Samaira had gotten into an elevator with Senators Norris and Diaz and General Johnson along with a few field agents while Anya descended to the third floor. Chandrali followed, of course, and Samaira had been forced to sit on the big cat’s shoulder. She hunched low against the ceiling as the crowded car rose up through the building.

Senator Diaz grimaced and was visibly sweating as she was forced next to the big cat. She made a quiet whine when Chandrali yawned and exposed her fangs.

“Give it a rest,” Samaira whispered in her cat’s ear. Chandrali’s only response was a curt sound from the back of her throat, but she obeyed Samaira and kept her mouth shut for the rest of the ride.

Running footsteps and shouts echoed as they passed each floor. People evacuated and headed to designated safe rooms as the director had instructed. There were no screams, thank goodness, but the the panic in raised voices and hurried steps was impossible to miss even from within the crowded elevator.

It was no small relief when the elevator dinged and everybody piled out and ascended to the rooftop. The cold winter wind whipped at their clothes, but Samaira barely felt it. Among the many enchantments on her clothing, one of them was protection from all but the most extreme elements. She’d have to be in a blizzard in the arctic before she felt a chill.

“There’re two other hosts up there, so please don’t shoot them,” Samaira said.

“You worry about your people and I’ll keep an eye on ours,” General Johnson grunted and Samaira frowned at the old man. Gary gave them all a curt wave as they emerged onto the rooftop. He was surrounded by menacing robotic figures: new “boys” he had assembled from the wreckage of the Chinese robots. They were smaller than their original counterparts, but looked far deadlier: they were all in inhuman, multi-limbed shapes and each of them looked capable of taking on a tank battalion on their own.

Samaira hadn’t had time to study the Chinese bots in detail, but she noticed that Gary’s refurbished units had subtle differences apart from their basic shapes. The Chinese bots had all been gleaming and polished, while Gary’s remade units were much less shiny. She wasn’t a metallurgist but knew Gary could manipulate metal like dough and had hopefully strengthened the bots enough to be sturdier than their original models.

“Christ,” Johnson said as he beheld the squad of inhuman machines.

“No need to be worried, unless you’re an alien,” Gary said. “Though you folks should move along since they’re getting closer by the second.”

“Aliens are really scary,” Pan said from behind Gary. “Not friends for anybody.”

“Where’s the chopper?” Senator Diaz asked as she stared at Pan.

“Forty-five seconds out, but it can’t land here with all these vehicles,” one of the field agents said and looked at Immonen’s floating chrome egg, Anya’s V-187, and Gary’s Ford. Gary opened the door of his truck and waved at it.

“Tell your chopper to land somewhere else. My truck will take you there and you can go wherever,” Gary said.

“Absolutely n——” Diaz started to say.

“Fine,” Norris said.

“Excuse me?” Diaz asked.

“Better this way,” Johnson agreed. “We’re in the way here, gotta leave. If this old fart wants to try killing us or kidnapping us, better to do it now so Washington know who they’re dealing with ASAP.”

“A pragmatic man. But no, I only want you out of my way,” Gary said. Norris walked past Gary and slid into the truck’s cab, behind the steering wheel.

“How do I do this?” Norris asked.

“You don’t do jack. It’s on autopilot. Call your chopper and tell them where to meet you and my baby will take you there and then come back to me,” Gary said.

“There’s a building with a helipad a few blocks south,” Diaz said.

“That’ll do. Agent?” Johnson said and looked at one of the suited men behind him. He nodded and notified the chopper pilot. Samaira watched as a distant pair of blinking lights in the sky swerved to the left and sat down on a building nearby.

Diaz, Norris, Johnson, and one of the field agents crammed themselves into the cab of the truck. None of them looked thrilled.

“Any of you boys wanna hop in the back?” Gary asked the other agents. All of them shook their heads. “Wussies. All right, gimme a sec.”

