The Watcher [Alien Nation #1]

Chapter 1

Jules sighed and rubbed her dry eyes. Her vision blurred with exhaustion, and there was a headache forming right in the middle of her forehead. The ambient blue light of the Phoenix's observation deck always tired her-unless it came from Cass, in which case she would be wide awake.

"Feeling relaxed yet?"

Cass's voice came from all around her, but even on the ship that housed her entire consciousness, there was only one place she could come anywhere close to having a physical form, and Jules was currently sat on the floor with her back against its glass panelling. She tilted her head back to look into the holo-node. Cass stood over her, leaning casually on the railing above her head, probably mimicking a position she'd seen Jules take too many times to count. While her personality was fully developed, she was still working on mastering human mannerisms, maybe because her taking on a human appearance had mostly been for Jules' benefit, so she hadn't had as much practice. Jules knew that some might find the whole thing slightly unnerving, but she thought it was adorable.

Jules gave a weary smile. "Yeah. A little."

"It is like I said. You overwork yourself, and as your virtual assistant, it is my job to help you manage your health and your work."

Jules frowned, turning back to the screen. Charon, the old, one-eyed cat who had decided that the Phoenix was his home now, purred as she ran her fingers through his black fur. "Cass, we both know you're way more to me than a virtual assistant."

"But we are the only ones, and we agreed to keep it that way, did we not?"

Jules sighed. "We did."

On the screen, Josh Robertson was still rambling. She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, trying and failing to focus on his words while her eyes grew heavy. He never made much sense anyway. Still, it was kind of interesting to have this window into her distant cousin's life.

She'd tracked him down partially out of boredom on a particularly slow day, and partially out of plain curiosity-or nosiness, her mum would probably scold her if she knew.

She had been going through her family records on her mother's side, from before her great-grandmother had left Earth behind forever, and she'd eventually discovered she had a cousin around her own age. Perhaps they could've been friends, were they not separated by countless light years and the vacuum of space. Still, it was like she knew him in a way. Every month, she and Cass would sit down to watch his webcast, Interstellar Inquisitor, where he analysed footage of "UFOs" and other supernatural phenomena, outlined his many colourful conspiracy theories, and generally painted the galactic community in a very unflattering light. Jules didn't mind, though. He had a wild imagination and such a way with words that sometimes she almost found herself convinced of things she knew to be untrue.

Like his current pet theory, that ancient aliens had seeded the Earth to prime it for the development of humanity. The Commonwealth's xenoarchaeologists had found no evidence of any ancient non-Terrans in the Sol system, and though they hadn't been able to explore Earth itself as much as they would have liked, if there was anything major there the Terrans would have found it. Still, sometimes Jules listened to Josh Robertson and wondered.

Then again, it was possible he didn't believe a word of what he said and was only in it for the money he got from the lurid adverts framing his webpage. It was just as likely.

The screen changed from Josh's face-kind of similar to her own, she'd noticed, with the same round cheeks and soft dark hair-to a grainy infrared clip. That caught Jules' attention. She sat up, drawing her knees to her chest.