Anya arrived in Manila to meet with a USAIF representative, as well as local Filipino government officials, and a few other hosts. Galtero, the Brazilian mecha pilot, was there. So was Amahle, the South African martial artist. All three of them were sent to Bulalacao Island to investigate a tiny village of no more than a few hundred people on the southern coast.

“The director thinks it’s Alien Omega,” the USAIF agent said. Some guy in his thirties.

Not Riley.

Not Ramierez either. Anya hadn’t heard from the former NYPD officer in weeks. After Riley’s fate, she was hesitant to get too close to any normal people she didn’t already know well.

“She thinks Alien Omega is at this island and she’s only sending three of us?” Anya asked.

“Ah, I think we can handle it,” Galtero said. “I leveled up like crazy after Alpha.” Galtero wore his tight pilots suit with a sizable number of gadgets at his belt and in his large, chrome wrist guards and matching boots.

“So did I,” Anya said. She had gone up to level 72, just 3 levels shy of picking a third class or specializing. She hadn’t picked any new skills, just leveled the ones she already had further. But even with her new level of strength…”Even if I was level 100 I wouldn’t want to tackle Omega with anything less than ten of us. All of us would be better, if we could help it.”

“I want a piece of the last one,” Amahle said. She was shorter than Anya, but looked even stronger. She wore some kind of flowing, billow top with short sleeves that exposed the powerful muscles beneath her dark skin. Ornate Her fluffy black hair was pulled into two poofy buns secured with yellow and red ribbons.”I’m still irritated you killed Al without me and Bernard.”

“Too slow,” Galtero said with a shrug. Amahle frowned at the younger man and he laughed.

The hosts had all gathered inside Manila City hall, where the USAIF agent, Bradley or Bradford or Brown or something, had handed them packets of information. Galtero had read his in less than three seconds, but Anya and Amahle took a bit longer. Anya already had gotten the gist of it during her ride from Honolulu: people vanished, no signs of attack, Omega suspected. Investigate and report.

As several such incidents had all happened across the globe, the hosts were all being split up with other country’s teams, so everybody could share the info. That was fine with Anya: she was still mildly irritated at Samaira insisting on being called “Captain.”

“Understand?” Agent Brown-something asked. Anya blinked and looked at the agent.

“Yeah, go there, check it out,” Anya said.

“And do not engage if Alien Omega is there. Keep it in sight but avoid fighting at all costs until back-up can arrive.”

“Can’t that doctor find it?” Amahle asked. “Just touch the captive alien and be done with it.”

“He’s been trying,” Anya said. “When he isn’t saving people. It’s always the same: the captive alien is cut off or something, no outgoing lines of communication.”

“Hmmph,” Amahle said. “Cowards. Invade our planet and then don’t even have the spines to face us.”

“We promise: no engagement,” Galtero said with a smile as he gave the agent a wave and left Manila city hall. His giant mecha hovered over the building outside and had drawn every tourist and idle civilian for miles. Cameras flashed and phones recorded the mecha as it floated, still and silent and over fifteen-stories tall, over City Hall. Galtero touched something on his belt and floated up into the air.

“I had my AI mark it on the map,” he said. “Race you there!”

Amahle didn’t bother to respond. Pale yellow light glowed around her and she shot up into the sky and through the clouds like a comet going back to the heavens. The clouds parted around her as she rocketed through them, reduced to a tiny speck in just a few seconds.

“Works for me!” Anya said and launched herself after Amahle, Galtero not far behind.

Galtero won the race, but mostly because Amahle and Anya were too focused on each other and overshot their destination. Galtero landed first and declared himself the winner, accompanied by his mecha playing victory music while he danced on the tropical beach.

When Anya landed, she thought the music couldn’t be more out of place shook her head at Galtero. He glanced around the small village and immediately cut the music and the dancing. Amahle landed beside Anya and frowned.

The village might as well have been a graveyard, and the houses its tombstones.

It’s worse than a graveyard, Anya thought. At least a graveyard is supposed to feel dead.

And the village did feel dead, but it looked like it shouldn’t be. Granted, it wasn’t exactly a modern habitation, but the buildings were bright, obviously lived in, cars were in the streets. Somewhere, a wind chime tinkled as a breeze came in off the ocean. It looked like a paradise: a quaint little place on the edge of a white-sanded beach, flanked by emerald trees and low mountains. The smell of food still lingered in the air, alongside that of some fish hung up on lines near the water’s edge, alongside the scent of the ocean itself.

Anya had seen some police vehicles and USAIF cars along the perimeter of the village, but no local officers or agents had actually entered the village. A few of Gary’s DragonDrones could be seen overhead, all of them scanning the island and the oceans around. A few smaller drones, some from Gary’s factory and some from China, hovered along the streets, scanning beams passing over homes and cars and roads, all deserted.

“What do they expect us to do?” Galtero said as he turned in a slow circle. “My mecha has basic scanning equipment, but it can just check for life-signs. But anybody with at least one eye could tell you that this place is deserted.”

“Not just deserted. Something happened here,” Amahle said.

“What do you mean?” Anya asked. Her heat sense told her that they were the only living things in the village, but she didn’t sense anything else. It was a warm, sunny day on a tropical island. Perfectly normal aside from the deserted village.

“I can sense ki: energy flow and pathways. It’s part of how I fight, but it has other uses. Like sensing living things, or naturally occurring leylines.”