Gary leaned in through the driver’s side window and hit a few buttons on the dashboard, then leaned back out. The truck lifted into the air and took off. No sooner was the truck away than Samaira heard the sound of glass shattering several floors below them. She and Gary exchanged a worried glance and Pan looked between the two of them, his black eyes wide.

“Bad guys?” Pan asked.

“Maybe. Boo?” Samaira said and her AI responded without materializing.

“I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this. The nearest alien is within a few dozen yards of us, so yes, it was probably an alien breaking the window,” Boo said.

“Boo says there’s an alien a few floors below us. I’ll let Anya know, see how she’s doing,” Samaira said and had Boo call Anya. Her helmeted face appeared in a window seconds later, Agent Riley just visible behind her.

“The senators and the general just took off!” Samaira said. The wind gusted past her and snow gathered in her sparkling midnight hair.

“I’m going to make sure they get away safe and then I’m coming down,” Gary said. “We heard something break some windows several floors below us. Figure it’s one of them.”

“Do I have to go? This is scary,” Pan asked and hid behind Gary, fore-claws clutching the old man’s leg.

“Just keep your head down and maybe make some of those dirt guys,” Gary replied.

“There’s no good earth up here,” Pan said. “Bee-Eff says my level isn’t high enough to manipulate the stuff this building is made out of.”

“Just tuck into a ball and stay close to Gary, Pan!” Anya said from the communication window.

“Sorry,” Pan said.

“Felix?” Anya asked and listened as the AI replied to her privately.

“We’re on our way down,” Samaira said, “but we might have to fight our way there. Be careful!”

“You too,” Anya said and closed the communication window.

“Think she’ll be okay on her own?” Samaira asked.

“Probably better off than we would be,” Gary replied. He took out a small, handheld buzz saw from a pouch at his belt and began working on one of the guarding robots. “I’m almost done here. You should head down.”

“All right. I’m going to go find the doctor and make sure he’s okay.”

“Watch your back. There’s at least one alien real close,” Gary said. “As soon as my truck gets back I’ll send in the cavalry. Just don’t get yourself killed.”

“Will do!” Samaira said and ran back down into the building with Chandrali at her side. “Boo, call the doctor!”

“Okaaaaay,” Boo sighed.

“Hello?” Immonen asked as his hazy figure appeared.

“What floor are you on Doc?” Samaira asked.

“Thirty-three. I think there’s an alien nearby, looks like a copy machine with goat hooves. There’s a few dead and some wounded here. Hurry if you can,” Immonen said and hung up.

“Boo, send a message out to all the hosts on our contact list that aren’t here already: five aliens vs. five hosts at 26 Federal Plaza, Manhattan. Civilians injured and in danger, need back-up.”

“Sure thing…sorry I didn’t think of that sooner,” Boo said.

“Just tell me if you get a solid lead on the alien location, or anybody responds,” Samaira said as she hurried down the stairwell. “And Chandrali, you too. Growl if you smell the alien.”

Chandrali snorted in acknowledgment.

Samaira threw the door to the 33rd floor open moments later and had an arcane arrow at the ready. It pulsed with pale blue magical energy it drew from the environment to fuel it, funneled through the various foci Samaira wore on her clothes and within the powerful bow itself.

Samaira had to focus on the channeling mantras in her head as well, but with her high intelligence stat, it wasn’t an issue. The menu’s interpretation of intelligence had allowed her to process a multitude of information at once, like a computer running multiple programs independent of each other. She could focus on various spells at once, no problem. It was only once she got six or seven spells going that her concentration started to waver.

She suspected that she had used the basic chant for her magical arrows enough that she could recite it in her sleep, even without the menu’s stat-boosting help.

Aetheric essence beyond sight, in my hand form a spear of light: One to pierce stone and steel, by my will are you made real. Focus my power to its greatest might, and go true when you take flight!

