The first time Edgar Shall id eyes o bck robot, he khere was something alien about it. Maybe it was the rumors from people even more traveled and paranoid than him, but he hadn’t survived pirates, criminals, the STO, and other smugglers to get to his ripe old age without trusting his gut.

  The problem was trying to prove it to his boneheaded nephews. One of his sister’s kids ying cop while the ot sucked in by the lure of fancy tech. Edgar couldn’t bme him, he’d seen some of the printers and robotic assemblers as he kept an eye on the robot. A cargo load of those would easily fetch a hundred million to the right buyer.

  Edgar had long ago learhat money wasn't everything though, and ofte got you killed. When he did runs like this, he preferred smaller items that were easier to sell than big-ticket items.

  His pn to expose this pretender had been simple. He acted like he was scared of flying back to STO space with how busy the area was with pirates, and then he would wait. Nobody eveioned him about it. With that done, he o gather information.

  So he watched, listeo rumors, and learned. Edgar heard about the man’s so-called disease. It wasn’t hard to get that information. He knew most of the people here, and drifters were quick to gossip with people they knew. Edgar chalked it up to their isotion and wanting to hear stories from other worlds. He obliged them.

  The run-in with the Marine had been a bit of a surprise. That nearly got him tossed into a cell when he lost his head and shed out at the man. Edgar thought he had put that past behind him, but it seemed he’d been wrong.

  If Damien’s security people hadn’t been there, it would have gotten ugly.

  He id low for a few weeks after that, simply spending time with Lucas, Damien, and his girlfriend Gabriel. How a sourpuss like his nephew had ever mao nd a woman like that, he would never know.

  Eventually, an opportunity preseself when the robot left for STO space with those Navy goons that they rescued. Edgar wasn’t stupid, he knew he was being recorded and watched. Damien had also warned him to stay out of trouble. With su upfront attitude, his nephew would never make it as a detective.

  Even though he knew he was under surveilhat didn’t stop him. Edgar used a code cracker to bypass the ste lock, a week after the robot was gohen he spent hours searg through the stacks of supplies for something to prove to his hat it wasn’t just a crazy theory. When he came up empty, he was left frustrated.

  The closest thing he could find as evidence were two tainers. One had a few small bck flecks in it, while the other had a much rger k of a simir-looking material. Seeing as the robot didn’t have a rge k missing from it, he assumed the piece had e from the STO stealth ship that was all the buzz around the facility.

  They looked identical but it wasn’t enough, and now he had blown his only ce to figure out what this alien robot or ‘man within the mae’ to. He knew he couldn’t stick around after that, so he made a hasty exit.

  Edgar must have tripped some arm on his way out. Before he made it halfway across the nding pad, he heard something whirr to life behind him. He froze, thinking his life had finally e to an end, only for the turrets to spit out hypersonic projectiles at his poor ship.

  He screamed in e and rushed toward his vessel, hoping they would stop if he was onboard. They did, but that was little sotion as he was effectively grounded because of the damage. From past experience, he knew what came .

  Security people rushed out of the facility, looking unsure of what to do. That was until Damien stormed out, red-faced and upset.

  The boy was angry, but he wasn’t dumb. His nephew had a six-legged robot cut through the hydraulic struts holding Edgar’s ramp closed. Up until that point, he thought he might have time to quickly pate holes and take off. Ohey started slig through the ramp ders, he didn’t fight the iable. Edgar pulled out an old folding chair and sat ihe cargo hold to wait. Just because he wasn’t going to fight it, didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be stubborn about getting caught.

  Edgar was curious what his nephew would say when he realized he hadn’t taken anything.

  The p fell to the ground with a loud boom, sending up a cloud of dust that obscured the outside. Damien stormed up the ramp, waving his pulse rifle about like someone fresh out of the academy. His nephew's eyes eventually settled on him in the gloom of the hangar and the pulse rifle barrel was only a moment behind.

  The ma him. “You going to e quietly?”

  Edgar chewed on the question for a moment. He may not have Damien’s skill in hand-to-hand bat, but he knew how to fight dirty. The fact that he didn’t want to fight his own nephehat tipped it for him. He held out his hands and waited while the rest of Damien’s people tromped aboard his ship. Edgar had already deactivated the explosives, so there was no about them actally tripping something and sending them all to the great beyond.

  Two of the men roughly grabbed him and pulled his hands behind his back as they spped mag restraints on him. They searched him, then dragged him off the ship while the rest searched the ship for what he might have taken.

  He spent the month or so in a small cell until a shadow darkehe doorway. He peeked out from under his arm and saw the robot standing there, o Damien.

  Edgar had wondered when his time would e, it seemed that day was today.

  ***

  “He didn’t take anything?” Alexander asked in fusion as he ied the tents of his ste room.

  “I didn’t say that,” Damien grunted in annoyance. “I said we didn’t find anything on his ship. We couldly tell what was in your ste room so we had to wait for you to return to verify if anything was missing.”

  “And your uncle?” Alexander asked. Their familial e wasn’t much of a secret, Lucas had told him about it the day the man arrived.

  Damien grimaced at the question. “Shall is in lockup awaiting evidence of his crimes. Right now all we have to charge him with is breaking aering, vandalism, and fleeing the se.”