“What’s a ley line?” Galtero asked. Amahle rolled her eyes.

“Like a highway for all kinds of energy. Ki, aetheric, necromantic, whatever you want. You, Big Red,” Amahle said and nodded at Anya. “You have a shitload of something coming out of you. Not ki. Not aether.”

“Flame, Light, and Gravity Dominions,” Anya said.

“No idea about that, but it’s a lot. Anyway, everybody has something coming out of them, a little ki. Some more, some less, but always some. When a lot of people get together, make a village, the collective amount becomes more than just the sum of its individual parts. This place, all the ki is…weird. It’s like somebody drained a well and then poisoned the dirt.”

“So not a case of people just randomly deciding to move, then?” Anya asked.

“Definitely not,” Amahle shook her head. “The energy disruption is wide, so it’s hard to pinpoint anything, but a tail, for lack of a better word, goes into the ocean.”

“Big Al favored the oceans,” Galtero said. “Same deal, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Anya said.

“I’ll check it out. I got some camera drones I can send down to scan the depths,” Galtero said and flew back up to his mecha’s cockpit. A few seconds later, dozens of tiny, spherical drones emerged from tiny compartments. Each one was about the size of a tangerine, and zipped down into the ocean where Amahle pointed. Anya soared out over the waves and Amahle followed, both women looking down at the passing cerulean expanse as they flew over.

“I got nothing,” Anya said.

“Me neither,” Amahle said. “Not even fish.”

Anya frowned. She wasn’t an expert on aquatic life, but she didn’t think fish were warm blooded. She hadn’t thought much at an absence of heat signatures. But if Amahle could sense life energy, and she was saying that there was nothing in the entire area around them…

“I think it’s safe to say this was an alien,” Anya said.

“Or a host,” Amahle replied. Anya looked sideways at the South African woman.

“What makes you say that?” Anya asked.

“Because some hosts are crazy,” Amahle said. “They blow the Russian countryside for fun. They murder rich people in grotesque and horrifying ways. They use a volcano as a weapon next to a crowded metropolis.”

“Hey——” Anya started to say.

“I don’t think it was you that did this. But you get my point. When you have power like us, it becomes easy to use it, to want to use it, to push yourself. You like the fighting, don’t you?”

Anya huffed, and a few licks of flame curled out of her nose.

“Nothing wrong with it. I do too. I enjoy the feeling of making my fists stronger than meteors and punching some out space freak a mile into the sky. It’s fun. I like feeling the ebb and flow of life around me, of flying like this, getting another level up, getting more skills and doing it again.

“But it’s become easy to lose perspective. To forget what I used to be, and still am, really: just a woman. Another person on this rock. Same as everybody else.”

“I don’t think I’m better than anyone,” Anya said. She thought of Samaira telling her to address her as “Captain,” again.

“Maybe not, but you can see how others might?” Amahle asked. Anya paused, then nodded. People thought money or political office made them better than the plebes. Of course there would be some hosts who would see themselves as elevated, better, on another level. Even if a host wasn’t overtly disdainful of human life, they wouldn’t have to be.

Zoya just didn’t seem to care about anything but explosions.

Harrison sounded obsessed with getting to new levels of powers.

Mona acted like she just wanted to have fun and hang anybody else.

Renn…Renn had whatever he had. He had been helpful so far, invaluable in saving people on Oahu with his clones clearing the area, just as Mona had, but she still had the sense he was just waiting, watching, learning.

And she had almost lost control of a volcano in her pursuit of killing Big Al. If her Battle Aura skill hadn’t been enough, she would have lost control. Honolulu would’ve been destroyed. Thousands would have died.

Anya sighed.

“Yeah, I can see,” Anya said.

“So I hope it’s an alien, but it could be one of us. And if it is, they’ll be sorry,” Amahle said.

“How do you know it’s not me?” Anya asked. Amahle snorted and laughed a deep, loud, honest laugh.

“No offense, but this is not your style,” she said. “If the village was a smoking crater, you’d be at the top of my list.”

Anya laughed back. “True enough.”

“Hey, I think I got something,” Galtero said in the comms window. The window widened to show the inside of the mecha’s cockpit and wide display the showed the bottom of the ocean.

“Yeah, something’s here. Somewhere in the area,” Amahle said as she floated to a stop a few feet above the water. “Hard to pinpoint. It’s all scrambled.”

“Scrambled?” Anya asked.

“There’s natural life energy here, but it’s contaminated. Not gone, like in the village, but just messed up,” she replied.

“Here, something on the bottom,” Galtero said. The camera was a hundred feet or so below the surface, where the water started to turn from cerulean to a darker indigo. The camera had some kind of filter that made it easier to see, and revealed several swaying, narrow shapes.

“What are those?” Amahle asked as she widened her comms window to get a bigger picture.

“I’ll send you some light,” Anya said, and was briefly reminded of the train attack near the Bahamas. She sent a spear of glowing light down, and saw the glow appear on Galtero’s screen.

“Dear god,” Amahle gasped. Anya paled and her stomach turned.

The narrow swaying shapes were people: men, women, and children. They had tied heavy objects to their waists or hands and walked down into the ocean, or been pulled by some other force to this distance. Their faces and bodies were bloated and pale from the water and death.

“Felix, call Samaira,” Anya said. “Tell her we found out where the villagers went.”