Renn, Mona, and Kan stood just outside an enclosed shrine, all three of them focused on a fourth person. The fourth couldn’t have looked more out of place: he was a plain-looking young man with unruly black hair and wide eyes with dark circles under them. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and he kept glancing over his shoulders and twitching. His clothes were plain but dirty in contrast to the elaborate outfits the other three hosts wore.

Anya had shaken his hand earlier, but barely spoken to him. He hadn’t even glanced at her when they shook and then he had hurried through the crowd to the back. He held Renn’s hand in both of his and looked on the verge of tears as the man behind the golden faceplate spoke to him.

“We’ll get you to 50, get you a respecification token, and that will be the end of it. You can take something less…troubling,” Renn said.

“I can personally recommend necromancy,” Mona said and laughed.

“No. Nothing else like…this,” the young man said. Anya tried to recall his name. Harry? Henry? Something like that? He sounded like he was from America, but Canada was a possibility too.

“Would you like to stay with us, Harrison? Since using your powers is so problematic, you’ll be vulnerable if an alien finds you,” Renn said.

“Really?” Harrison asked. Renn, Mona, and Kan all nodded. “God yes, thank you. Thank you.”

“Come along. Our ship is nearby. You can rest there,” Mona said and started to guide him away as Anya, Gary, Samaira, and Pan approached.

“That’s when they talk to me,” Harrison said.

“I have something that will help,” Mona said and then the two left out the back of the temple and disappeared into the woods beyond.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Anya asked and pointed after Harrison and Mona.

“Hopefully. He took the ‘Demon Summoning,’ skill because he thought it would be ‘cool.’ Apparently the demons taunt him, tell him to kill himself so they can drag him to Hell, that it will only be worse the longer he delays the inevitable, and so on,” Renn said.

“Holy shit,” Anya said.

“Mm. Surprising. And the implications are disturbing,” Renn replied. “But that’s for later. If you see anybody thinking about taking the skill, better to warn them away from it. For now…”

Renn extended his hand to Anya. Anya gripped it and shook.

“Anya,” she said, then shook Kan’s hand. Despite his fearsome gauntlets and hooded, menacing appearance, Kan clasped her hand in both of his in a gentle embrace and nodded to her. Samaira and Gary introduced themselves next. Samaira was pleasant enough, but Gary only grunted as he shook hands with Renn, and he and Kan looked at each other in silence.

Pan was much cheerier.

“Hello! Pan here,” he said and rose up on his hind legs and extended his gleaming claws.

“Comme il est mignon!” Renn said as he squatted down to Pan’s level and gently took his claws between his thumb and fingers and shook. “And so much more polite than the shark. Truly, a pleasure.”

“You seem nice,” Pan said and then waddled over to Kan who chuckled as he shook Pan’s claws.

“You’re Americans?” Kan asked.

“Yes. Technically Pan is from Africa but I picked him up at an American zoo,” Anya said.

“May I ask why?” Kan said.

“First I thought he was human, and he was the most obvious dot on my map. An easy target. I was kinda disappointed when I found out he wasn’t human, but then I realized if I left him there and an alien showed up, anybody at the zoo would be in danger, so I got him out.”

“Last night, there was a disturbance at a mall in Chicago, I think?” Renn asked. “Was that you too?”

“All of us,” Samaira said. “Well, Pan stayed in Anya’s ride, but yes.”

“You saved a lot of people,” Kan said. “Thank you. Many of the hosts here are mostly focused on their own survival. It’s a natural reaction, but…it takes something special to think of others too in such extreme situations.”

“Uh, yeah, sure. No biggie,” Anya said. She looked up as Mona returned. She smiled at her, exposing a single small fang on the right side of her mouth.

“Sorry about that,” Mona said and shook everybody’s hand. She cooed over Pan and gave his scales a soft caress before stepping away.

“Will Harrison be okay?” Renn asked.

“For now, yes. I have some questions for him, but he needed to rest,” Mona replied.

