I had forty dollars in my checking account, twelve days until eviction, and an alien staring at me from across a lobby that smelled like new money and a lawsuit.

The receptionist had already given up on me. Her tablet was face down on the travertine, her nails pressed into the heel of her hand, and the recessed lights in the ceiling were going off in a sequence designed for closing. I watched them shut down. I was forty-seven minutes late. I was soaked through to the second strap of my bra. My printed-out ad was a wet origami square in my coat pocket, and the receptionist would not look at me without making a small wounded sound about her shoes.

Two people left in the lobby. Her. And him.

Four other applicants had passed me on the way in. They had glided out before I made it through the revolving door. Tall, dry, glossy, all the way back from somewhere with a doorman who didn't ask questions. The lobby smelled like gardenia and the kind of cleaning product that comes in a glass bottle with a French label.

He was standing alone by the tall marble reception desk. Six and a half feet of him. Shoulders that would not fit a regular doorway. Skin the color of a bruise three days out, the kind of pale violet you'd describe as anemic if you were running cover for him in a hallway, which I had not, at that point in my life, expected to do.

He was looking at me.

The lobby light dimmed by one more setting. The receptionist made a very polite sound that meant we were closing and could I please leave.

I walked across the marble.

My sneakers squeaked. I felt a fifth grade chemistry teacher's worth of shame at the noise, decided I did not have the budget for shame, and kept walking. The alien did not move. He watched me the way you watch something small heading your direction when you haven't decided whether to move. There was a thin amber light somewhere behind his pupils. Probably an artifact of the dim. Probably I was about to faint from caffeine withdrawal and the rain.

I stopped two feet from him. My printed-out ad was making a small, soggy curl out of my coat pocket.

"Hi," I said. "I'm here for the compatibility screening."

His head tilted half an inch. He was looking at the receptionist now, who had stood up.

"The cohort has concluded," she said, very gently, to me. "The matches are paired. I'm so sorry, miss. We are closing."

"I have a confirmation email," I said.

I did. I had it three times over. I had screenshotted it. I had printed it. I had set my alarm for two hours before the appointment and then the F train had broken down at Jay Street and the conductor had said the words "extended dwell" with the joy of someone announcing a wedding, and by the time I got off the bus that replaced the train I was, again, forty-seven minutes late.

"The cohort," the receptionist said, "is closed."

The alien spoke for the first time.

"I have not been paired."

His voice did something to the floor. Not a metaphor. The floor moved, very slightly, the way a subway platform moves when a train enters the station two stops away. The receptionist's tablet rattled against the desk.

I angled my chin up to see him. Up close, the purple of his skin was deeper at the temples and lighter along his throat, like he had been painted by someone learning gradient. His eyes were the color of warm honey except for the part behind the iris that wasn't quite the color of warm honey, which I was deciding not to think about.

He was looking at the receptionist. Not me.

"This human applicant has not been paired either," he said. "Is the procedure paired or unpaired?"

"Sir," she said, "the cohort has formally concluded."

"The procedure is paired," he said.

He did not raise his voice. The floor moved anyway.

The receptionist's hands found her tablet. She turned it over. Her thumb did three nervous things to the screen, and then she said, in a voice that was not the voice she had used at me, "If you'll both follow me, please."

I looked sideways at him.

He was already looking at me.

"Will this check clear by Friday?" I said.

It was not a clever question. It was the only question I had in my head. I had been carrying it for fourteen days. He had to bend his head to hear me. The lobby's acoustics swallowed quieter voices. When he did, I could smell something cool and faintly metallic where his shirt collar met his throat. Sahrenai detergent, I would learn later. In that moment I had no idea what I was smelling. I just knew it was not human soap.

He answered me with the seriousness of a man being asked the time.

"I do not know your bank's clearing protocol. I will assist with negotiating an expedited deposit if it is required."

I laughed.

I think it was a laugh. It escaped without a permission slip. It was the first sound I had made on purpose in forty-seven minutes and I did not have a budget for it either, but there it went.

He watched me laugh.

His face did something. The corner of his mouth moved without arriving at a smile.

The receptionist led us down a hallway lit only by emergency strips. She tapped a panel. A door slid open onto a small room that smelled like alcohol and clean paper.

"Consent and biometric capture, please," she said. "Standard fingerprint pad. Both palms. The agency processes the genetic and neural compatibility scan from there."

She was reading from a script.

I sat down on the padded bench. He sat down next to me, and the bench groaned under the difference between us. I looked at the fingerprint pad. I looked at my own hand, which was shaking from the rain and the cold and the no breakfast and the no lunch. I extended it, palm down, onto the cool glass.

His palm came down at the same time. His knuckles brushed the side of my wrist.

The pad pulsed once. White light, then green.

Then it pulsed red.

The receptionist looked up.

"Hold on," she said.

The pad pulsed red a second time. A third. The room's overhead light flickered.

My right ear started to hum. A low, electric whine I felt before I heard it. The whine climbed up into my temple, my back teeth, the inside of my eye. My vision narrowed to a small bright tunnel that contained the receptionist's face and three of her words.

"I need to call..."

I do not remember the rest. I remember standing. I remember the bench groaning again as he stood. I remember the receptionist stepping back. I remember the door opening for two more uniformed agency workers, and one of them gently, very gently, putting a hand on my shoulder and saying we needed to walk her down to billing.

I took three steps toward the door.

The whine in my back teeth became a high steady scream.

The bright tunnel I could see through closed into a coin slot. The floor came up at me. I felt cold marble against my knee, and my palms, and the side of my face. I heard a sound I assumed was a chair falling over. I heard, very far away, the receptionist say, "Oh, no."

A hand wrapped the back of my neck.

The whine stopped.

Not slowed. Stopped. Like a switch had been thrown. My vision opened back out. My ear cleared. My pulse rolled down out of the 180s and into something that resembled human inside of one heartbeat.

I was on my knees on the marble floor.

His hand was at the base of my skull. His palm was hot. His fingers had gone past the curve of my hairline. He was crouched down to my level, which meant he was still tall enough to be sitting up while I knelt.

I looked at his wrist.

The thin amber light behind his pupils was much less faint than it had been a minute ago.

I thought the words oh, that is a problem.

I thought, in exactly the same breath, do not let go.

The receptionist was saying things into a comm unit. I caught "system error" and "containment protocol" and "do not separate them, do you hear me, do not separate them."

He was looking at me. He had not blinked since his hand had landed on my neck. I think his pupils had, but I could not be sure.

"I will not," he said, to her.

Or to me. I would never be sure which.