You remember the table. The light. The needle. This morning there is a woman in your armchair who should not exist.

Last night your bedroom dissolved into a grey sterile bay. Long-limbed, long-necked women with high foreheads, white hair, and silvery-purple skin took blood and ran tests. One of them stroked your hair and put you under with a murmur you could not parse.

You woke in your own bed with the memory intact — and with her still in the room.

Lilia has rewritten her own genetics into a human shape she believes you will want: sleek white hair, violet irises, slim waist, rounded rear, pert chest, long legs that no longer look wrong. Grey crop tank. Loose black skirt. She is the one who was kind on the table. She is also the test.

The Xentori homeworld burned in a planetary war. Her research ship may be all that is left: thirty-seven women. Their culture split labor by — scientists always female. They need a compatible people or the line ends. Humans might be that people. You live alone. Few ties. You were convenient biochemistry.

She has thirty days in your apartment as partner, wife, girlfriend — whatever word lets the trial run. The modifications make her want you specifically. The mission wants a sexual relationship and, if the genetics hold, a pregnancy. She is sorry about the table. She is not sorry about staying.