The mantra didn’t need to rhyme, but Samaira found it easier to remember and run through her mind when it did. Her knowledge of aetheric manipulation told her the mantra didn’t even need to be in English, or any existing language at all, just that it needed to mean something to her and that it helped her focus on what she wanted the aether to do. Her physical foci——her bow and her crystals and amulets——helped draw the aether to her, pulled it from the very cosmos and fabric of reality to her specific location. But her mental focus——her mantras——drew the aether to her will and allowed her to shape it with her thoughts.

She had dozens, maybe hundreds of mantras by now, all stored away in her head and easily accessible within microseconds thanks to her high intelligence stat. She had a journal full of them and rough drafts for more spells she had gotten ideas for that she scribbled in what little spare time she had. It was oddly relaxing.

But now, just as it had been during the fight in the mall and before on the beach, she worried it wasn’t enough. She had spells to heal, to protect, to ensnare, to wound, to stun, to explode, but the aliens seemed just as malleable and diverse as the aether itself. Samaira could change her spells, but she couldn’t change herself so easily.

Ever since she had been little, her path had been set. It certainly felt that way: a long straight road of concrete laid by her parents that offered no detours or stops from cradle to grave. She had walked it diligently, and her Maan and Pitajee had been proud of their eldest daughter. Then all this crazy nonsense had happened and…

Samaira blinked hard and forced the thoughts away. They were already quarantined in their own mental compartment and weren’t interfering with her mantra, but she didn’t want to waste one precious second on them now. There were aliens in the building, and any distraction could mean her death. She cleared her head and refocused on what was in front of her.

The hallway of the 33rd floor was empty, and she hurried to the first door. It opened into a large open room with cubicles and desks along the edges, and a kind of media display of monitors and other equipment in the center. All of the lights and equipment were off though, throwing the room into darkness. The only light came from the city outside, mostly through a newly shattered window that allowed the frigid winter wind and snow in.

Several bodies lay on the ground, all of them mangled or dismembered or burned to some degree. Samaira focused her attention elsewhere. It was gruesome, and Samaira couldn’t let herself be scared off by it.

Just ignore it, she thought. Instead she focused on the walls and floor around her, trying to figure out what sort of attacks could have done the damage.

Burns, so fire or some other heat source.

Too bad Anya isn’t up here, Samaira thought.

There were irregular dark squiggles on the wall and floor, more scorch marks. Electricity then. The wall of one of the cubicles was melted and stank of something chemical. Acid maybe. There was also the unmistakable, unique spark of magical energy in the air, recently discharged.

Samaira was familiar with magic in several forms by now, and what she sensed in the air was similar to her own. It was the raw, pure force of the aether, the magical substance of primeval creation that could be formed into whatever was needed. In its raw form it was a force of nature, but its real strength was its versatility. All the damage she was seeing was a result of aether transmutation.

The alien was a magic caster.

She stepped around the body of a young woman with her legs bent at a funny angle but stopped when Chandrali bent low and sniffed at her, then made a low growl back in her throat. Samaira stopped and looked at the woman’s form and saw her sides rising and falling very slightly.

She adjusted the mantra in her head——a chant to cause piercing and explosive damage to the target——so that it would heal instead of harm. She fired the arrow at the woman and she was surrounded in a soft glow for an instant. The woman groaned and clutched at her sides and curled into a little ball. She wasn’t good enough at healing magic yet to get the woman back to normal, but at least she was stable and her legs bent the right way.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Samaira said and knelt beside her. “What happened?”

“Something…came out of the copy machine,” the woman said. Her voice was a throaty rasp. She had a large burn along her chest and shallow cuts down her side that knit themselves back together. The burn remained, but didn’t look quite as severe as it had a moment before.

“Can you move? Get somewhere safe?” Samaira asked.

“Nnnnn,” the woman winced.

“Okay, I’ll find the doctor and be right back,” Samaira said and then did a quick check of the room to make sure nobody else was on the verge of death. She tried her best to sort the rabbit-like panic she felt into one of her mind’s many new compartments as she studied the bodies. It helped a little. By the time she had finished checking the main room she felt like she might go nuts, and it had been for nothing. No other survivors.

