“Don’t fucking touch _anything_,” called our group leader over our headsets, “We don’t know what kind of space virus there could be on or in this ship and we don’t need another effing plague. Only the swaps touch. Then we cap and bag for the lab, got it?”

“Got it,” the other team members replied, “Understood.”

We all carefully spread out and edged closer to the wreck. The metal was torn open and jagged, exposing the inner belly and the glowing lights within. I stopped at a nearby piece of metal and swapped like my job required but my eyes wandered deeper into the steaming ship. There was a sort of pull to it, a draw that had me wanting to foolishly step closer. Of course we weren’t supposed to board the ship but I stomped through the snow and got as close as I could to one of the jagged tears where the metal had rended. It was humming, I realized. There was this low pulsating hum, almost like a heartbeat but it stuttered and stumbled occasionally like the entire ship was a wounded animal of some sort. I fished out another swap and swiped it through the nanotechnology jell that seemed to ooze out of the metal walls, glitching and glowing as it dripped.

Movement and the sound of something skittering inside the ship made me flinch. Quickly, I turned, trying to look all around with the narrow view through my helmet. I couldn’t see anything though but the feeling of being watched unsettled me in a strange way. It didn’t repulse me or send me running, rather it drew me in, calling me to seek it out and find the source.

“Hello?” I called but only my teammates responded.

“Aye Leira, you see something?” One of them asked. I breathed for a second, looking around before replying.

“I guess not. I think I’m just jittery,” I muttered. Another teammate replied that we should just hurry up with the samples and get out of this place but somehow the thought of leaving filled me with dread.

Throwing all caution to the wind and possibly even my job, I followed my impulse and stepped through the jagged metal to the interior of the ship. I clicked my headset off before calling out again.

“Hello?”

Just like last time I was met with that same pulsating silence.

Before I knew what was happening, something tackled me to the ground, throwing me so hard that my helmet cracked right along the glass and my nose began to bleed from where my face collided. I yelled, screaming and twisting in my suit until whatever being that had tackled me let me turn over and I could see it.

Him.

Or so my body told me, my subconscious whispering into my mind. He was graphite gray and chittering with more arms than me and more limbs than me too. And he was scaly yet leathery at the same time.

“I came to find you,” I tell him, the words coming out of my mouth in a bloody sputter as my nose continues to bleed. The words don’t even feel like mine. It feels like my body was preprogrammed to say them, “Let me be your companion.”

We obviously didn’t speak the same language, he just kept chittering but when he saw the blood on the inside of my helmet he stilled from trying to keep me pinned to the ground. That stillness lasted only a second and then his talon like hands were cracking the glass of my helmet open like an egg. I had to close my eyes to avoid getting any shards in them. Before I could open them though, something warm and wet suctioned to my bloody nose. I opened my eyes to see the glow of the ship blocked out, his head dipped into the space cracked open in the helmet. He was licking and sucking at my blood! If there was some sort of space virus, I was for sure going to die from it now, if I wasn’t eaten first. I didn’t feel like he was going to eat me though. Instead I felt safe as a rough tongue(?) licked my upper lip.

In the next instant he lifted his head. Only, this wasn’t the same creature that descended on me and tackled me to the floor. Two brown, very human eyes gazed down at me.

“Forgive me, companion,” He said, in perfect English, “I needed a sample to complete my form.” He then sat up and looked at himself and it was only then that it occurred to me he was naked and merely sitting on me. He looked at his fingers then felt his face and the silky brown hair that fell messily around his shoulders. “Though necessary to assimilate, I find this form to be inconvenient. Seems rather weak.”

Slowly, I eased up on my elbows to look at the man I had been summoned to search out and find by pure instinct alone. What on earth was I supposed to do with him? Be his companion apparently, but what did that mean?

“Good, the blood has stopped,” he mentioned, eyes finally wandering back to me. I only realized then that my nose no longer dripped and, instead, I could breathe through it normally as if it had never bled at all.

And then, we just stared at each other long and hard. I didn’t know what to say, he didn’t seem to either. It almost seemed like he was waiting for my direction. It was strange that he wasn’t freezing in this weather. The gaping ship provided little shelter from this arctic weather and he didn’t have insulated clothing on. He didn’t have anything on at all. I supposed he wasn’t human and he must not feel temperature like that. It seemed very apparent that he felt other things, though, as he finally climbed off of me and stood tall.

“What luck, a compainion and a mate,” he declared before reaching out a hand to me to help me to my feet, “Now we have no reason to be parted. Well then, show me to our home and teach me of your culture.”

Just like that, my body accepted the role and I gave him a determined nod.

“Let’s find something for you to wear first.”