Chell came huffing into the medical bay several minutes later. She glanced at Anya as she hurried past her straight to Immonen, and put her hands gently on the unconscious doctor’s temples. Anya wasn’t worried about the doctor grabbing Chell and harming her like he had with Gary, as his wrists and ankles were secured to his hospital bed with strong cuffs.

“Sorry! I came as fast…as I could…” Chell panted as she started to rub Immonen’s temples.

“It’s fine,” Anya said. “Just please tell me he’s going to be okay.”

“Yes,” Chell nodded and Anya almost collapsed with relief. “But…”

“But what?” Anya’s relief knotted back up into a snarl of wires in her gut at the simple “But.”

“But it’s going to take some work, and something really messed with him. Like, a lot. You were right to call me: this is psychic damage. And…look, I know he’s not your favorite, and I don’t really care for him either, but it would help if Renn were here. He’s stronger at this psychic stuff than I am.”

“Whatever it takes,” Anya said. “I’ll call him. You focus on Garreth.”

Anya brought up her comms menu while Chell continued to rub Immonen’s scalp. She tapped on Renn’s name, and saw he was currently in Paris. The connection beeped twice and then the reflective, golden surface of Renn’s helmet appeared in a window before her.

“Anya,” Renn said. “I’ve been informed of what happened at Gary’s lab. I’m glad you’re all unharmed.”

“Not quite,” Anya said and explained Immonen’s condition.

“I see. The doctor’s important. While it’s true any one of us could acquire his skills, it would still be a huge loss if anything happened to our most dedicated healer. As well as any information he might have about what happened. I’m in the middle of informing my, how do you say…handlers? Overseers? The government people who watch me. I need to complete my briefing on the incident at the lab with them, but then I will fly over. Until then, please have Chell continue to stabilize the doctor.”

“Right. Thank you,” Anya said. Renn only nodded in response and then closed his window. Anya looked up at Chell as the young woman closed her eyes and frowned. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing new,” Chell replied. “Mostly just curious.”

“Any idea what happened? How it took him over?”

“I’m at around level 50 for my psychic abilities. It would be possible for me to take command of a person against their will, but it would take all of my focus, and there’s no way I’d be able to make them appear natural. It’d be like trying to ride a pissed off rhino. Their consciousness would instinctively try to throw me off, resists control, maybe even cause brain damage to itself.”

“So it did try to mind control him? You’re sure?”

“Oh I’m sure. There’s damage here. Not a lot of physical damage, but psychic. There’s like, psychic tearing in his thoughts. Omega scrambled his conscious mind enough so that it wouldn’t try and throw it off when it took over. Cruel, and brutal, but effective.”

“Jesus. So he’s in a coma? Is he even still, y’know, himself?” Anya asked.

“Yeah he’s still in here. He’s just kinda all over the place. Up is down, front is back, inside is outside, mass confusion. I dunno if the doc has some kind of innate healing or anything, but him shutting down like this maybe saved his life. His subconscious is trying to re-order things while his consciousness is knocked out.”

“Thank god for that, then,” Anya said.

“I’m doing what I can to help,” Chell continued. “But it’s not much.”

“Just do what you can until Renn gets here,” Anya said. There was nothing for her to do here, no aliens to burn, nothing to smash, just the waiting and the quiet beeping of medical machines. She left Chell and Immonen, much as part of her wanted to stay and hover over the doctor just in case anything changed, she realized she would only distract Chell.

She went to the hangar and sat on the hood of her V-200, and called Tori on her phone.

“Anya? Thank god! I just heard about the factory,” Tori said. Anya went through the basics of the incident again and sighed when she was done.

“So now I just gotta wait for Renn to get here. Should be less than an hour or so, hopefully,” Anya said.

“Well this thing with the factory has really lit a fire under peoples’ asses in DC,” Tori said.

“I know it’s bad. It was a huge asset,” Anya said. “And they’ll probably blame me.”

“Screw ‘em if they do. You did what you could and everyone survived. But it’s not just the loss of the factory they’re mad about. MacDougal’s mad because now China has the largest output of advanced technology. They’re talking about coercing you and the other USAIF hosts into purchasing more advanced stuff from your RAC stores to shore up the shortcomings until Gary can get something back up.”

“What? Gary wasn’t even working with them in the first place, he was just loaning his tech to everybody, China included.”

“I guess maybe MacDougal or President Hanover might have been implying to China that Gary was in their pocket to keep China more cooperative.”

“So they just straight up lied? Fuck, why am I not surprised,” Anya rubbed her face. “Hey, should you be telling me this?”

“Probably not, but like I said, screw ‘em,” Tori said and Anya snorted.

