Last time, Uncle Jeb.

They ask if Jared and Jamie are there, and he says no.

“No,” we whispered. We were not echoing him, we were protesting against getting our life back. What was the point? We closed our eyes again and listened to the pain in our body. We let that drown out the pain in our mind.

Oh for christ’s sake.

He didn’t say he found their bodies. They just aren’t here. Seeing as you aren’t dead and all, you can try to find a way to find them. Even just a message would probably do it – if you told them to go to the peak where you saw the next landmark, they’re the only ones who’d know to follow the trail.

You got all this way, you kept walking without water through a desert, you commandeered a brainslug! YOU ESCAPED. And it’s all meaningless if your boyfriend isn’t here right now to meet you?

They were gone. There was no way to find them, no hope. Jared and Jamie had disappeared, something they knew well how to do, and we would never see them again.

God fucking dammit book.

They’re so miserable they just go back to sleep because who cares about anything now.

They wake again, still a bit woozy.

Our mouth tasted of dust, and at first we were sure that we had dreamed Uncle Jeb’s appearance. Of course we had.

So they seem thoroughly mingled – even when they’re considering possibilities, there’s no sign of different thoughts.

Our head was clearer this morning, and we noticed quickly the strange shape near our right cheek–something that was not a rock or a cactus.

Or one noticing before the other.

Well, Melanie is the better character of the two, I think – actually showing that strength while it’s pretty much just informed on the brainslug’s side, so if we can get a fusion character that’s Melanie with some brainslug knowledge so we can keep the xeno worldbuilding, that would be absolutely perfect.

Anyway, it’s a canteen because that really did happen last night, because otherwise there wouldn’t be any waking up at all, but hey, you went through a lot and it makes sense you’d be pretty confused right now.

“Why did you give it water, Jeb?” an angry voice demanded, close behind our back.
We whirled, twisting onto our knees. What we saw made our heart falter and our awareness splinter apart.

Dammit! I hope that comes back.

Anyway, back to Melanie II as our sole viewpoint.

There’s eight people, six men and two women, all armed. Jeb has a gun. Melanie is just :DDDDDDDD eight people that’s more than I thought existed in the whole world!!!!!!!!

Melanie II snaps that hello they are going to die now.

They might have been human–as she thought of the word–once, but at this moment they were something else. They were barbarians, monsters. They hung over us, slavering for blood.
There was a death sentence in every pair of eyes.
Melanie saw all this and, though grudgingly, she had to admit that I was right. At this moment, her beloved humans were at their worst–like the newspaper stories we’d seen in the abandoned shack. We were looking at killers.

Um, no.

They’re not child murdering pedophiles for wanting to kill a killer, they’re just being sane.

Melanie II has claimed brainslugs don’t kill, but it’d be more accurate to say suffering is abhorrent to them, because they clearly don’t have a problem eliminating a mind and are even willing to kill a creature outright if it’s too defective to be of use. They’re also fine killing and eating animals so long as they’re not “intelligent” by some standard that the fire flowers manage but no nonhuman earth creature does (and while it’s funny to think they just haven’t realized other creatures here have brains too because of host bias like with the fire flower eating, enough humans know better than the brainslugs would too).

But we haven’t had that discussion for some reason, and now is no different, with Melanie agreeing instead of throwing the brainslug’s words in her stolen face.

A shiver passed through me at the thought. I’d skimmed through the histories of human atrocities. I’d had no stomach for them. Perhaps I should have concentrated better.

Huh, skimming is canon. Now if we just assume human atrocities covers everything we did and not just a few human on human incidents, we now know why she thinks this desert is some particularly terrible place when again, Australia, literally it is on fire and you can see it from space please fix that brainslugs, also the oceans, just…everything about them.

But she does know the basics:

I knew there were reasons why humans let their enemies live, for a little while. Things they wanted from their minds or their bodies…

My, surprisingly dark. I’m not sure if I feel like actually praising this for having rape be acknowledged as a thing that can happen the way I did birth control, but authors pretending it doesn’t exist has been a problem in a lot of the books we’ve seen, so again this book is far exceeding my expectations.

