Nunavut, Canada

50 miles south of Lady Melville Lake

The only one who looked cold was Chell.

The psychic had flown up with Anya in the V-200. Samaira, Immonen, and Gary had taken their own vehicles while Mona and Harrison rode in that Gothic carriage together. When in flight, six phantasmal horses appeared in front of it and the hooded coachman whipped them into the air. The wheels burned with ghostly white flames and soared along at the rear of the squad of strange craft. It was the slowest, but it still had to be going several times the speed of sound to even keep up with everybody else.

Chell had slept on the short flight to the far northern reaches of Nunavut. She’d brought a coat and leggings, but had very little in the way of supernatural or technological protection like the rest of them. Anya stood next to her and raised her body temperature, and instructed Reggie to drape himself loosely over her shoulders. Chell had squeaked at the presence of the serpentine familiar so close to her but didn’t protest.

Mona, for her part, simply said that cold didn’t bother her anymore and Harrison claimed that his affinity for something called “The Infernal Realms,” meant that he wasn’t bothered by extreme temperatures either. Gary tapped something on his watch before he got out and said he’d be fine, and Immonen said he had been given some kind of weather charm by Yai when he’d met her in India that shielded him from harmful conditions.

Gary had thrown a grapefruit-sized metal orb onto the ground and it had expanded into a wide domed structure large enough to hold a few big cars. The inside of the metal dome was plain, but offered some protection from the cold outside, and a number of scanning devices along the curved walls as well as some basic furniture: a central table, a few chairs, a bench. Gary called it his portable field command dome.

“I could make some kind of psychic shield to keep me warm but that seems like a waste, especially when I’m already inside,” Chell said.

“It’s fine,” Anya replied and wondered how the young woman had survived this long. She was glad she had, but honestly. She’d asked her on the way up if she could read thoughts and Chell had waggled her hand.

“Sort of. It isn’t like reading a book or listening to the radio. If somebody specifically directs their thoughts at me, then yes, that’s pretty easy. Otherwise it’s really difficult, like somebody chopped up a dictionary and trying to piece the words together. It’s pretty simple to get somebody’s ‘mood,’ or tell if they’re lying though, even if they’re really good at hiding it,” Chell had said.

“So you put all your points into lie detecting?” Anya had asked.

“No! That sort of thing is just a side benefit. I can make psychic constructs, like weapons, and disrupt thoughts easily enough. Like filling somebody’s head with static. The couple times I’ve been near aliens, I’ve been able to sense that connection they have with each other, like Dr. Immonen did. I’m also pretty much immune to psychic attacks myself. There’s other stuff, but those are the big things,” Chell had replied.

Too bad you didn’t have the psychic ability to know that northern Canada would be cold, Anya thought. Chell seemed to, literally, be warming up to Reggie and relaxing, so there was that.

All of the hosts wore their scrambler bands and were focused on the far north side of the lake. Gary had placed the decoy some one hundred miles north of their current position, which essentially put it in the center of a mostly-frozen lake in the middle of an equally frozen wasteland.

The ground for miles in every direction was flat, hard, and frozen through. Only the tiniest, hardiest patches of stubby grass, lichen, and moss survived up here. There wasn’t even any animal life to speak of. Anya could neither see nor sense the heat of any animals for as far as her abilities could stretch. The lake probably had fish in it, but that was all.

“Okay, bomb is armed, cameras are on, DragonDrones are in place,” Gary said as he studied a holographic screen in front of him. Anya glanced upwards at a gray, overcast sky. Somewhere high in the stratosphere where seven of Gary’s powerful DragonDrones. They were scanning the area for miles around the lake constantly for movement, heat, lifesigns, or any hint of an alien signal. An anti-matter bomb of Gary’s own design had been placed with the decoy signal in a second field command dome on top of the icey lake, and surrounded with cameras along the shore and underwater.

According to Gary, the bomb could wipe out Tokyo in a blink, but he’d reined in the size of the explosion in favor of intensity. It would still be plenty big, but the concentration of deconstructive force within the blast radius would be enough to unmake just about anything.

“Scrambler bands are all green,” Immonen confirmed.

