Monday. Alan watched Kraussen work from his chair under the shadow of a tree that the doctor had there as a specimen in his cell. The cold light from the ceiling was the only illumination there, as always. Jaime was standing on the other side of the cell, as always. Since their truce, they’d barely spoken at all, which he would’ve thought of as a miracle in the past. Now, however, the awkward silence they’d spent their hours in was slowly killing him.

  A high pitch alarm was heard from Jaime’s watch. He turned it off almost immediately and reached for a box he’d brought with him, from which he got an injection ready. He pulled up his shirt and applied the medicine in his abdomen. He’d done this several times since they’d started co-guarding Kraussen, but Alan could never avoid twisting his face whenever he saw Jaime injecting himself.

  “What?” Jaime growled, looking at the other men’s face.

  “I’ll never get how you can do that without blinking”, Alan spoke. Jaime lifted an eyebrow.

  “The injection?”

  “Yeah, man. I’d rather swallow whatever the doc is boiling before doing that.”

  “This isn’t for human consumption.” Kraussen was quick to respond. “No one could tell what this would do to your system.”

  “Not even you?” Alan teased him.

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  “Of course I could, but- Not to mention, I’d have to do too many analysis and experiments to create an equivalent of my prototype plant that humans would be able to consume, and I don’t have time for that.”

  “You could fix the problem of global hunger if it turns out as resistant as you say.” Jaime put back the now used syringe in the box, and applied some alcohol to clean the tiny hole it left in his body.

  “Perhaps, but humans don’t like it when you experiment with them. I know, I’ve tried.” Kraussen turned around, absorbed by his research again. It took Alan a few seconds to realize what he’d implied right then.

  “Wait, you what?”

  “Can we go back to the part where you’re afraid of needles?” Jaime smiled while also sitting on a chair.

  “I’m not scared!” The other man shouted. “I just…prefer to have someone else applying them to me.”

  Then Jaime laughed. Alan had never seen him laugh before. And something about being able to do so, to make that annoying and perpetual poker face of his crack, gave him a sense similar to pride or satisfaction that he couldn’t quite stop.

  “Doc, you agree with me, right?” He then asked Kraussen, looking for support.

  “I’m actually on the side of Mr. Pineda on this. I’d much rather inject myself than let someone else do it.” The alien spoke without looking at him, while writing something on another one of the million notebooks and papers he had.

  “See?” Jaime crossed his arms. “You’re just a coward.”

  “Okay, fine, sure, I’m a baby. Happy now?”

  Jaime chuckled, and the same satisfaction as before filled Alan’s chest. They continued talking, throwing sarcastic comments to one another, but with no malice like before. Kraussen gave his opinion every now and then, sometimes to agree, sometimes to talk back. The three of them spent hours like this, in what turned out to be the first workday Alan had genuinely enjoyed since being assigned as a guard of Dr. Kraussen.