Now let’s continue to do that by having rape not be an actual thing here either.

Melanie II then says there’s some super secret that she knows they want and she won’t say no matter what. She quickly blocks it off so Melanie I won’t see it, but Melanie I doesn’t seem to even notice. She is really disappointing now that they’ve found people.

And Melanie II says she’d die before telling them, but also, this is a problem because dying would kill Melanie I and she understands that would mean murdering another person in the process.

But it seems she’d still do it rather than give up her secret. I’d like to say that I wish Melanie I was paying attention here to accuse her of being a hypocrite by contemplating murder, but let’s face it, she wouldn’t be pointing this out no matter what.

Anyway, Melanie I is paying enough attention to get that Melanie II thinks they’ll be tortured and claims her uncle won’t hurt her. Her crazy uncle who had no interest in saving their mother and decided to just tell the rest of them to get out while they could, and then ran off after a token attempt to convince them, one that seemed at least 70% motivated by wanting to let them find out the truth so they’d know he was right and regret not believing him and think he was so smart for figuring it out first and they’ll be so sorry about all the times they said he was crazy.

Melanie II does not point out any of these good points, but does point out another good point – her uncle doesn’t think there’s any “her” there, so it doesn’t matter that he cares about her. Although I think the “us” did give a pretty good clue. Melanie I points out that this is easily solvable – open your mouth, say words.

And they do have a pretty good story, you know? If this was seeker sanctioned, they’d have supplies to last them. Even if they were going to fake running out with a single infiltrator, they’d have set it up so she had just finished her last bottle of water or something before being left out as a decoy, or maybe plenty of water but a broken ankle or something keeping her at the tree (they can heal jumping down an elevator shaft, so that shouldn’t be any big deal). She was obviously about to die there, which is just not risk I could see anyone taking to catch a few more humans. And that’s assuming a single infiltrator even is a seeker MO, which doesn’t make much sense as a plan given they hate death so much and the attempt is suicidal – I mean, handing yourself over to humans?

Even assuming the brainslugs are brave enough to choose to do that themselves, which seems possible with our brainslug’s determination to kill herself rather than reveal something (the secret of reproduction? the fact brainslugs are poisoned by maple flavored instant oatmeat? the fact maple flavored instant oatmeal is an aphrodisiac and they’ll all reproduce and kill themselves for the next generation, vacating their current hosts in the process?), they’d still need some way of communicating with other seekers once they found the humans. If there is, then there’s no point in killing her because someone else is watching and has seen them, and the strike force is incoming. If they think she’s on her own and intends to send a message back or something, make her strip naked or whatever to prove she’s not carrying anything but the brainslug.

So Melanie’s explanation that she’s riding in the brainslug that’s riding in her actually has a lot going for it. She walked the brainslug into the desert without proper supplies because she didn’t want anyone knowing or for the brainslug to have a chance to find them and make it back to brainslug civilization. It’s obvious this was a one-way trip, obvious that there’s no one there in the wings to rescue the brainslug or even collect whatever it might find – if there was, they’d already be caught. The claim may be hard to believe, but the facts support it.

…which is why they don’t try it. Instead, Melanie II insists that if she says anything, they’ll assume it’s a lie, and if she’s lying, they’ll assume she’s a seeker because only those lie, and if they think she’s a seeker they’ll kill her.

Melanie recognized the truth of my thought at once. The very word Seeker made her recoil with hatred, and she knew these strangers would have the same reaction.

God, book, I get it, they’re evil unlike the rest of your precious little harmony babies. We’ll probably find out that all the sparkle yeerks really wanted was to hug a whole lot and only the evil seekers kept conquering planets and they did it because they liked eating puppies and needed fresh planets so they could eat more puppies.

It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m a soul–that’s enough for them.

Okay, Melanie II, I understand you’re probably still pretty out of it from the dehydration and heat, and the lack of food likely isn’t helping either. But you just said you wouldn’t try to explain things because it would just make them kill you. But now you’re admitting that’s what they’ll do anyway, so you have nothing to lose by trying your explanation about why they shouldn’t kill you.

