Her face reveals no fear, only cold calculation. It makes a certain amount of sense. My need to reassure her stems from 16 years of emotional ties to other humans before I became an Archaea. Her only experience with humans is her mental ties to her host, who sacrificed both their lives to save someone the Archaea had never met.

“They’re after me” Fiona’s archaea speaks in a whisper.

Our eyes lock. “Over my repeatedly dead body.”

As if happy to a...