“Because my grandmother knew her.”
He had a grandma? I had to keep my shit together. He wouldn’t be lying to me. Why would he? Rational, practical, open-minded. That could be me. Rational, practical, open-minded, and maybe a little bit of this Atraxian thing.
Oh God.
My heart was beating like crazy, but I could go along with this story. Stories were great. I read them all the time. “So her… family… was from the same place as yours? As you? And The Primordial? And The Centurion?” The fact that I was saying these words out loud was blowing my fucking mind.
“I told you they’re my brother and sister.”
I made this terrible sound in my throat of pure disbelief that hurt like fucking hell, and it wasn’t rational at all when I squeaked, “So you’re telling me that I’m a little bit of an alien?”
Alexander rolled his eyes. “That’s a simple term for it.”
My brain was fucking spinning. “And you’re an alien?”
He gave me a really hard, almost disgusted look. “We don’t do rectal probes, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“But you look human.” The words, the comments were about to just flow out of my mouth. I could tell. “Are you shapeshifters?”
He was trying to fight an eye roll, I could tell. “No. Why would we…？” He blinked. “What’s your definition of a human? Being bipedal? Having two eyes and two hands? Having hair? Or being born on this planet?”
Oh boy.
“We’re humanoid, if you feel more comfortable with that term. That’s why we came here, where we could fit in.” He blinked. “Atraxia is an older, bigger ‘cousin’ to Earth. It’s what scientists here would consider a twin planet.”
“Like in the Galaxy Battles movies, where there are human-looking people on a bunch of different planets but there’s also all kinds of alien-looking people too?” I whispered in shock. Even in some books I read, they didn’t call people humans when they were from Earth. They called them Terrans sometimes.
“Oversimplified but yes.”
“So you aren’t cloaking yourself to hide the fact that you have four eyes and your skin is green? Is being Atraxian why I can memorize some things so easily?”
His groan was enough of an answer at least for part of my questions.
“Is there an Atraxian language?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t taught it. Neither of my parents saw a point in speaking it around us. There are eight tones to it, so a single word can be pronounced in eight different ways, and each one would have a different meaning.”
Fuck. “How did the first people to come communicate then?”
Alex’s face went a little smug. “We learn fast.”
“How come no one ever noticed anything different when I’ve had bloodwork done?”
“Because you’ve descended from enough humans, and you’ve more than likely not been to the doctor enough for them to see certain markers.”
That made so much sense. The questions just kept building up in my head. “So our ancestors came here on a spaceship?”
“From what I was told, the ship only made it as far as Mars, and they “flew” the rest of the way here. Later on, my great-grandmother went back and destroyed it to remove the evidence.”
“Why did they come here?” I asked.
“Why do people leave their homes?” he asked right back.
I had to think about it. “Religious persecution? Colonization? Just to explore? Because their lands are dying?”
His eyebrows slowly rose. “If they wanted to colonize, they would have.”
He was right. That would have been the easiest shit in the world for them. If he wasn’t making this whole thing up.
“One of your ancestors had a vision that war was coming. She predicted that it wouldn’t be in her generation or the next but sometime in the distant future. The majority of the population refused to listen—Atraxians are a peaceful people by nature, they rarely leave their planet—but a small percentage understood the magnitude of what would eventually come. Those who didn’t want to stay were granted permission to leave; they even gave them four ships to travel, but on the condition that they could never return. That they could never reach out to the people who stayed behind or tell anyone where they were going. All I know is that each one went in a different direction, they were led by members of your family and another family’s visions. From what I understand, they were seen as traitors for leaving. Our civilization was advanced, but they were much more traditional with their views.”
“But… how? What does all of this even mean?” I dropped my voice. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked him, scooting up a little higher along the couch so I was in the corner. “My grandfather didn’t know. He never said anything.”
Alex was watching me so, so closely. “There is no way he didn’t know. My best guess is he knew not to say anything. He was aware that your family’s gifts would weaken with time, that his child and every generation afterward would have so much human DNA their abilities would be almost nonexistent. Your line also isn’t one that is remarkably strong physically, it makes it easier for you to fit in. His ESP had to be what kept you hidden and alive for so many years.”
I thought about my grandpa and how every time he’d told me about them—his grandmother and mother—it had been without my grandma around.
I thought about how he had surprised us with the random locations he picked for us to move to sometimes after everything had gone to hell and relocating had quit being fun. Places he had seemed so confident in. Towns there was no way he’d ever heard about in the news or in the paper.
I shrugged, feeling a little helpless, a little confused and overwhelmed. I was a little in shock. A lot in shock.
“It’s safer for everyone the less people know. It was the agreement when the families came here and some of them married humans.”
Married humans.
Abilities.
Agreement.
The world rocked under the couch like we were in the middle of an earthquake. “Families?” I squeaked.
“Twelve of them.”
Oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. There were twelve fucking families that came from another planet? And this son of a bitch was telling me I descended from one of them and that explained my Nostradamus stomachaches?
How the hell was that possible? Was this the greatest secret of all time?
“One family died off soon after they arrived, four others have so much human DNA now in their lines that their abilities don’t exist or are mostly latent, six still have some, and then there is my family,” he explained, those purple eyes totally focused on me.
I could barely get the words out of my throat. “Mine is one of those?”
“One of the four with hardly any abilities. Your great-great-great-grandmother married a normal man. So did her daughter and her daughter. Your grandfather married a normal woman. Your mother the same.”
“How many Atraxians came here?”
“I’m not positive. I know your great-great-great-grandmother wasn’t married; she was the only member of your line that came here. She did tell me that.”