A young woman with dark hair pulled back in a bun sat at the desk and looked up at Agent Riley as he emerged from the elevator.

“Morning Ms. Harris,” Riley said and nodded at her. The woman smiled at Riley, then glanced at Anya and nodded.

“Will she be needing a badge?” Ms. Harris asked.

“Two please,” Riley said and the woman leaned up and looked around until she spotted Pan. Her eyes widened and she gasped and fell back into her chair.

“Hello!” Pan said and waved. “Pan here!”

“What in—What!” the woman said and scrambled to her feet.

“It’s fine, they’re with me,” Riley said and put his hands up.

“What is it?” Harris asked and edged around her desk.

“I’m Pan?” Pan said and cocked his head to the side. He opened his bag and held it and its creeping, crawling contents out to Harris. “You want ants? Friends?”

Harris looked like she might be about to scream or pass out when Riley stepped between her and the pangolin. Anya patted Pan on the head and shook her own as she closed the bag of ants up.

“Harris, the badges please,” Riley said. “It’s okay. They’re fine, I’ve got it. They’re helping me with my case. All that weird stuff going on?”

“I didn’t think it was this weird!” Harris hissed.

“It’s weirder,” Riley replied. “Look, I got you the usual: lemon poppyseed muffin. I’m just gonna head back to one of the conference rooms and have a chat with these folks, okay?”

“Okay,” Harris said. “Okay.”

Harris slid back into her chair and handed two plastic clip-on ID tags to Riley. He thanked her and handed her a muffin from the brown paper bag, and then swiped a card of his own along a black scanner near the opaque glass wall. A portion of the wall slid aside. Riley handed Anya and Pan the ID cards and Anya clipped hers to her jacked and then helped clip Pan’s to his baggy pants.

“Just stay with me and don’t lose those and you’ll be fine,” Riley said and led them into the main offices.

“Thank you. Sorry,” Anya said to Harris who continued to stare at her and Pan with wide eyes.

“Bye bye!” Pan said with a wave and waddled behind Anya.

The Office behind the glass was a long open room with computer monitors lined up side-by-side along narrow desks stretched across the main floor. There were smaller cubicles and work stations along the edges of the room, rows of monitors on walls, white boards and other wide spaces covered in notes, photos, sections of maps, and more. The whole place buzzed with activity, hurried conversations, the drone of printers, and the chatter of news stations.

With so much activity, hardly anybody noticed Riley, Anya, or Pan. The pangolin was short enough that he didn’t even come that high above the tables they walked past. Anya did hear a few gasps and “What the Hell?” questions muttered behind her as they made their way to a narrow hallway and a plain wooden door with a tag on it that read “1B.”

Conference room 1B had a single large table that could have sat 8 people comfortably, a single large presentation screen currently tuned to the news, a number of folders and papers laid out in neat piles, and a thin Hispanic man eating a bagel sandwich.

“Ramierez,” Anya said as she walked in and smiled at the young officer.

“Hey!” he replied and stood up. “Don’t hit me!”

He smirked as he said the last and Anya held up her hands with a laugh.

“Friend!” Pan said.

“Little guy!” Ramierez replied then raised his eyebrows. “Whoa, you got shiny. Is that metal?”

“Yes! I’m strong now!” Pan said as he shuffled in. Riley closed the door and took a seat, then offered Anya one of the two maple bars she had been smelling since she’d entered the stairs on the roof. She forced herself to eat as slowly as possible, but she still wolfed the whole thing down in under a minute.

“Holy shit that’s good,” she said.

“I’ll show you the place when we’re done here. But we need to cover some business first,” Riley said.

“Yeah. I’m here to help. What do you want?” Anya asked and sipped her coffee.

“First, if you can do so safely, I’d like to see this fire magic stuff Ramierez told me about,” Riley said. Anya nodded and summoned a fireball into her hand. Riley stared at it for several seconds as his brows knit together. Anya made the fireball bound up and down, float in a circle, grow, shrink, and eventually wink out.