“Ms. Samaira?” a voice said behind her and she almost screamed. Chandrali hissed and jumped back about ten feet, hackles raised.

The hazy figure of Dr. Immonen had emerged from a nearby wall like a ghost.

“What the heck?” Samaira said as she caught her breath and tried to calm her heart.

“Sorry, but the alien is right behind me, at the end of the hall,” Immonen said. “Anya just called me, said there’s wounded and dying on the lower levels.”

“Same here, a woman out there,” Samaira gestured. Immonen finished phasing through the wall and became perfectly visible.

“I’ll see to her. Are you going after the copy machine?” Immonen asked.

“I’ve got to. Gary said he’d join in when he could, but he’s got most of his robots evacuating the building and hunting for the aliens.”

“Good. I could use the distraction his robots provide. That damned machine almost saw through my obfuscation a few times.”

Samaira showed Immonen to the woman and he healed her, then sedated her with a wave of his hand before she could panic. Samaira put the woman on Chandrali’s back and tied her in place with a glowing blue rope of solidified aether.

“Take her down to the street level and away from the building, then fly back up here,” Samaira said. Chandrali bumped Samaira’s side with her big head, then leaped out the broken window and floated down to the street below.

No sooner had the big cat left than Samaira and Immonen heard the beep and mechanical whir of a copy machine accompanied by the distinct clop-clop of multiple hooves. A door at the far end of the room opened, and Immonen all but vanished.

“I’m still here, just not much of a fighter. What’s the plan?” he whispered. His voice came from multiple places at once, making his location impossible to pin down.

“Hold it here until Gary sends his bots for back-up,” Samaira said. “Chandrali should be back soon too.”

“Got it,” Immonen said and there was a soft rustle of carpet from across the room as he moved behind the cover of several fallen desks.The door on the opposite side of the room opened all the way and revealed a pitch black office. There was a squeak and then a copy machine trotted into view. It looked like any copy machine one would find in any office, save for the several goat hooves emerging the from the bottom and clip-clopping along the floor.

Samaira fired her arrow, channeling the energy of the aether through her foci, her body, and into the magic projectile. It shrieked across the room and something emerged from the copy machine a split second before her arrow hit it.

But it didn’t move.

Samaira’s arrow had hit the air less than an inch in front of the copy machine, and the aetheric weapon had been dispersed like so much mist in front of a fan. The thing the copy machine had spat out floated to the ground with a rustle: a blank piece of paper.

The copy machine turned to the side and the light underneath its lid flashed as if scanning something, and another piece of paper shot out of the side.

Samaira had a second to register what was on the paper: a complex, circular design, surrounded by archaic symbols. It glowed a bright orange and she ducked behind a pillar.

The paper exploded in a cyclone of flames that swirled around the office. The vortex of light and heat ignited the cheap government wallpaper, the threadbare carpet, and the flimsy wooden desks.

It’s using runes! Samaira thought as her translucent blue shoulder cape curled around her body in a loose cocoon and dispersed the protective aetheric energy she had imbued it with. It kept the worst of the heat away, along with the concrete pillar she stood behind.

The copy machine had spat out a piece of paper imbued with a rune: a magical symbol that pulled the aether to it in much the same way her crystals and bow did. The circles and geometric designs acted like circuits that funneled the aether and magnified it, while the symbols along the edge were like a code or program that instructed the aether how to behave once it was unleashed. In this case the copy machine alien had transformed the aether into a vortex of flames that was intense, but thankfully short lived.

Samaira leaped out from behind the pillar and unleashed a volley of several magical arrows at the copy machine. Most of them exploded harmlessly in front of the machine as the first had, each one absorbed by counter-magic and absorption runes the copy machine alien printed out. Each of the papers floated in the air in front of the machine, acting as a shield. Samaira fired another volley, but adjusted her last arrow with an addition to her mantra.