“Everybody ready?” Gary asked.

Anya was in the armor she had purchased and had upgraded by Gary’s metalworking and a number of charms she had purchased from the RAC store and runes Smaira had carved into it, along with the retractable forearm blades hidden within the gauntlets. Mona and Harrison hadn’t summoned any of their servants, but they had said they could do it in a second if required. Room inside the dome would get cramped with the summons, and outside might give away their position.

“I think so,” Anya said. Samaira had her bow, Chandrali was at her full, armored size, and Chell just nodded.

“All right. The Exterminators are in position around the lake,” Gary said, referring to some of his combat-bots. “But hopefully, all this is just for show. Activating the decoy in five, four, three, two, one. Activate.”

Gary pressed a button on his screen. Within the second command dome, the tiny metal sphere turned on and transmitted their signals, clear as could be.

“AIs, confirm,” Gary said.

“Your signal is in the middle of that lake!” Felix said within Anya’s ear. She gave Gary a thumb’s up, and one-by-one, the others did too.

“Confirmed,” Gary said. “Now, we wait.”

Gary and Immonen monitored the data streaming to them through their various screens and devices. Chell had sat down on one of the chairs nearby and closed her eyes to psychically scan the area. The others just had to stand around and hope.

Minutes passed.

Then an hour.

Anya was starting to think the experiment was a failure when she heard Chell gasp. A second later Gary grunted and Immonen hissed.

“They’re here,” Gary said.

“Hooo boy,” Samaira breathed. Gary duplicated a holographic screen from one of the cameras and enlarged it. The view showed the edge of the lake, barren and icy.

A vending machine, a trashcan, a cow, a giant carrot, an armchair, a collection of colorful balloons, a palm tree, a street lamp, a yellow taxi, and a wheelbarrow had all appeared from over a hill a half mile from the camera. The camera zoomed in on the surreal assembly and Anya immediately noticed the numerous “mistakes,” she had come to expect from the aliens.

The vending machine was full of neatly arranged organs instead of snacks. The giant carrot was, well, giant at over eight feet tall, and also hovering. The armchair was made of what looked like human skin. The balloons were each some kind of floating embryonic sack containing vague, shadowy forms that twitched and writhed within. All of the aliens had something which marked them as unearthly.

They walked, floated, or slid forward toward the lake and the camera.

“Jesus,” Anya said. Ten aliens. “Felix can you detect any signal from them?”

“Not at this distance, even under optimal conditions,” Felix replied.

“The DragonDrones are only picking up the vaguest readings from them,” Gary said. “And from the charts, it’s saying they could be anywhere in a 500-mile radius. Still got some work to do there, clearly.”

“Are you going to blow them up?” Mona asked. “Or just stare at them all day?”

“I want them to be as close to the blast’s epicenter as possible,” Gary said. “Just be ready to move in if this goes sideways.”

“I’ve been ready for over an hour, old man,” Mona said and rolled her eyes.

“And you’ll wait a bit more,” Gary said. “Now hush.”

“They’ve entered the inner blast radius,” Immonen said.

“Not yet,” Gary said.

“They’re not moving,” Harrison said as he looked at the screen. All of the aliens had stopped moving toward the lake, about 200 yards shy of the shore. Anya didn’t think a wheelbarrow, even one with eyes along the side, could appear suspicious, but this one did. It narrowed its eyes at the lake, then rolled back several feet. The bunch of embryonic balloons and the armchair moved closer, and the rest of the aliens remained still.

Everybody within the small shelter held their breaths. Reggie tightened around Anya as he felt her tense up. She idly stroked his feathers but remained locked on the screen. The floating carrot, the vending machine, and the cow all surged forward toward the lake in a rush. The cow had a face like an old man and it broke into an eerie grin as it trampled its way into the frozen waters.

The trashcan, palm tree, street lamp, and taxi followed at a slower pace, while the other aliens remained still. The wheelbarrow rolled back further.

“Close enough,” Gary grunted and pressed another button. The screens filled with light and then went dark. “DragonDrones display!”

