One additional host from Team Three died due to some kind of unknown poison while waiting for Yai to regain her stamina. That brought the total host fatalities up to thirteen. The datastreams had been deciphered by the AIs by the end of the day and confirmed their suspicions: four of the strongest aliens from Big Al’s pack of dozens had followed the other packs of weaker aliens towards the decoys, but kept their distance. They had waited until the hosts moved in, sacrificing the weakest alien in the packs to create the death signal and act as a lure. The strongest aliens had teleported or otherwise moved the rest of the pack away from the attack sites, then waited for the hosts to arrive before springing their counter-ambush.

It could have been much, much worse.

If not for Samaira’s healing and the advanced medical tech from Gary and Immonen, Team One would have lost approximately half its members to blood loss, shock, or poison. Francis, Kemuel, Alejandro, and even Harrison had all suffered serious wounds or other injuries that they had barely recovered from. The other teams had similar amounts of injuries but Immonen and Yai had been ready to save almost everybody.

Yai had cursed herself in Thai, which her silver orb refused to translate, and gone to the family of the host she had failed to save to offer apologies. The families of all dead hosts were being compensated by the various world governments, and the fallen were honored, but only briefly.

The datastreams had shown other, far more distressing news.

Big Al and his horde of remaining aliens were still together, still roaming around the Pacific Ocean. Numerous shipping vessels and even passenger ships had gone missing. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened to them. As a result, all shipping and boats were anchored at their respective ports, which held up billions and billions of dollars of goods, to the dismay of many.

Even more troubling than that, however, was Alien Omega.

It had vanished.

“What the hell do you mean it vanished?” Director MacDougal asked in the Ready Room of Gary’s factory the following day. “This is the alien datastream we’re looking at right? I thought they could track each other perfectly.”

The Ready Room was not as busy as it had been prior to the attacks. A handful of government representatives were present as well as a smattering of hosts. The rest of the known hosts had been dispersed all along the Pacific coastline, or were patrolling for any sign of Omega.

Only MacDougal, Agent Riley, and General Johnson were present from America. General Huang from China was back, as well as Admiral Jeffries from Australia, and General Sato from the Japanese Self-Defense Force. Each of them sat among a few ministers or representatives from their countries, along with their respective hosts. Li Qiu sat at attention beside Huang, while Brody and Cooper lounged next to Admiral Jeffries, and Jiro loomed behind General Sato.

Anya had just come back from her vigil along the Pacific, 50 miles west of San Francisco. She should have been getting some rest but she didn’t want to miss anything. She took a seat near Cooper and Brody, who both nodded at her and smiled as they raised their joints to her in a silent salute. Gary had never left the factory and was seated in the back row, tapping at a screen. Pan had been sitting near Gary, but quickly waddled over to Anya when she entered the room and took a seat.

“They can track each other perfectly,” Gary said. “So that means Omega isn’t missing, it’s purposefully hiding.”

“How is it doing that?” General Huang asked.

“Couldn’t tell you. If it’s their own signals, maybe they can cancel their ability to trace each other, just like hosts can remove somebody from their contact list,” Gary said.

“Then why haven’t they done this sooner? If they had all removed themselves from tracking we’d have never been able to find them, and they’d have the element of surprise,” Admiral Jeffries said.

“It does sound pretty fuckin’ stupid,” Brody said.

“Maybe they needed the signals to group up like they did. Maybe they wanted us to come to them so they could kill us, but underestimated our ability to fight back. Maybe it never occurred to them until now. Maybe they cannot delete the signals and there is something else going on,” Li Qiu suggested. “They are aliens. Why do they ‘disguise’ themselves in such bizarre shapes? Why a hundred other things. It is better to focus on ‘where,’ for now, I think.”

Anya hadn’t heard Li Qiu talk much on the scant occasions she’d been able to speak with her. “Why,” was a burning question for her for pretty much everything that had happened since late February. But she had to agree: “Where,” was the much more pressing concern.

“Knowing why might let us know where the damn thing went,” General Johnson said as he rubbed his chin.

“Space?” Anya asked and raised her eyebrows. Suddenly everybody was looking at her. Even with the large room being mostly empty, it was still a significant number of people to suddenly be so intently focused on her. Pan was closest, his long snout inches away from the side of her face.

“What kinda space?” Pan asked.

“Uh, the outer kind. Sorry, outer space. Up there,” Anya pointed.

“The fuckin’ ceiling?” Brody asked. Cooper laughed and blew a cloud of smoke in the shark’s face.

“You dense dickhead,” Cooper said. “She means off the planet. Above the sky.”

“You’ve had too much of that, I think,” Brody said and snatched Cooper’s joint away and began to smoke both his own and his friend’s at once.

“I’m serious!” Anya said. “When the aliens first invaded, there were several host signals that went off-world. They got the fastest spaceship they could probably afford from the RAC store and ran. Felix confirmed it. Tell them, Felix.”

“It’s true!” Felix said. "The alien datastreams had only general positional data for tracking the hosts at that time, but the data did show multiple signals expanding before disappearing. The only option for this anomaly is that the hosts put an immense amount of distance between the aliens and themselves, greater than what is capable on Earth. So yeah, outer space!”

“Did it run away? I would like that,” Pan said.

“They have not shown a predisposition for retreat,” General Sato said. Jiro slammed his enormous fist on the table beside the general, as if furious that the strongest alien was no longer in sight.

“That’s not entirely true,” Gary said. “The first encounter I had with these things did pull back and run away when we killed its buddy and had it out-numbered.”

“But that was still on Earth. And it only did that to reshape itself to counter you and Samaira,” Anya said.

“These creatures originated from somewhere. Maybe it is returning to its homeworld to report,” General Huang said.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Admiral Jeffries said.