  As far as Alexander could tell, nothing was missing. Some materials were moved around, but that could have been done by his robots or the automated carts that came a pretty much all day.

  Even the samples from the STO ship and himself were still there. Those were probably the easiest to steal and if the smuggler kheir worth, probably the ideal choice to take. But he hadn’t taken them. If he hadn’t taken anything, what was he after then?

  The learning modules seemed like the likely target, but Alexander had stored all of them on a terminal ihe facility puter room. The ohat Lucas had rebuilt. You had to gh three guard checkpoints and two bio-locks just to get to the room that led to the mainframe. And you couldn’t evehe final bst door uhe puter had your identity on file.

  Alexander kept a few of the library cards on hand and in his workshop, but they were bnk and required a trip to the puter room to load the proper bio-markers oo make them funal, so stealing those ointless.

  He sighed and turo face Damien. “As far as I tell, nothing is missing. What is the punishment for the crimes you listed off so far?”

  The former mixed martial artist looked like he bit into a lemon at Alexander’s annou. From his expression, Alexander gathered the man didn’t much like his uncle.

  “A month in lockup for the first offense,” he ground out in annoyance.

  “It seems he’s served his time, and then some. I would like to speak to the man before we release him.” As much as Alexander would like to keep the uncle locked up, if he started making up his own rules people wouldn’t have much reason to follow the ws.

  After reseg the ste room, the pair made their way to the holding cells. The cells had been in pce when the facility was first structed, so it seemed even the people whinally built Eden’s End khey might need a pce to hold troublemakers. They passed the security room aered a long hall that taiwelve identical rooms. Alexander and Damien stopped outside the st door on the right.

  Shall lounged in the bed, his face covered by his arm. They could both tell the man wasn’t sleeping, but he also didn’t aowledge them other than to gheir way.

  Alexander was the first to break the silence. “Mr. Shall, I ask what you hoped to aplish by breaking into my ste area, and then trying to flee the p?”

  “I got nothing to say to you,” the man replied zily.

  “You just tradicted yourself by responding. That leads me to believe you want to tell someone what you were up to.”

  “It won’t matter. They won’t believe me anyway.”

  Breaking into Alexander’s ste area, followed by the refusal to speak to him along with the admission that they wouldn’t believe him finally made something click for him. “You don’t trust me,” Alexander blurted out.

  The man finally turoward the door. “Hard to trust something alien.”

  You could hear a pin drop in the silehat followed until Alexaarted ughing. “Well, you’re n.” There was no point denying the truth. He k was only a matter of time until someone figured it out, again. However, he didn’t expect the crusty old spacer to be the oo put it together.

  Both Damien and Shall looked at him in surprise but Damien didn’t move away or shift into a mgressive stance, meaning he already had an inkling of the truth. Alexander was curious to know what the man had figured out. He wouldn’t have been the first to put the pieces together.

  The first person to front Alexander was Jasper, although he didn’t accuse him of being an alien. Eva knew something was off about his story, but not what. She would probably figure it out at some point as well. Then came Captain Krieger. That man had only needed a go put two and two together, but the man did have an unfair advantage. With him came Vice Admiral Fletcher, who absolutely knew what Alexander’s body represented and wao use that to his advantage. And now he had two- make that four more people to add. Lucas and Gabriel obviously knew if Damien did.

  “What? It’s not like I hide this,” Alexander said, gesturing to his body. “I’ve spent years trying to figure out where this damn body came from. Going by the ck of surprise from you, Damien, I assume you’ve realized something was off about my story for some time?”

  The man grunted nonittally, which made Alexander chuckle.

  “So, yes, this body is almost certainly alien in in, but I’m still human where it ts,” he said, tapping on his torso.

  Shall stood from his bed. “Yeah, and how we be sure of that?”

  The man’s tone suggested he was trying to vince Damien to side with him. If that was the case, Shall didn’t know his nephew as well as he thought he did. Alexander didn’t know Damien all that well either, but he knew him enough to know that ohe guy made a choice, good luck trying to get him to ge his mind about it.

  Alexander shrugged. “Your feelings aren’t my so believe what you want. I don’t care. Just stop breaking into pces until you fix your ship and leave.”

  “Yoing to let me leave, just like that? What if I tell people about you?”

  Alexander rolled his eyes in his mind space. This dude really was trying to provoke him into shing out. Alexander could respect that, even if the man was barking up the wrong tree. If the man knew him at all, he would know provoking him to violence was not something easily aplished. Now if he threatened Yulia, they were going to have a problem. It seemed like the man only had an issue with him though, which was fine.

  He decided to take a page out of his memories ing alien abduovies from his time oh.

  “So what if you do? Who’s going to believe you? It’s your wainst mine, and you’re a smuggler and an outw. As for keeping you here? I don't like you nearly enough to allow that, which leaves the other option of simply getting rid of you. We aren’t pirates, and you’re simply not important enough for me to care. So do me a favor, run along, tell everyone you , and muddy the waters for wheruth does e out about me.”

  Alexauro the silent mao him. “Damien, I’ll let you handle your uncle's release. Once you're done, e find me in my workshop and we discuss the questions I see you itg to ask. You might as well bring Lucas and Gabriel too because I’m only going to do this Q and A sessioime.”