Next, she uncapped her coffee, pushed it away from her, and pointed a finger at it. The coffee began to boil in less than a second, and was roiling and burning so hot it was evaporating. Riley stood up to stare at the coffee as it frothed and boiled. Anya drew the heat back out of it until the coffee became cold, then heated it up to a normal steaming temperature again.

She raised the temperature in the room by roughly ten degrees, then brought it right back down again. Riley made a face when she did that and shook his head.

“All right, that made me nauseous. Don’t do that again,” he said.

“Yeah that sucked,” Ramierez agreed. “Like what my mom says she gets. Hot flashes?”

Anya shrugged, then looked at Riley. “Anything else?”

“For now,” Riley said. “Can you do anything Pan? Besides defy all former norms of what your species is capable of?”

“I can dig and eat ants and make goooooleeeeemmmsss,” Pan said and drew the last word out. “Golems. And dominate the earth.”

“Excuse me?” Riley asked.

“He has a power called ‘Earth Dominion’ that gives him control over physical earth and stone the same way I control fire. He doesn’t mean he is going to rule the planet,” Anya said.

“No, I don’t want that,” Pan said.

“All right. Small favors,” Riley said and sipped his coffee. “Golems, earth control, fire control, what else can this menu thing you mentioned do?”

“Anything,” Anya said then had an idea. “Let me introduce you to somebody who knows way more about the menu than I do. Felix!”

“Yeeeees!” Felix said and appeared with a spin on the table in front of Anya. Riley narrowed his eyes and leaned forward while Ramierez smiled at seeing the AI again.

“This is Agent Riley with the FBI. He’d like a tour of the menu system and its functionality. Think you can explain it for him?” Anya asked.

“I can absolutely do that!” Felix said and his eyes sparkled. “Nice to meet you Agent Riley!”

“Yeah, you too. I saw you in the video, a little. You’re like that paper clip in the typing program on my computer, or something?”

“I guess!” Felix said. “I already gave a basic overview of the menu in the video yesterday, but would you like a more detailed explanation?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Riley said.

Felix beamed and let out a contented sigh and then expanded the menu into multiple windows and began to explain each in loving and enthusiastic detail. Riley wrote some things down on a notepad, asked some basic questions, and took photos of the menu after asking permission. Felix struck several dynamic poses during the photos.

It was over an hour later when Riley finally turned the conversation to the aliens, and Anya explained everything she could about her two encounters with them. Riley nodded as she described the fridge and made more notes.

The SWAT team had found the remnants of the fridge and its spawn and been very confused, horrified, and unnerved. All that was left of the fridge was a slagged metal box filled with fleshy burned goo. The fridge spawn were much more intact, though still in a number of pieces. They’d all been taken in by the CDC and quarantined and awaiting experts to study them more closely.

“Which brings us to the current government tangle that is happening, and why I suspect I’ve been left alone the past day,” Riley said. “It seems nobody can figure out who this mess belongs to.”

“What do you mean?” Anya asked.

“Granted, it’s only been about 38 hours or so since these aliens hit the atmosphere, but the various alphabet agencies and military are in a tug-of-war over jurisdiction. The FBI says it’s theirs since it involves a form of terrorism across state lines, but the DHS says that’s their backyard, while the NSA says it’s an informational issue, but the military says the NSA is technically a civilian agency and needs to act in a supporting role and let the Air Force handle it, but the CIA says it’s happening all over the world so that’s their territory and yadda yadda yadda. Jurisdictional bureaucratic BS. Nobody’s told me to stop what I’m doing yet, so I’m gonna keep at it for now, but you can see how this would become very confusing very quickly.”

“I guess?” Anya said. She wasn’t sure where Riley was going with this.

“Nobody, in any agency, has gotten anything more than the aftermath of any of these incidents. You’re the first piece of proof that something unearthly is going on. So far, we’ve been lucky and nothing truly catastrophic has happened like in Belarus, but that won’t last. One of your fellow hosts or an alien may go wild at any moment, and we need to be organized before that happens. I’d like you to go before a committee that’s being held this evening featuring some bigwigs from the various agencies, a few senators, and a general from the Air Force.”

“Excuse me?” Anya said. “You said this would just be us.”

