Moira spent six years of her life to be there. Rigorous note-taking left fingerprints that may never wash off her tablet screen. Sleepless nights of study sapped her health and, during finals, even her will to live. Book after book met their end by her hand. Friends? What were those? Who had the time? And yet absolutely none of it, not a single word from any professor’s lips, nor any research conducted for endless papers and projects, could have prepared her for that god damn smell.

The rescues lived in squalor all their lives. Many of them had never had a bath. Hell, many of them wouldn’t even know what a bath was. Common sense dictated they’d have a stench, but the overwhelmingly thick aroma of excrement, body odor, and death combined made her want to give up her dream career as a rescue psychologist and catch the next ship headed back to Earth.

She untied the red scarf holding back her natural black curls and used it to smother herself. Another intern had offered her a minty paste to smear under her nose that morning, but the putrid stink wasn’t any better mint-ified. Luckily, her first round of cataloging a group of incoming rescues was almost over. She’d just have to wear a nose plug on her next shift.

A team of rescuers had knocked over a Collector’s Exhibit containing twenty-five individuals that morning, and they all needed to be logged. The intake crates sat stacked three-high in columns on either side of the room. Each contained an alien (or, in rare cases, a human) who’d been rescued from the Collectors. As they arrived, they had to be identified and sorted. Moira was noting the last bit of information on the twenty-fifth as the door opened.

Her supervisor, Dr. Sketchy, strolled in with his hands in his pockets. His real name was Dr. Sachse, but only to his face.

“Done yet, new girl?” he asked, and not in that friendly, “we know each other so it’s cool,” kind of way but in that annoying, “I’m in a position of power and can be as rude to you as I want,” kind of way.

“Almost, sir,” she replied. They weren’t in the military, and she didn’t have to call him “sir,” but it always put him in a good mood.

She peered through the barrier shield into the crate. The brown lump of flesh hanging from the ceiling by a tentacle was an alien called an Aranean. A male. He seemed calm, maybe even sleeping. If Moira had to guess, she’d say he’d probably be alright after some medical help and rehabilitation. Although, a trusted mentor once told her it was nearly impossible to glean a rescue’s chance of recovery based on first impressions. Either way, if he made it back to his home planet—and that was only an “if”—it would take years of physical and psychological treatment, and he’d carry the trauma the rest of his life.

But that was what the Intergalactic Freedom Sanctuary was for.

He’d be safe there. In fact, he’d never be safer. Regardless of whether or not they made a full recovery, leaving the Sanctuary was the biggest threat the rescues faced. The odds of recapture were extraordinarily high. Especially among rare species. In fact, the number of rescues recaptured by the Collectors sparked a commonly held belief that they tagged their captives with some kind of tracker. In all the years the Sanctuary existed, however, no one had ever found such a device, and the methods they used to hunt their lost treasures remained a mystery.

“Is this the last one?” Sketchy took the tablet out of her hands and scrolled through the list rather than let her answer. “There are two here with no entry. Why didn’t you do them in order?”

“I did,” she said. “I skipped those two because I couldn’t fill out their report.”

“Why not?”

“One of them I don’t recognize, and I can’t see the other.”

“What do you mean you can’t see it?”

“I can’t see it, sir. The crate looks empty. I think we’ll have to call in a team to go inside.”

He clicked his teeth and scratched his wavy tufts of blond hair. Alright, Moira had to admit, Dr. Sketchy was attractive. He spent hours in the employee gym keeping himself fit and always came into work clean-shaved and tidy. Not to mention, he smelled much better than everyone else in the room, including her at that point. It was a shame he was such a pig.

“Alright, let’s go take a look at these mystery entries,” he said.

She walked behind him to the seventh crate. He leaned into the barrier shield and examined its contents, just as she had an hour earlier. A twin-sized bunk stuck out of the farthest wall, and a cabinet with a sink formed a corner on the left side. Directly across stood a toilet and a small metal table. But otherwise, it was empty.

He rapped his knuckles on the wall, but nothing stirred.

See? she didn’t say.

“Come out!” he called. “Come on! We don’t have all day!”

Still nothing.

He shined a flashlight in and smiled. “See that?” he said.

She looked but didn’t see anything. “No, sir?”

“Right there!” he barked as if saying it louder would improve her eyesight.

She squinted and there, under the bunk, she spotted a tiny brown bump. Almost as soon as she saw it, it pulled away.

“Whatever it is, it’s skittish,” he said. “It’s hiding in the back corner by the skink.”

Obviously.

“We don’t see a lot of that around here,” he went on, and if she didn’t know any better, she’d say he sounded thoughtful. “The shy ones don’t usually last long. We’re going to need a team to go in and identify it. Wait here.”

Hmm, and whose idea was it to bring in a team?  she thought.

Sketchy left her to stand around, awkward and bored, until he returned. She couldn’t even text. She hadn’t been at the Sanctuary the months it would take to receive a message from Earth. Out of pure habit, she pulled her phone out anyway and pretended to type to her friends and family. This not only didn’t entertain her but made her anxious, so she stopped.

With nothing to lose, she placed her arm against the barrier and shined a flashlight inside.

“Hello?” she said softly.

Of course, nothing happened.

“Are you in there? I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe now.”

A pair of green eyes appeared and vanished in a fraction of a second.

Damn! If she’d been paying more attention, she might have gotten something out of that.

