Emily Drake, friend of Cassie

Jason couldn't do much in his tank, watching as day turned to night, then back again, multiple times. Carrie and Cassie both checked on him every so often, but he knew he had to be patient and let them do what they were doing. He'd at least resigned himself to waiting, unsure what else to do in his cramped quarters meant for goldfish, not him.

Once the weekend came around, both Carrie and Cassie had good news, approaching Jason's makeshift life-support chamber with smiles on their faces.

"Juno finally got a hold of Emily," Cassie said, taking a seat on the nearby couch. "She'd been working double-shifts and pretty much just ignored her phone until this morning. But once I explained to her what was going on, she sounded absolutely thrilled. She's totally on board."

Carrie tapped her chin, trying to recall whom Cassie referred to. "This was the... oh! The girl who found out about your aliens?"

"Yep, that's the one, Emily Drake. This was back in college for us, Emily was my roommate. Not as isolated of a situation as being up in the mountains, but still, very hard to hide the fact that I had an alien living inside me, especially when after I got back from summer vacation, I'd, uh, had a 'growth spurt' of sorts." Cassie motioned to her chest, though everyone knew what she was referring to--she just wanted to make sure Jason's eyes were looking her way. "She knows the capabilities of aliens and nanites both inside and out, Juno was very fond of her, and she acted like Lena's administrator for a while. She made my body do some crazy things... fun things, but absolutely bizarre. Anyway, she sounded so exhausted by work, it sounded like she'd take any change of pace that came her way, so this was right up her alley."

"That sounds perfect," Carrie said, as she held up a silvery blob in her hands. "And just in time, too! Jason, these are your nanites, we fashioned a seed out of samples from both Lena and Beta, so it would grow into its own personality for you. Cassie, Jason, meet 'Kit'."

The little blob of nanites, a lighter silver color than the ones Jason had seen from Cassie's body when her arm transformed into that cannon shape earlier, formed a tiny hand that waved at the blue sluglike alien. Carrie carefully lifted the nanite blob into the aquarium chamber, setting the nanites in next to Jason.

"Oh, that's an interesting choice," Cassie said. "Kit as like that robot car from the old TV show since it's like the nanites are the interface to these bodies to make them vehicles for the aliens?"

Carrie furrowed her brow as she thought about it. "...No, it's short for Kitkat, like the candy, since I had one earlier and it was all I could think of. Your idea's way better though, so let's just pretend it's that." Clearing her thought, she turned back to the aquarium. "Jason, Kit's going to do their calibration procedure with you and start their Lifeboat configuration, just let them do their thing and then we can take you out of the aquarium. The nanites will help you talk, too, so just relax."

Jason stayed still as the nanites enveloped him, encasing his whole form in a silvery substance and lightly permeating into his new gelatinous body. They encased him thoroughly, creating an atmospheric generator capable of a sustainable environment inside the nanite casing that suited his physiology, versus just hours of survivability exposed to the normal Earth atmosphere. A transparent screen formed in front of his eyes, so he could look out at the world, but for the most part, he felt pretty immobilized.

"This is weird," he said. Or at least, Kit said it for him, translating his thoughts into words that the nanites could broadcast with an external speaker. "Oh, I can speak again! Great. When do we leave? It's been days, I want to eat a hamburger again. But, like, a real one, not the frozen stuff in the kitchen here. I miss doing all sorts of human things."

Carrie chuckled as she picked Jason up out of the tank, walking next to Cassie as they headed to her SUV. "Well, since we're leaving now, we're looking at a five-hour drive under ideal conditions."

"I'll get us there in three," Cassie said with a sly grin as she slipped on her aviator sunglasses.