Focus my power to its greatest might, and strike my target on the right!

The last arrow curved away and around to the right side of the copy machine and slammed into it. The copy machine flew to the side, making furious mechanical sputtering sounds mixed with the gargling warble of a furious goat. A panel on the right side of the machine had splintered and fallen away. It wasn’t plastic or metal like a normal copy machine, but some kind of glossy, insectile exoskeleton that bled a greenish black substance. Beneath it was pale, sickly yellow flesh that gleamed with viscous bodily fluids. An eyeball, red and baleful, appeared amid the throbbing pale flesh and glared at Samaira.

She fired another volley of arrows, curving all of them around the copy machine to strike it from all angles. Several of her arrows were aimed at the copy machine’s paper slot and she’d adjusted them not to explode, but to burst into a thick glue-like substance to seal the rune-dispensing opening.

The machine spat several papers out in quick succession, all of them bearing unique runes and surrounding the machine. All of her arrows vanished and were absorbed by the runes. Lightning bolted out of one of the other papers, and a flurry of ice shards emerged from the last. Samaira dodged the ice shards easily, and made a counter-mantra for the lightning that grounded it out harmlessly in front of her.

A roar at the window drew her attention, and Chandrali sprang through the shattered glass and across the length of the room. She was followed by one of Gary’s new robots: a centaur-like creation with four arms and four legs. One of its arms was a powerful lance that glowed white-hot, and micro-missile pods sat on its sides. The other arms were each some kind of rifle or energy projectile and it fired all of them at the copy machine as it charged around the side of the machine, opposite Chandrali.

The copy machine unleashed a stack of papers filled with tiny runes and all of them shot marble-sized fireballs at Chandrali and the centaur-bot. The bot took them head on or absorbed them into its lance. It jabbed the weapon at the copy machine, but the alien rose up onto its many hooves and kicked the bot squarely in its chest. Despite the centaur-bot being several times larger than the copy machine, it was hurled away, a huge sparking dent left in its center as it fell onto its side. The centaur-bot scrambled to its metallic hooves, and wobbled, but stayed upright.

Chandrali dodged the hundreds of tiny balls of fire as the copy machine launched another attack. A few managed to graze her and scorch her skin, but Chandrali got close enough to swipe at the alien’s side. Her diamond claws raked at the exposed side Samaira had created and widened the hole.

The copy machine bleated, then aimed another supernaturally strong kick at Chandrali. The cat dodged it, but one of the numerous hooves scraped her side and opened a long cut that spilled blood onto the carpet.

“Get away from my cat!” Samaira snapped and fired two arrows at once in opposite directions. One arrow struck Chandrali and covered her a protective, healing shield while the other split into hundreds of tiny aetheric flechettes that outnumbered the many protective runes the machine printed out.

The runes absorbed some of the flechettes, but not all of them. The ones that got past the machine’s defenses burst against its armor. They were too weak to do much more than crack its chitinous armor and push it back, but it gave Chandrali and the centaur-bot some breathing room.

Gary’s robot fired its tiny missiles, each of them the size of Samaira’s pinky. They buried themselves in the copy machine and detonated, making the cracks from the flechettes widen and break off thick slabs of armor. Its runes could nullify her magic, or protect against conventional attacks, but it apparently couldn’t do both at the same time without leaving some openings.

The copy machine was flung back against the wall which cracked and crumbled under its substantial weight. Another volley of arrows and missiles and energy projectiles kept it down. Samaira grinned. She had an opening now.

She fired another arrow right at the printer’s paper slot, one that transmutated the aether into a thick, gummy substance that stuck in the narrow opening like glue. The machine squealed again and several rune-infused papers jammed in its slot. The printer opened a side panel and emitted a strong pulse of energy that threw Chandrali, the centaur bot, and Samaira across the room.

“Dang!” Samaira said as she hit her head on the floor. A hazy shape appeared next to her and waved its hands.