“So they’re gonna try to force us to waste RAC on just…tech stuff so they can have a pissing contest with China?”

“It’s one idea that’s been raised. They’re mostly talking about getting Pan to do it since he hasn’t spent much of his RAC yet.”

“What? He’s spent loads,” Anya said. “He got some weird space alloys to combine with his scales and other body mods for protection. Cost a damn fortune.”

“Ah. His handler must have left that out of his report. The Joint Chiefs are under the impression he only buys ants.”

“He definitely does do that. But he doesn’t have the warchest he seems to think they do. Most of us have spent a fair amount. Granted, I got a shitload after Big Al. Couple million.”

“Holy hell, what’re you gonna get with that?” Tori asked.

“Well I was saving it for a spaceship,” Anya replied.

“No kidding?”

“Yeah. Once we kill Omega, that’s the last of them. But we still don’t know dick about who sent the menus. And there might be some hosts still out in space that need to know Earth is safe again. Assuming Omega didn’t fly off-planet to go hunt them down. And even the cheapest, most basic, one-seater ships are at least six-digits. But now…now I’m thinking if there’s any kinda anti-psychic tech in the RAC store, that’s where I need to put my money.

“I got a few basic charms, and Crown of the Firmament gives me some kinda passive defensive bonuses to stuff like that, but what happened to Garreth…it was spooky. Omega totally took him over, had complete access to his powers. And Omega was never even in the damn room.”

“No, but Doc touched that captured alien, right? And that’s when he started acting funny?”

“Yeah, so…god, I’m dumb. They’re all connected, the aliens. Or they were until Omega went off somewhere and severed the connection. But then when Garreth touched the captive, he had access to their network or whatever, and Omega reconnected and used that to take him over.”

“It sounds like that’s what happened. But since the captive alien died, does that mean there’s no way to hook back up with the alien network or whatever? Since it’s just Omega, now?”

“That would be my guess, but any guesses with these bastards is just shooting in the dark.”

“Well, don’t make contact with any aliens and you should be okay, right?”

“Ri——” Anya said then a jolt went through her. “I gotta go.”

She didn’t even hear Tori’s response. She dropped her phone and sprinted full-tilt back to the medical bay where Chell had her hands on Immonen’s recently-occupied head. The young woman glanced up when Anya entered, a bit surprised at her dynamic rush into the room.

“Are you all right? What’s going on?” Chell asked.

“Stop connecting to his mind!” Anya snapped and Chell drew her hands away and looked down at Immonen.

“Wh-what? What’d I do?”

“Omega! It used the connection earlier with the captured alien to get to Garreth. So it could use the same thing to get to you since it took hold of him.”

Chell blinked at Anya and then let out a sigh.

“Oh, that. No, it can’t do that. Not to me, anyway, and not through the doctor here,” Chell said and put her fingers back on Immonen’s temples.

“How do you know that?” Anya asked.

“Well one, my psychic abilities include shielding from psychic attacks. I’m not immune, but I have enough defense that I’d be dead from exhaustion or an aneurysm before something broke through. As for Dr. Immonen, he’s burned out, psychically. Doc isn’t built for psychic energy, so it was like running too much electricity through a machine that can’t handle it. If it had stayed much longer, it would have started to do permanent physical damage and then boom, no more doc. Even if it wanted to take him over again, it’d probably wind up killing him immediately.

“Besides, a psychic needs some kind of link to a target. Line of sight, physical proximity, a kind of mental link, or compatible psychic emissions. For the type of total control Omega was using, even at immense levels of power, it would need some kind of direct contact only. Line of sight or psychic emissions wouldn’t be enough.”

“What’s that last one? Psychic emissions?” Anya asked.

“Mmmm,” Chell bit her lip as she thought. “Kinda like blood-type. Sort of. Some blood-types only match with others of the same kind, but you could have a rare universal donor who’s compatible with a lot. There’s more types of personal psychic emissions than bloodtypes, and it’s not exactly like that, but it’s in the neighborhood. If one person’s psychic emissions match with another, it’s easier for them to sync up. Dr. Immonen and I…very different emission types. No compatibility.”

“Uh-huh,” Anya said and took a breath, then paused. What Chell said put her at ease, but Omega could have already taken her over and was lying to her. Or it could be about to take her over any second through Immonen and kill him, or——

“Anya,” Chell said. “I’m still me. Dr. Immonen is unconscious, but stable.”

“Were you reading my thoughts?” Anya asked.

“No, I told you, I can’t read thoughts that way. But I can feel your anxiety from across the room, and it doesn’t take a psychic to figure out what might be causing it so shortly after somebody got mind-controlled.”

Anya sighed and sat down in a chair nearby.

“You’re right. Immonen was acting a little off shortly after he touched the alien.”

