Page 33 of Blightfall

“Got it,” Alanik said. She must have communicated telepathically with Hoid, because a moment later my hair turned dark brown, similar to Arturo’s. Not as fun as blue, but different. Different could be fun too.

The earpieces the others wore now blended into their ears, matching the color of their skin. Alanik’s and Gilaf’s hair had changed to a dusty blond. Their skin tones darkened, pushing toward brown. Their violet eyes were now bright blue, the bone protrusions gone from their cheeks, their fingernails flat and blunt instead of sharp and pointed. They both still looked a little ethereal, but at least they weren’t instantly identifiable as aliens.

“You’re staring,” Nedd said, and at first I assumed he was talking to me, until Arturo startled and quickly glanced away from Alanik.

Nedd smirked, but then glanced down at his own arm and suddenly he was the one staring. His prosthetic was disguised to look like skin, and Nedd stretched his fingers, watching them like he’d seen a ghost.

“Is there something wrong with my appearance?” Alanik asked Arturo.

“No, nothing’s wrong!” he said, refusing to look at her. “You look great.”

“Because if the illusion isn’t perfect,” Alanik said, “I could make subtle changes. Tell me if I’ve made a mistake.”

“It’s fine,” he said.

“You’re not even looking. How would you know?”

Arturo shrugged, clearly realizing she wasn’t going to drop it. “If you’re trying to blend in, you could try looking a little more…plain, I guess?”

“Plain?” Alanik said. “What do you mean?”

“Like, ordinary.” Arturo winced, like he wished he hadn’t started this conversation. He acted like that around Alanik sometimes. They’d been circling each other since she’d joined our flight, but I could never quite tell if either one was aware of the other’s interest.

“I know what the word means,” she said. “But what would make me more plain? I need to keep all the features on my face.”

“Yes,” Arturo said. “But you could make them look…less striking. Stand out less.”

Alanik gave him a skeptical look. “How would I do that?”

“He wants you to look less pretty,” I translated.

Arturo covered his face with his hand.

“Is that what you mean?” Alanik asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” Arturo said through his fingers. He looked like he wanted to burrow into the soil at his feet and become one with the forest, disintegrate into nothing. Though he had a point. Alanik had made herself as beautiful a human as she was an UrDail, which might draw attention to her.

“Our flightsuits are probably going to stand out,” Arturo said, changing the subject. “But we don’t know yet what kind of clothes they wear here. If you see anyone, duck down in the underbrush so Alanik and Hoid can disguise our clothing before we’re spotted.”

We all climbed out of the gully, headed in the direction of the river. It was a good thing the DDF required so much PT, because trekking across the soft, crumbly soil and climbing over branches and logs were no joke. We used our light-lines as little as possible to avoid drawing attention as we neared the population, which only made travel slower and harder.

The forest was strangely alive, not just with trees, bushes, and moss, but also with an array of bugs. Small snails clustered on rotting bits of wood, chewing on the decaying bark. Beetles clung to foliage, eating even tinier beetles that looked like dots against the purple leaves. Black flies buzzed around our heads, as if trying to identify us as friend or foe.

“Try not to let the flies bite you,” Arturo said, swatting at one on his neck. “They could be venomous.”

“Can they be, if they coexist with the human colony?” I asked.

“Old Earth had venomous snakes,” Nedd said.

“And spiders,” Arturo added.

We came to a large log, and I pulled myself on top of an old branch. “Okay, but those humans didn’t have a choice about where to live,” I said.

“I think even most interstellar travelers have to take some of the bad with the good,” Suki said, peeking out of Arturo’s backpack as he jumped off the log. “No place is perfect.”

“If much of the continent is so forested,” Alanik said, “it’s no wonder the humans haven’t spread farther across the surface.”

“I don’t know,” Arturo said. “There’s good shelter here, and plenty of wood to build with. It’s more likely they haven’t spread out because they were being harried by Superiority drones.”