“And for now, it is,” Riley said. “I’ve only included the basics in my reports. I’m meeting with Anya Nowicki, who I believe to be integral to the case I was assigned. Prior to meeting you this morning, I wasn’t 100% sold on your, ah, abilities. But after speaking to Chicago PD about what they found in the mall, the very brief security footage I saw of that fridge moving before the power went out, and everything you’ve shown me here, I don’t have any choice but to be a believer. I think the committee this evening will need similar convincing to light a fire under their collective asses.”

“He’s right,” Ramierez said. “I didn’t believe what I saw, and I was there. My whole precinct thought I was full of shit. They saw what happened to the park, to my partner and the others. I even had Riley call them and tell them I wasn’t crazy or pulling a joke and they told him to get lost.”

“And even after talking to the Chicago PD, they think it’s some kind of prank or vandalism stunt,” Riley continued.

“But they have bodies! Alien bodies!” Anya insisted. “How can they not believe what they’re seeing?”

“Because they don’t want to. I didn’t. It’s terrifying. I’m just a man with a badge and a gun. I don’t have fire magic or alien AIs helping me track killer extraterrestrials. It’s been about five days since those menus came to Earth and already it looks like Russia might be ready to start World War III, several of Europe’s most influential CEOs are dead and their finances vanished in the wind and the economy looking to go who-knows-where because of it, and some kind of crisis or ‘terrorist attack’ happening in almost every major city on the planet in the last 38 hours,” Riley said and then sighed.

“And it’s just beginning. So no, Ms. Nowicki, people are not going to believe such a horrifying possibility that Earth has become some kind of proxy battlefield for warring aliens without proof. We need something, someone, to convince them of the truth. I could charge you with destruction of public property, stealing that pangolin, and assaulting Officer Ramierez here,” Riley said and shrugged, “but that would be a pretty stupid move on my part. It’s obvious America is going to need the cooperation of people like you, and steamrolling you seems like a bad way to do that.”

“Anya freed me. Not steal,” Pan said. “I’m really happy about that.”

“I wouldn’t press charges anyway,” Ramierez said.

“Well fine, then just public property damage then,” Riley said and sighed. “My point remains: not gonna force you, but it’d be a huge help. Maybe save a bunch of lives.”

“Yeah,” Anya sighed. “I’ve come this far. If it’ll help…”

“It will,” Riley nodded. “I have another favor to ask, if you’d be okay with it.”

“No harm in asking,” Anya said.

“I’d like your friends from last night to attend as well, and the little guy there. I’d also like your non-host friend to come in for a few questions. The one who helped you free Pan.”

Anya blinked. She could understand why Riley would want to see Samaira and Gary, but Tori? She didn’t know anymore than what Anya had already told the agent.

“Your friend isn’t in trouble. I would just like everybody who’s in-the-know on hand. To help,” Riley said and held his hands up.

“Help with what?” Anya asked. “My friend can’t do anything. I mean, she’s smart and talented, but she’s not able to call up a menu or anything.”

“No, but she’s another witness to confirm and get on record. Usually when a task force is formed, it has experts in the field as its members. Currently, outside of hosts, the only experts I’m aware of are Ramierez and your friend.”

“You want T——my friend for a job?”

“The Bureau hires outside consultants all the time. Granted, your friend has had limited exposure to the menu system, but its exponentially more than anybody else I know of.”

“I don’t know,” Anya said. “I’ll talk to the other hosts, but I’d rather you leave my friend alone.”

“Victoria Janine Carmichael, right?” Riley asked and Anya’s mouth dried up as Riley said Tori’s full name. She didn’t answer. “Let me repeat: I have no interest in causing Ms. Carmichael any distress or inconvenience. Just a chat, maybe some money for a consultation service, see if she has anything else she can or wants to offer the Bureau. That’s it.”

“I’ll ask her,” Anya said. “You’ve been nice so far, Agent Riley. I’d like it if you were equally nice to my friend.”

“I have no plans to be otherwise,” Riley said. “Do you need to go contact the other hosts?”

“Yeah, I should do that,” Anya said. She pulled her menu up to call Samaira and Gary, deciding to stick to text for the moment. She was halfway through typing a message out to the two when there was an impatient tapping at the door of the conference room. Riley stood and opened the door and revealed a harried-looking young agent.