“Hi, there,” she tried again. “Would you like to come out? There’s no reason to be afraid.”

Come on. Come on, whatever you are. Let me see you so I can file my report and rub it in Sketchy’s face. She waited. Patiently. Watched for it to peek at her again. Another fraction of a second was all she needed. She’d be ready that time.

But it stayed tucked into it cozy safe place.

Okay, so, what would she like to hear if she was in its position?

When she was a child, she was afraid of thunderstorms. She’d hide under her bed, just like this alien, until they passed. But she never faced it alone. Her mother used to sit beside her and sing. It always made her feel better, even during tornado season.

She didn’t dare sing aloud in case Sketchy returned and caught her in the act, but she gently murmured a soft tune. A lullaby.

The din of other alien sounds drowned her out. Collector rescues were notoriously wild during intake. Even if the rescue heard the song, she didn’t know what she hoped would happen. It wasn’t like life functioned like a musical.

But then, there it was.

A pair of green eyes, a light brown nose, and gone again. It was all she could have asked for and more, plenty enough to identify its species. But it hadn’t finished yet. Her heart fluttered as a hand came out of the shadows. Her training kicked in and she evaluated everything about it she possibly could.

An adolescent hand. Perhaps a teenager or around her age, but not entirely fully grown. Covered in smooth, light brown fur. Digits almost human-like but slightly longer. And it was doing something absolutely astounding.

It was pointing.

At first, she thought it was pointing to her, but it wasn’t. It was pointing at something past her head, on the opposite side of the room where crates thirteen through twenty-five were stacked.

“They’re on their way,” Sketchy arrived and the hand withdrew.

“Call it off, sir,” she replied.

“It came out?”

“Not for long,” she said, “but long enough. It’s a Dweller.”

“I doubt that.” He shook his head. “It can’t be. They’re a passive species. Not fighters and no real survival skills. The only Dwellers ever recovered from the Collectors have been corpses. They’re used for baiting and feeding, that’s all. The experts will check it out, don’t worry.”

It was a good thing he didn’t look at her. She rolled her eyes so hard she might have strained an optical nerve.

“What if it is a Dweller?” she asked. “How do you think it could have survived?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It couldn’t have. There’s no way. The Exhibits are dog-eat-dog, and Dwellers are herbivores. Dog isn’t on the menu. Now, let’s go take a look at the other one. You said you didn’t recognize it? You’re new here so it’s fine if you don’t know all the species names yet, but you can’t use that excuse forever.”

She did know all the species names. She knew them by heart. She knew what they looked like, their average lifespans, what their diets consisted of. She knew which species had the highest trauma recovery rate and which ones were statistically destined to spend the rest of their lives at the Sanctuary. She even spoke most of their languages. She knew everything she could possibly know about them. Except for this one.

This one was like nothing she’d ever seen before.

Dr. Sketchy typed a command into the control pad at the center of the room, and an automated crane removed the fifteenth crate from the top of the stack. The alien inside could be heard long before it was placed on the floor in front of them. Its mumbling and growling voice reverberated off the walls, low and scratchy. The crane shook as it threw its body against anything and everything surrounding it, probably doing more damage to itself than the metal crate. Whatever it was, it was violent and unhappy, a dangerous combination. But not unusual.

“Let’s see...” Sketchy uttered and approached the barrier.

Inside, a shadow leapt off the bunk. Only, it wasn’t a shadow. Its blacker than black skin looked more like a void in the universe than a being. Moira kept expecting it to leave a trail of ink behind as it moved. And it moved a lot. She couldn’t make out any of its features because it wouldn’t hold still, even for a second, and they all blended in. It seemed to have two arms, two digitigrade legs, a head, a pair of horns, and long black hair. Everything else about it was a blur.

“Well, that’s a...” Sketchy said.

“A what, sir?”

He pulled out a flashlight. It recoiled, but in the instant the light hit its face, she saw is silver-on-black eyes and an impressive set of fangs. Sketchy traded the light for his tablet and scrolled through the list of known species.

“I have no idea what that is,” he scoffed. “I think we’ve discovered an entirely new species. Congratulations, new girl! This is a first contact event! I’ll alert the research department.”

“I can let them know,” she offered in her best friendly voice. She couldn’t risk Sketchy conveniently leaving her name out of the report. Not if she wanted to make it in the field. She’d be a part of this even if she had to wrestle Sketchy for the honor.

“No, I got it,” he insisted and brought up his email to seal the deal before she had the chance to intervene.

A slam and a flash of red almost stopped her heart. Sketchy dropped his tablet to the floor. The unknown alien pounced straight at the corner of the barrier shield, again, and again, and again. Each time its claws struck, a short alarm sounded and a red light blinked.

“Whoo!” Sketchy picked up his tablet. “We got a live one! You want to kill us there, buddy?”

Ew. Only a cocky asshole would refer to a psychologically damaged alien creature as his “buddy.” But Sketchy’s arrogance wasn’t the only thing that struck Moira.

“I don’t think it’s after us,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

She didn’t reply but watched the alien attack. If it wanted to kill them, it would have pounced straight at the barrier, but was throwing itself at something off to the left. Something on the other side of the room had drawn its attention, something by crate seven, the crate where the Dweller hid under a bunk.

“Dr. Ske—er—Sachse,” she said. “Have any two rescues ever...known each other?”

“Of course not,” he laughed. “Why would you even ask that?”

She shrugged. “Just curious.”