Kayla got to the diner 15 minutes before her shift started. She briskly walked to the back, ignoring the greetings from her fellow servers. She entered Sam’s office without knocking.

“Morning, Kayla,” Sam smiled. “You’re here early.”

“We need to talk,” the girl said flatly.

Sam motioned for her to shut the door, then directed her to an empty chair. “If this is about Grace…”

“It’s not about her, Sam. I’m pregnant.”

“What?” Sam asked, completely stunned.

Kayla whispered, “It’s yours. I haven’t been with anyone else.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and blew out a breath. He liked Kayla, but he hadn’t planned to get this involved with her. He wasn’t ready to be a father.

“I thought you were using protection,” he frowned, puzzled.

She shrugged. “I did. I guess it just...failed.” Kayla’s eyes brimmed with tears.

Sam sighed heavily and tried to take it all in. His mind raced in a thousand directions as he grappled with the idea of having a kid: custody issues, court appearances, and child support. He should have been more proactive. Why had he put the burden of contraception on her alone? He was usually more responsible than that.

“Would you consider an abortion?” he asked.

The girl angrily snapped, “No! It’s out of the question.”

“But…” Sam continued.

“I said no!” Kayla shouted, jumping to her feet.

Sam put his hands up in a helpless manner. “Ok, ok,” he said, trying to mollify her. “I was just asking.”

She sat back down and stared into his deep brown eyes. “What are we going to do?”

He could have told her to get lost—that the kid wasn’t his. He could have paid her off so she wouldn’t sue for child support. He could have fired her and told her to get the hell out of his bar. He could have done many things, but Sam was, at his core, a decent man.

He smiled at her and said, “We’ll figure this out together.”

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Later that night, Kayla sat on her bed and listened to the tape of Dr. Reed’s interview with Fannie Wilson. She couldn’t find anything new of substance except Charley Miller’s strange parting words:

Would that the stars were now right, that we might see an end to this low reign of man. The Priest Who Became a God sits in silence now; but when He awakens, your miserable kind will be no more.

She didn’t understand what the cryptic words meant, but now she had two new questions she could ask if the alien, this “crawling chaos” returned. She didn’t have to wait long before the chat box opened.

crawlingchaos: Satisfied?

kamillr2020: with wut?

crawlingchaos: Your text abbreviations and misspellings are so annoying! Are you satisfied that I told you the truth about your pregnancy?

kamillr2020: yes im satisfied

crawlingchaos: Good, now we can move on to the business at hand.

kamillr2020: wait i have a couple of questions

crawlingchaos: Why should I answer your questions? You are too ignorant to understand anything.

kamillr2020: then it wont hurt u to answer

crawlingchaos: Fine, ask.

kamillr2020: wut does the stars were now right mean?

crawlingchaos: Where did you hear that?

kamillr2020: does it mean the position of the stars like a constellation?

crawlingchaos: No, it refers to the number of “pulses” a neutron star creates as it rotates. It is how we keep time when we are here.

kamillr2020: who is the Priest Who Became a God?

crawlingchaos: Kulullû, who your kind has mythologized as “Cthulhu.” Even Kulullû is not its true name and form. That’s simply what the early Mesopotamians called it.

kamillr2020: ur right i dont understand any of that

crawlingchaos: If you let me in, I’ll teach you all this and more. You will be the most intelligent person on the planet. No one will be your equal.

kamillr2020: u will make me kill ppl

crawlingchaos: Not all of them. That is for Kulullû to do and it will happen many centuries from now. I will give you the life you want with Sam and the baby. You can have all that if you just open the door.

kamillr2020: i dont want a baby and i dont want anything to do with you!

crawlingchaos: I think of you as a daughter, Kayla, and I tried to play nice. But this ridiculous texting ends now.

Electricity shot from the laptop and into Kayla’s eyes. An explosion rocked her mind. In every cell, the alien part of her DNA, inherited from her father and his father before him, hummed with power. She couldn’t think through the unbearable pain and had no chance of resisting. The crawling chaos had learned a lot through Dr. James Baker and Charley Miller. It had learned even more from Emma Morgan.

Now it completely understood human biology. Now it was completely in control.

Kayla, or rather the alien within her, smiled.