The holographic screens switched to an aerial view from the DragonDrones high above. The explosion had cleared the cloud cover for miles around the lake and created a wide crater in its center. Water rushed in to fill the new pit in around along the northern edge of the lake.

“Exterminators moving in,” Gary said. Anya saw several tiny specks rushing toward the lake. She knew that those tiny specks were each one of Gary’s Exterminator bots: over twelve feet tall and built to withstand anything short of a full-on nuclear strike. They had basic humanoid forms, but were very wide and had very tiny, box-shaped heads whose array of antennae gave them a definite insectile look.

“I can’t confirm if the aliens are dead or not at this distance,” Felix said in Anya’s ear.

“No signs of the aliens,” Immonen said as he studied the camera feeds and his own displays.

“It can’t be that easy,” Samaira said.

“I’m not sure whether I want it to be or not,” Harrison added. “Slaughtering them with this level of ease has a certain satisfaction to it, but I’d rather get my hands at least a little dirty. Besides, there’s experience to be had.”

“Not me,” Chell said.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” Gary muttered as he looked at his screens. Anya saw a pale flicker on the edge of the screen, past the enclosing ring of Exterminators.

“There!” she said and pointed. Gary zoomed in at once and focused on the wheelbarrow alien. Its tire was flat, its handles broken, half its eyes were missing, but it was alive. It left a trail of steaming black fluid on the frozen ground behind it, and moved with erratic but substantial speed.

“Kill that thing!” Gary said and half of the Exterminators turned around and flew at the wheelbarrow. The air around the Exterminators wavered and then the Exterminators folded in on themselves and were gone.

“What the hell?” Gary asked.

“What about the other aliens?” Anya asked. Immonen looked at one of the many screens and pointed at two of them.

“That chair and those balloons are still moving, sort of,” Immonen said. The collection of balloons had been reduced to less than half of what they had been before, and floated lower and slower as well. The chair was barely recognizable as such, and black blood leaked from its blown-apart side and back. The Exterminators closed on the chair and blasted it to pieces within seconds. The remaining robots split between the balloons and the wheelbarrow.

Whatever the wheelbarrow had done to Gary’s previous robots, it tried to do again. Two more of the Exterminators folded into themselves and vanished from sight. A third lost an arm, but opened panels along its side and unleashed dozens of finger-sized missiles. The wheelbarrow alien was consumed in bright white explosions and finally scattered into pieces.

The balloon alien was all that remained. Its balloons squeezed out their shadowy cargo, appearing to give birth to slime-covered, fetal nightmares.

“That’s fucking disgusting,” Anya said.

Much like the fridge-spawn from the mall in Chicago, the creatures the balloon-alien birthed grew rapidly. A grotesque creature that looked like a dachshund melded with an earwig and covered in throbbing tumors went from a few feet long to a few yards in the span of five seconds. It threw itself at an Exterminator and ripped its torso off its legs while the robot pummeled it into mush.

Other equally hideous nightmares emerged from the balloons and fought off the Exterminators. Each time a balloon birthed one creature, it would begin to inflate again and another dark shape would start to take form. It was a slow process though, and the Exterminator bots outnumbered the balloon alien and its spawn.

By the end, only four of Gary’s robots remained, all of them severely damaged, but they closed on the balloon alien and obliterated it.

“Hot damn,” Gary said as he watched the last alien fall.

“It worked? They’re all dead?” Chell asked.

“Looks that way. About to send in the clean-up crew, if they don’t mind?” Gary asked. Anya, Samaira, Harrison, and Mona all stepped out of the command dome and into the cold. Anya tensed as she altered the gravity around herself and Reggie wrapped himself around her tightly as she soared up and through the frigid air. She increased the heat around her and Reggie as she flew to keep her elemental warm.

Samaira wasn’t far behind her atop Chandrali, Mona behind her and held aloft by a horde of spectres, and Harrison…

Harrison had sprouted huge bat wings and propelled himself right alongside Anya. He winked at her and she frowned. While it was good to see another host using their powers instead of being terrified of them, she couldn’t help but wonder about the nature of them.

Time enough to think of that later. The blast site was in view now, and Anya slammed down just along the shore near the ruins of the balloon alien.