One comes toward her with a knife.

Better fast than slow. Better that it was this brutal hand and not mine that killed us. Better that I didn’t die a creature of violence, accountable for Melanie’s blood as well as my own.

Um no it’s still totally your fault. If you were really convinced that you don’t want to kill Melanie, you could GET THE FUCK OUT OF HER so they wouldn’t need to kill her. You die either way, but you don’t need to take Melanie with you. Say “I’m really sorry and I’m going to let go of Melanie’s brain now so you can pull me out and kill me,” and then do that.

She does not say that. Instead, crazy uncle guy tells machette guy not to hack Melanie’s head off.

“Why? You said you made sure. It’s one of them.”
I recognized the voice–he was the same one who’d asked Jeb why he’d given me water.
“Well, yes, she surely is. But it’s a little complicated.”
“How?” A different man asked the question. He stood next to the big, dark-haired Kyle, and they looked so much alike that they had to be brothers.
“See, this here is my niece, too.”

God. Fucking. Dammit.

He’s just holding an idiot ball because the author says so. He isn’t saying it’s complicated because his niece is still in there. He’s just saying that hey, this one looks like that person he used to know! Just like EVERY OTHER BRAINSLUG, all of whom live in people that other people used to know! Even Melanie gets this – her dad never came back, just a thing wearing his skin.

But now her uncle is ready to shoot an actual human to prevent them from killing a brainslug. He has no real excuse for it, just that he doesn’t want to kill the thing that looks like his niece. Poor Kyle attempts to explain the whole “they’re fucking brainslugs” thing, to no avail.

Melanie’s aunt attempts to defuse things by saying they should bring it to the doctor, who I guess is studying brainslug physiology. Melanie II says this is her worst fears, despite the fact that getting poked a bit and killed is a lot less awful than sustained torture. Don’t be so whiny, Melanie II.

“Aunt Maggie? You’re here? How? Is Sharon –” The words were all Melanie, but they gushed from my mouth, and I was unable to stop them. Sharing for so long in the desert had made her stronger, or me weaker.

The Kevining is going fast. Even completely out of sync, Melanie is starting to control the body. The other times she talked was when she had hit her brainslug with an emotional wammy to get her feeling the same.

Anyway, dear Aunt Maggie promptly smacks her for trying to trick them.

“You won’t fool us, you parasite. We know how you work. We know how well you can mimic us.”
I tasted blood inside my cheek.
Don’t do that again, I scolded Melanie. I told you what they’d think.

What? No! Do it again! Don’t you care more about your cousin’s safety than getting hurt? Especially when you do know there’s a good chance they’ll kill you, even if you’re less certain about it than the brainslug. Showing concern for Sharon that’s detrimental to your own life or any brainslug plot is part of showing you’re there.

Tell them you saw Sharon in the city on the news, it’s how you got caught, and you think she was using Aunt Maggie’s old bolthole but you were watching the house with no sign of it, so maybe she’s at another one she knew about that you didn’t, but the brainslugs do know about that one and they’re looking for Sharon now so if she’s with you guys and just goes out for some reason you should know she’s in a ton of danger now. And if she’s all by herself and you didn’t know where she was then yeah, that’s where she is and you probably think it’s a trap but it really is where she is!

The gun is probably pointed at your head at this point, so then you add that you figured they were probably going to kill you either way but seriously please go find Sharon and at least save her and also since Jared and Jamie aren’t here they should be on the lookout for them, maybe leave water along the route because you were hoping Jamie would figure out the path and you don’t want him to die. You know Jared and Jamie aren’t brainslugged because they were looking for the two of them when you left and hadn’t any leads.

If you haven’t been shot, go on to tell them everything you know about seekers and brainslug society at large, minus whatever the super secret thing is. Sing like a canary.

