple admission of guilt that weirdly made me feel a lot better. Originally, Eve had been wildly arrogant—insisting we belonged together, that she was the perfect mate for me, she knew exactly how I’d react along her schemes. But that side of her seemed to be dwindling away a lot lately—humbled, I guess. Of course, she still had a bit of an ego—the ancient, powerful Predazoan, the perfect lifeform—but she seemed so much more human lately.

  I was too drunk to continue the conversation, and honestly, I was quite exhausted now. As I slowly drifted off to sleep, Eve continued stroking my hair, trailing her delicate nails along my scalp as she trilled in a soothing, musical way like an alien lullaby. Right before I fully succumbed to the peace of sleep, an errant drunken thought seemed to cross my mind; I believed now, regardless of all the reasons we probably shouldn’t be together, my walls and resistances were crumbling away, and I was beginning to fall in love with Eve.