The Exterminator bots had set up a basic perimeter, weapons still at the ready, scanning arrays active. Nothing moved save for the gentle twitching of the bots’ antennae and the other hosts landing around the lake.

“Felix? Signals?” Anya asked.

“Zero,” Felix said. “They’re extremely dead.”

“Call Gary,” Anya said then smiled as Gary’s face appeared. “You did it, Gary! They’re all dead. No signals, according to Felix.”

Gary let out a sigh and grunted. Chell and Immonen high-fived each other in the background. “What about their data-streams?”

“I’ve acquired the streams and am working on decoding them now,” Felix said. “I’m sure my fellow AIs are doing the same.”

“What about experience?” Anya asked. “Gary gets it all, right?”

“Not necessarily. I don’t have full access how the menu determines experience, but everyone here was involved in the fight in some way. Gary probably got the most experience by far, but that doesn’t mean nobody else got any.”

“Gary?” Anya asked.

“Ah, Gizmo is telling me I have to be on-site and he has to pick up the alien signals directly,” Gary said, referring to his AI.

“How much did I get?” Anya asked.

“Three levels!” Felix said and Anya raised her eyebrows. She had expected maybe some progress on a single level but three whole levels for doing essentially nothing?

“Samaira? How many’d you get?” Anya asked.

“Three,” she confirmed.

“Mona? Harrison?” Anya asked.

“Two,” Mona said. “But I’m already at level 55, so my progress continues to slow down.”

“Three,” Harrison said.

Anya nodded. Immonen and Chell would need to be on-site for their AIs to pick up the information and award levels as well. Anya marched over to what remained of the wheelbarrow alien. It was a combination of metal, flesh, and some rubbery, wet substance.

“Got you bastards now, don’t we?” Anya said. Though in truth, she was a little disappointed. She had hoped to really test herself against these things now. It would be her first chance to well and truly cut lose. Every alien fight she’d been in before had been near a major city. Even the fight with the Chinese robots had been right next to Beijing.

Here, in the middle of nowhere, she’d have been able to unleash everything she had, let Reggie get as big as he wished, and unload the stress of the past several weeks.

Still, if it was between having to be side-lined, or the mere chance of more people winding up dead, she’d take the former. Anya had been able to avoid thinking too much about all the people who had died during the alien attack in Manhattan, and Carl and the cops in Prospect Park due to the flurry of activity she had been sent through. Meetings, interviews with the government, going to Alaska and completing side-objectives and doing skill research with Samaira, it had kept her mentally occupied.

But now, looking at the destroyed alien in front of her and considering the ease with which it happened, it looked like an end was in sight. There was hope it might all be over soon, and with little to no bloodshed on her side.

So why am I bummed out? Or worried? Anya thought.

“Hey kid,” Gary said and Anya started. She’d left her comms window open. “You okay? You look like somebody just told you your puppy died or something.”

“Fine. Fine, just…well, now I don’t have any excuse to cancel that interview, do I?” Anya said and tried a weak smile. “Maybe if I’d used up all my energy I could’ve just stayed in bed but now…”

“Now you gotta go do a little dance on national TV,” Gary said. “Don’t envy you kid. Still, once we get things wrapped up, we’re celebrating. How’s your regeneration handle booze?”

“A little too well, sadly,” Anya said.

“Hmm. Well, maybe we’ll figure something out. Assuming you’re up for some post-battle celebrations?”

“Didn’t feel like much of a battle, but hell yeah,” Anya said.

“See you soon. Me, Doc, and Chell are heading up now,” Gary said and closed the window.

“We did it!” Samaira cheered far off to Anya’s left. She was standing solidly on the waters of the lake and skipping around.

“Nasty wankers got it coming now. Renn will be thrilled,” Mona said and laughed as she brought up her own comms window.

“At this rate we might have them all whipped by the end of the week,” Harrison said.

Anya looked down at the dead alien again. Nothing with these freaks had ever been easy. This undisputed victory felt off. But the aliens were as dead as the frozen earth around them. Still, as her fellow hosts celebrated their win, she wondered, and worried.