“Good. Now, I think with these four that is everybody, yes?” Renn asked. Kan nodded at him. “Excellent. I was afraid nobody would come. I considered going to world governments first, but the few people in power I tried to contact wouldn’t listen to me.”

Samaira just smiled sympathetically and Gary grunted.

Anya said, “It’s because you look like fucking super villains.”

There was a pause as Renn, Mona, and Kan stared at Anya, looked at each other, then laughed.

“Fair’s fair!” Mona said. “Kan especially. Oh dear.”

Samaira let out a sigh of relief and Gary allowed himself a smirk. Anya had been expecting a denial, or the quiet dismissal of indifference from the three other hosts.

“Yes, that is fair,” Renn acknowledged, and to Anya’s surprise, removed his helmet. Renn pushed a button near the back of the helmet and it retracted into a collar around his neck.

Renn was young, probably early twenties at the oldest. He had a slim face and short, mussed brownish-blond hair, and green eyes. Despite his youth, he had a weary cast to his face. “I know the helmet can be a bit intimidating, but it’s useful, and I’ve found people tend to take me less seriously when they find out how young I am.”

“No kidding,” Gary said. “Can you even drink yet?”

“I can, but alcohol isn’t to my liking,” Renn replied. “I’m not trying to be a great leader, or any leader. I’ve explained this to others already but I don’t want to be the boss host or whatever you would call it. Later, yes, we may need to talk about how we organize, but for now, I just didn’t want people to be alone. It’s suicide.

“And Mona and Kan, they only want to help and make the world a better place…in their own ways. We may not all be as altruistic as Yai or Dr. Immonen, but our ultimate goal is the same: save the planet and make it safer and more prosperous for her people. I’m hopeful that after realizing they aren’t alone, the hosts here will act more in the interest of others and not just themselves.”

“A lot easier to be concerned about others when somebody else can watch your back,” Gary agreed.

“You four are actually the largest group here. There’s a few groups of three, lots of pairs, but it’s mostly all loners,” Mona said. “Did you plan that or did it just happen?”

“Gary and I just happened to be in the same area when the menus hit. But Anya went searching for people and found us,” Samaira said.

“It was almost pure luck that I did. I flew all over New England and didn’t find anybody else. So what now? You say you don’t want to be a leader but you’ve got us all here. Anything else besides just meeting?”

“Well——”Renn started to say before Gary held his hand up.

“Hang on. Before we do anything else, I need to know something: how many hosts do you think are here?” Gary asked. Anya and the others all turned to look at him in confusion.

“Felix told me there were fifty-eight when we landed. Plus you, me, Samaira, and Pan, that’s sixty-two,” Anya said.

“And when we arrived that’s what our AIs told us as well,” Mona said. “So plus me, Renn, and Kan, it would be sixty-five.”

“Uh-huh,” Gary said. “Same numbers I got. And I count sixty-four faces in the crowd, plus my own.”

“So?” Anya said.

“So, Cooper isn’t a host, remember?” Gary asked. “And I’ve been counting handshakes. I’ve shaken hands with sixty-four people, but only sixty-three hosts since that Cooper kid isn’t one.”

Anya exchanged glances with the others. “Felix, how many hosts are in the immediate area?”

“There are sixty-five! That includes you! And to follow Gary’s logic chain, you only have sixty-three contacts in your menu. One of the hosts is missing.”

“They’re hiding,” Renn said and brought his helmet back up. He looked around at the assembled crowd.

“Anything?” Mona asked.

“I can confirm what Mr. Gary said. Sixty-four faces, not including my own, but only sixty-three other hosts. Other scans don’t show anything: no heat signatures, no air disturbances, nothing. Whoever they are, they’re hiding quite well.”

Anya focused on her heat sense. She picked up all the body heat around her. She noticed that Brody’s heat signature was different, not entirely warm-blooded. There wasn’t anything unusual about the crowd, no subtle heat signatures that seemed out of place.

“Felix, match each of the host signals on my map to each of the contacts, then take them off the menu map for now. I want to see the host I haven’t connected with yet,” Anya said.