“I do. Bring the bastards on,” Brody said.

“There might be more of them?” Pan asked and his voice squeaked on the last syllable. Anya patted his head.

“I’ll try to come up with something to scan the area around Earth and beyond. It’ll take a while. Hey Huang, you mind if I co-opt some of your assembly lines for faster production?” Gary asked. The Chinese General grunted and nodded.

“If it will help in hunting the aliens down, anything,” he said. Anya saw Gary’s eyebrows raise at Huang’s immediate compliance, as well as a subtle smirk beneath his mustache.

“Much obliged, General,” he said.

“Do you have something that can scan for the alien signals yet?” Anya asked him.

“Not yet, but…wait, Doc didn’t tell you?” Gary asked.

“Garreth hasn’t told me anything since shortly after the attack and he was swarmed with healing. Is he okay?” she asked.

“Doctor Immonen is fine,” Director MacDougal said. “Better than fine. He’s ecstatic. Team Two managed to capture an alien alive.”

“What?” Anya asked and shot up out of her chair so quickly that Pan squeaked in surprise and curled into a ball.

“General?” Li Qiu asked Huang. He nodded.

“I was not informed of this,” General Sato said and frowned. Jiro rose out of the two chairs he had to sit in to accommodate his weight and size and took one thumping step toward Huang before Sato snapped something at him in Japanese. Jiro cracked his knuckles and stepped back but remained standing.

“Nobody told us either. You fellas starting to keep secrets?” Admiral Jeffries asked.

“Nothing of the sort,” Huang replied. “But containment took precedence over communication. Li Qiu alerted Mr. Hendricks immediately and he and some of our engineers and another engineering host from Europe set about creating a secure prison for the creature at once. General Johnson was notified since we have discussed bringing the alien to America for additional containment within Mr. Hendricks’s factory here.”

“A living alien? In captivity?” Anya asked. “How?”

“Ms. Zoya’s explosions. Team Two was the only group not using technological means to destroy the aliens. This lead to Ms. Zoya being somewhat ah, less precise and over-enthusiastic with her attacks. Her power is substantial but…erratic,” General Huang said. “One of the lesser aliens was partially consumed by the explosion, but survived. Host AIs have confirmed it is still emitting a signal and living, but its power is reduced. It put up a fight but was so weakened from damage that it was able to be secured.”

“It’s gotta be a trap, right?” Anya asked. Jiro clapped his shovel-sized hands, nodded, and pointed at Anya. “This whole thing was a set-up for us to get ambushed by the strongest aliens we’ve seen. This is just some other ploy. I mean, bringing it here? With Gary’s factory, all the scrambling jammers? The number of hosts and government people that are constantly here? It’d be my primary target if I wanted us dead.”

“That’s what I told them,” Gary said. “No way in hell I’m letting that thing in my factory. But I have started construction of a special holding facility in the Mojave, with Johnson’s go ahead. It’ll be fine there and I can scan it and Doc can do whatever tests he wants.”

“That will have to do,” Huang said. “But the temporary containment procedures we have in place now are no guarantee that the alien will not escape.”

“If it gets away we’ll kill it. Better to have it run than ruin everything,” Gary said.

“Has Garreth tried scanning the alien and using that link he mentioned to just find Omega that way?” Anya asked.

“The Doctor has already proposed as much. However, until we can be 100% certain of his safety and that the alien will not get away during such an attempt, he is being kept away. When it is secure in Mr. Hendricks’s Mojave facility, we will see. When will you have your containment building ready, by the way?” Huang asked.

“Six hours,” Gary said. “Got most of my construction crew on it. I could speed it up, but I don’t like to cut corners.”

“No corner cutting, please,” Huang said.

“And I’m guessin’ we just use the good doctor to find Big Al the same way?” Jeffries asked. “Our Navy has endured more than our fair share of casualties since this bastard made the Pacific its home base.”

“That’s the idea, I’d wager,” Johnson said. “We just need to wait six hours for Hendricks to finish his containment facility and then Immonen can scan the captured alien we do have. Find Alpha, hit it with everything we got. If it survives anti-matter bombs and the like then the hosts can charge the damn thing with robotic and military back-up.”

Gary nodded as the room was filled with constant muttering, then additional nods of agreement. Jiro clapped his hands and pointed at Johnson and gave him a thumbs up. Brody grinned at Jiro and pointed between himself and the huge man.

“You and me, mate. Front line,” Brody said.

The only ones who seemed hesitant were Huang and Li Qiu.

“Omega may be in hiding so it can ambush us later. If we expose ourselves to all of them, we could be mobbed. Even with all the hosts assembled, I am uncertain about our odds against Alpha and Omega at once, to say nothing of the pack Alpha carries with it.”

“Then maybe die. But alien die also. Good,” a surprisingly gentle, heavily accented voice said and Anya glanced around the room. It took her a moment to realize that it was Jiro. He still had his full helmet on so she couldn’t see his mouth moving, but it was definitely him. General Sato spoke quickly to him in Japanese and Jiro nodded.

“Are we confident that Dr. Immonen will also be able to track down Omega’s location?” General Sato asked.

“Whenever I’ve spoken to him, it sounded like the only thing he needed to follow the connection the aliens had was time. And not that much of it. So, pretty confident, I s’pose,” Gary said.

“We’ll reconvene tomorrow at 0700 hours, local time, after Mr. Hendricks has finished the containment, the alien has been moved, and Dr. Immonen will prepare to scan it. I’d also suggest that any country with psychics send them to perform any kind of mental scans as well,” Director MacDougal said.

“Agreed,” Huang said.

“See everybody tomorrow. God willing, we’ll be ready to kill this damn thing and save our planet,” General Johnson said. “Dismissed.”