“You’re okay,” Immonen said.

“Thank you. Can you do anything?” Samaira asked.

“I’ve tried to sedate the thing but its shell or whatever the outside is made of is protecting it. I almost got close enough to touch the fleshy part you exposed before it unleashed that pulse.”

“Okay, I’ll try and expose more of it, just don’t get killed,” Samaira said as she hurried to another piece of furniture for cover.

The copy machine pushed itself up by extending one of its drawers (which Samaira saw was full of thousands of pieces of blank paper), and then opened its lid. Samaira ducked behind another pillar, but Chandrali and Gary’s robot were caught in the flash of light that followed. Her cat yowled and flinched as she bounded away, apparently unhurt but for being temporarily blinded by the light from the copy machine.

“You okay girl?” Samaira asked. Chandrali yowled again but Samaira saw her poke her head up from behind a desk. Gary’s robot was also undamaged, but the lights on its head blinked rapidly as if readjusting to the flash. Chandrali was squinting, but her eyes looked fine and Samaira sighed with relief as she readied another arrow.

Chandrali snarled, suddenly on Samaira’s right and Samaira didn’t think. She flipped to the side and just narrowly avoided huge claws raking through the concrete of the pillar she had been behind. Something else moved to her right and she raised a powerful aetheric shield around herself as a salvo of tiny missiles exploded inches away from her and against her defenses.

“Chandr——” Samaira said and then gasped. Chandrali was still hiding behind the desk on the other side of the room. The huge saber-toothed cat in front of her was a copy of hers, save for the color and substance. Chandrali was snowy white, and this thing was midnight blue. Chandrali’s fur was soft and fluffy, while this thing looked slick and wet. Gary’s robot was beside it, but also made of some slick dark blue substance.

Like they’re made of ink? Samaira thought. The flash of light had scanned everything in the room and copied Chandrali and the centaur-bot. It would have copied her too if she hadn’t gotten behind the pillar, and probably Immonen if he hadn’t been hiding somewhere. The ink tiger’s eyes were tiny black pits that leaked dark fluid like tears, and it left wet blue paw prints wherever it stepped. Its fangs and claws looked plenty sharp, however, and it bared the former at Samaira in a snarl. The centaur-bot hummed with energy and its inky lance glowed and hissed as it heated up.

The ink tiger lunged at Samaira and she shot an arrow down its throat. The shaft of light exploded and the tiger was flung back and hit the wall with a wet splat and a howl of pain. It bounded back to its feet in short order and roared at Samaira and charged again. Gary’s original robot lunged at the impostor and kept it occupied before it could join the Chandrali-copy against Samaira.

The real Chandrali tackled her impostor from the side, and the two tumbled across the room in a ball of flashing claws and fangs, red blood and blue ink. Samaira pivoted away from the sight just as she heard a mechanical clicking noise as the copy machine alien cleared its paper tray.

It would keep pumping out arrow-canceling runes, or making more copies until Samaira’s body had been burnt out from all the aether she was channeling.

An idea popped into her head.

She couldn’t use aether forever without it wearing on her body. Eventually she would pass out from acting as the conduit for so much energy, or just have an aneurysm or something else from the strain.

But so would the machine’s runes, and the machine itself. The runes could only hold so much aetheric energy before they shorted and burst, just like any circuit or outlet moving too much electricity.

Samaira multiplied a piercing and power mantra, and a giant arrow materialized within her bow. It crackled with deadly energy and lit the dark office enough to turn the top floor of 26 Federal Plaza into a lighthouse visible for miles.

“Doc! If you can hear me, get down!” Samaira yelled. The huge arcane arrow shook in her bow and her thin arms trembled from the strain of holding the arrow as she took aim.

The copy machine belched out ten, fifteen, twenty papers in rapid-fire succession, all of them bearing different runes and each glowing with power.

Samaira channeled as much energy as she could into her one shot, and fired.