“You got it! Great idea!” Felix said and all the multi-colored dots on her map vanished until there was only one. It was silver, and only a dozen yards away or so. That would put it outside the temple.

“Can you make this 3D?” Anya whispered to Felix. “Show me exactly where they are?”

“I can’t fully render the area like that but I can tell you the host is about ten yards above the ground,” Felix said.

“Ten yards up?” Anya said and glanced upward. That would put the invisible host in a tree.

“Don’t stare,” Renn said. “Look back at me, just like we’re having a normal conversation.”

“It’s just one host. Probably shy,” Mona said.

“No, I don’t think so,” Renn said. “Remember where we are.”

“Is that why you picked this place?” Mona hissed. “Are you completely mad?”

“What? What is it?” Samaira asked.

“New friend?” Pan asked and looked around.

“I hope so,” Renn replied. “But look, we have to be——”

“Oi!” a loud voice yelled from behind them.

“Oh hell,” Mona said.

Brody stood near the edge of the courtyard and was pointing straight up at the tree where Felix said the hidden host was.

“I smell you up there! Come down and do this hand touchy thing with me!” Brody shouted.

“What is going on? Why did you pick this place? I thought it was just because it would be easy for the AIs to pick out,” Anya said.

“Well, that too,” Renn said.

“What’re you doing, mate?” Cooper asked. Brody ignored him and leaped up and dug his thick fingers straight into the bark of the tree and hung there. He reached his other hand out and grabbed something invisible in the air next to him.

“Don’t hurt them!” Renn shouted.

The air around Brody’s fist shimmered, crackled with energy, and then revealed a slender feminine figure in a gray cloak and bodysuit. A helmet with insectile lenses across its surface glowed green, and a huge rifle was slung across her back. She shouted something in Chinese and thrashed in Brody’s grip.

“Holy shit!” Cooper said. There were similar cries of surprise and alarm from the other hosts below. Surprise turned to fear as lightning leapt out from the cloaked host and shocked Brody. The shark snarled and fell out of the tree with a thud and lay in a smoking heap. He was back up in only a moment, and Anya stared as his body rippled and shifted in different directions before it returned to normal.

“His environmental adaptation skill. Must have been trying to adjust to all that voltage,” Felix said.

“Excuse me!” Renn said and stepped forward, hands up. “We mean no harm. Our friend here isn’t human and doesn’t understand basic courtesy.”

“Yes I do!” Brody said. “That’s when you squat and flip out one of those dress things.”

“That’s a curtsy you big dickhead!” Cooper snapped.

The figure in the tree didn’t move but for a glance upward.

“Something’s coming,” Gary said and the HUD appeared on the inside of his glasses as he followed the cloaked figure’s gaze.

A deep humming sound echoed across the mountainside, and hundreds of tiny blue lights shone like falling stars as they grew closer. The lights were the glowing sensors of the robotic soldiers that descended from the sky on silent anti-grav discs, similar to Anya’s V-187. Most of the robots were thin, almost skeletal, with smooth heads and gleaming bodies. They each carried some kind of weapon ranging from humming energy rifles to huge missile launchers.

Several dozen of the robots were much, much bigger though. They were the size of a tank and landed with heavy thumps on back-jointed legs. They were covered in matte gray armor and bristled with weapons. Anya recognized miniguns and mortars, but there were other devices on the big robots that she wasn’t familiar with: A glowing blue orb grasped in a thick metal claw, thin strings of metal cable that hummed and vibrated, and more esoteric weaponry.

But what really drew Anya’s attention and what all the robots shared was the Chinese flag emblazoned somewhere on their bodies.

“Huh,” Anya said.

A booming voice spoke in heavily accented English from all of the robots at once.

“This is General Huang of the People’s Liberation Army. You are trespassing and assembling illegally. You will drop all weapons and surrender yourself to the authority of the People’s Republic at once or face immediate reprisal!”

All of the robotic soldiers leveled their weapons at the hosts.

“I hate being right,” Gary muttered.