Okay, now Maggie and Jeb are debating if she led seekers to them and it’s recapping what I already said about obviously no one else was there or they’d be here already and also obviously they wouldn’t leave her to die on the off-chance there were humans around. Jeb confirms this for me, which means that my even tentative speculation that maybe some brainslugs might choose to die for the greater good isn’t true, so we don’t even have to argue that this particular instance wouldn’t be worth it.

He calls the brainslugs centipedes.

He’s talking about you, Melanie translated. She placed the picture of the ugly bug next to my memory of a bright silver soul. I didn’t see a resemblance.
I wonder how he knows what you look like, Melanie wondered absently. My memories of a soul’s true appearance had been new to her in the beginning.

But I thought it wasn’t a good comparison if she doesn’t see it? But apparently Melanie thinks it’s a description borne of observation, so I guess it is.

Also wow, if the brainslugs weren’t continuing our fuckups with the bottled water and stuff, I’d really be on their side by now. We got conquered by these things without one person managing to even broadcast what the damn things look like before it was over? Darwin has spoken.

Anyway, so, crazy uncle is going to take her back, which no one likes but he says it’s “his place” so he gets to make the decisions? Really doesn’t seem like that makes sense when running a group like this, one guy being able to doom you all is kind of a flaw.

“Okay, whoever you are,” he said to me, his voice still kind. “Let’s get out of here before it heats up.”

So he doesn’t even think she’s his niece. He is literally just doing this because the author says so.

At least he blindfolds her.

Jeb was patient; his guiding hand was almost chivalrous.

What? Where is this even coming from?

And it marks that Melanie seems to have totally disappeared, because if she has any input here you’d think she’d be making a family connection with his kindness, not fucking chivalry.

The groups chats eventually and he admits to one of them that no, he didn’t save her out of comparison, because that would have meant just letting her die. No, he did it out of curiosity – except if he really did notice the plural when she spoke and can tell how weird her behavior is, WHY NOT SAY THAT’S WHY HE’S DOING IT? Maybe people would still think that wasn’t worth the risk, but at least he doesn’t seem like he’s gone round the bend and is seconds away from running off to join the brainslugs like he did by saying they had to be nice because it looks like his niece.

She figures out that they’ve already caught souls before and brought them back to the doctor, enough that There was already a set routine here., but doesn’t wonder why, if this is standard for them, they made such a fuss about not killing her on the spot. There’s probably no answer here, the author just wanted to write it like that.

Melanie II rambles a bit about how she could commit suicide by admitting she’s a seeker or by telling the truth because they’ll just be even more convinced she’s a seeker but she doesn’t want to die. Melanie I still doesn’t believe they’d be tortured to death in the first place. It’s weird that both of them would think her being thought a seeker would definitely prevent rather than encourage torture.

What answer would they want from you that bad?
I’ll never tell. Not you, not any human.

So…if a human doesn’t even know there’s a super secret, how would they know to ask? I guess maybe Melanie just doesn’t know as much as the people there, and her uncle does apparently know what brainslugs look like which is apparently more than people usually know. Jared wasn’t even clear on how much of a scar brainslugs leave.

Melanie understood the cacophony before I did. I’d never heard the sound because I’d never been with humans before.
It’s an argument,she realized.It sounds like so many people arguing.

Melanie II only knows any of these words because she’s in Melanie’s head rooting around in her memories. She’d know. I like the idea of how the brainslugs are at once alien and familiar, but in practice it’s not being done well at all.

They’ve taken her into a cave where there’s two dozen people. Melanie is all OMG YAY while Melanie II is still brainslug enough to be more OH FUCK although really, it’s not like more actually matters when you were clear than anyone with a weapon is already too scary for you to handle.

Oh, and there’s some guy with some sun-gilded tint of his skin so I guess Jared is there and they were just lying. In which case yet another failure! If she’d shown how upset she was and tried to talk them into finding Jared before the brainslugs got him, maybe they’d believe that Melanie is still around. They’d know it was true that Jared was still free and the brainslugs had no idea where he was, so her saying this wouldn’t be her luring them into a trap baited with secretly brainslugged Jared. Instead she just shut down and then took a nap.