“Agent Riley, you need to see this,” the agent said and gestured out toward the main office. She didn’t even register Felix’s glowing form on the table or Pan poking his head up from beside Anya’s chair before she hurried back out.

“Uh, excuse me,” Riley said and stepped out. Ramierez and Anya exchanged a glance, and then the officer followed after Riley.

“Felix, disappear. Pan, you wait here for a few minutes and enjoy your ants,” Anya said.

“You got it!” Felix said and winked out of sight. Pan needed no encouragement, and hid under the table with his ants. Anya left the conference room and followed Ramierez into the main office. Several of the monitors on the wall were tuned into what looked like the same channel.

“Several European, North American, and Asian news channels were just interrupted by…whatever this is,” Riley said as he saw Anya and Ramierez.

The monitors all showed the same image: a man in some kind of robotic helmet with a reflective gold faceplate and wearing a white coat with gold and purple highlights sitting in a chair. A beautiful, pale woman in an elegant robe over sleek armor and with sea-green hair stood beside him. She had a smirk that reminded Anya of a very satisfied, predatory cat. A man in strange armor and a red hood that concealed his face stood opposite the woman.

All three had menu AIs perched on their shoulders.

“Holy shit,” Anya said.

“Are those hosts?” Riley muttered.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Anya replied.

“Hello and good-day or evening as it may be,” the man in the helmet said. He spoke English with a noticeable French accent. Different monitors had subtitles appear in Chinese, Spanish, Russian, and other languages. “I am Renn. I come to you now with a call for unity and cooperation in a time of turmoil and confusion. Early Saturday morning, Central European Time, our planet became the site for multiple pieces of alien technology. This technology was forcibly integrated with over ten-thousand citizens of our planet against their will. I, and my colleagues here, are three such people, or ‘hosts,’ as we have begun to call ourselves.

“Near dawn on Tuesday morning, Earth was invaded by hundreds of hostile alien lifeforms. These lifeforms have the primary goal of hunting down hosts, of which they have killed roughly 90% already. They are also responsible for thousands of non-host, civilian deaths. Both the hosts and the aliens are responsible for much, if not all, of the distressing news these past few days. This includes the nuclear strike in Belarus, the ‘terrorist’ attacks in Tokyo and Brooklyn, the massacre in Mumbai, the devastation in Rio, and many other equally concerning reports.”

The image of the three hosts was interrupted by quick clips of events around the world that showed hosts in battle with aliens, or the aftermath of such fights.

“This is not a joke, or a game,” Ren continued as he and the two others reappeared on the screen. “People have died and will continue to do so. That is why I am making this announcement.

“To the people of Earth: I understand this is upsetting. But please remain calm. If you know somebody who is a host, it is in your best interest to distance yourself from them as quickly as possible. The aliens will not hunt you, but they will not care if you are collateral damage either.

“To world governments: We are not your enemy. We did not ask for this. We would like to cooperate with you in restoring order from this chaos. But, as with all people, we have basic rights and we will not tolerate being the target of any ill-conceived attempts on our persons or forced into being puppets of your political agendas. Our concern now should be ridding our planet of the hostile forces that have seen fit to invade it, and that means putting aside fear and paranoia of what might be in favor of what is.

“To my fellow hosts: I know many of you are scared, you are alone, you are confused. Please, do not give into despair. All hosts who have joined forces have succeeded in defeating nearby alien attacks. I invite you to join me. I will be at the site of the first alien that entered the atmosphere in roughly four hours, and will leave a message behind with further instructions for any curious after that. Your AI should be able to pinpoint the location easily.

“I realize this announcement may cause some turmoil, but I believe it’s best to act quickly and save lives where we may. I hope to see you soon, my friends. Earth and humanity will prevail.”

The monitors all went dark, and then began to repeat the message.

“It’s repeated twice already. News stations are saying they’ve been completely locked out of their own systems,” the harried agent told Riley. Riley turned to Anya and nodded his head at the monitors.

“Well, what do you think?” Riley asked.

“I think things got a lot more complicated,” Anya said.