“Control of that level would be incredibly difficult to maintain, especially if he was still behaving even a little bit normal.”

“He sounded mostly like himself until we got to Gary’s factory and he touched Gary. Then he went really weird. How was Omega able to make him still sound human?”

“Probably set his brain a few questions: explain to me what you would do in this scenario, that sort of thing, and then it just duplicated that. Or maybe it was still Immonen, but it just made him think he had to do something for some reason and saved direct control until the last minute.”

“All right,” Anya said and rubbed at her face. “All right. Mind-control is so fucked.”

“You’re telling me. I never want to try it. Even this is a bit much for me,” Chell said. “Uh, sorry, if I talked too much just now.”

“Don’t be silly. I asked. I’m glad you told me. I need to know,” Anya said. “Do you mind if I ask you something else?”

“I guess not,” Chell said and shrugged one shoulder.

“Why psychic stuff?”

“Was never good at talking,” Chell said. “Talking to new people, or just in general. Always was worried I was bugging people. Sometimes couldn’t tell when people were serious or making jokes or…a lot of things. But I needed something to defend myself and my family from the aliens, and I wasn’t sure if this menu signal thing was a type of brainwave or what, so…psychic stuff.”

“Makes sense,” Anya said. “I’ll let you work. I’m gonna go keep an eye out for Renn.”

“Okay. I’ll be here. Thank you, for uh, talking to me.”

“Yeah, any time,” Anya said, and smiled as she left to go and await Renn’s arrival.

Renn arrived not in Mona’s Gothic carriage, but in a white and gold sphere of roughly the same size. He and a tall, broad-shouldered man in a red hood and spiked gauntlets emerged. Anya hadn’t seen Kan since Beijing. The man’s hood was a black void, far beyond what normal shadows were capable of. He was significantly warmer than the average human, and Anya could sense that the difference was due to his blood, which moved more quickly through him.

“Any improvement?” Renn asked as he approached.

“Chell says there’s been a little, but nothing significant,” Anya replied.

“I see,” Ren replied and said nothing else until he entered the medical bay and stood over the doctor. Chell looked like she wanted to go hide in the nearest cupboard, but stood fast over Immonen and continued her healing process.

“May I?” Renn asked her.

“I think it’s why you were called, so, sure,” she replied, and Renn touched Immonen’s forehead.

“Yes, an attack. Total control. Brute force,” Renn said. “He’s not as mixed up as I thought he might be. Is that you, Ms. Park?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said.

“Not bad,” Renn replied. “I’d like you to step away, please.”

“Why?” Anya asked.

“For the same reason you don’t want too many chefs in the kitchen,” Renn replied as Anya stepped forward. Kan met her step, and positioned himself at an angle as if to intercept her if she moved further. Anya glared at Kan but didn’t push him.

“If it’ll help Garreth, do what you need to do,” Anya said. “But if you hurt him…”

“Dr. Immonen will not come to harm. He is a good man,” Kan said in his deep voice.

“I’m not about to harm the man most capable of healing, and giving us direct insight into the deadliest alien,” Renn said. “Please, this will only take a moment.”

“They’re telling the truth,” Chell said, and Anya stood down. Chell removed her hands from Immonen’s head and stepped away as Renn moved forward.

“Only a moment, I promise,” he said, and then he placed his fingertips on Immonen’s temples. For a moment, nothing happened and Anya was about to ask him if he was doing anything.

Then Renn changed somehow. He didn’t really move, and there was no obvious shift in his appearance, but his whole body appeared to shimmer, or vibrate for an instant. Chell gasped and backed away until she was in the far corner, her eyes huge and shocked as she looked at Renn.

Whatever than change in Renn was, it lasted less than a few seconds, and he stepped away from Immonen, appearing as he always did.

“He’ll be fine,” Renn said, but he sounded a bit winded. “He may have a bit of memory loss for the last few days, but nothing severe. I would suggest you let him sleep, let his mind settle on its own. Once he’s awake, he should be able to see to his own injuries well enough.”

“What did you do?” Anya asked.

“What Ms. Park was doing, just faster,” Renn replied. Chell looked at Anya and nodded, though she stayed as far away from Renn as the room would allow.

“I see. Thank you,” Anya said.

“My pleasure. And if I’m being honest, entirely self-serving. We will need the doctor more than ever in the days ahead.”

Anya knew he was referring to Omega, but something in his tone piqued her interest.

“You know something?” she asked.

“Another two villages have gone silent. Both of them coastal. One in Indonesia, another in Egypt. Much larger populations than the others, but same result: populations dragged or walked out to sea, weighted down and drowned. Likely mind control.”

“God damn it,” Anya said. “Why?”

“My guess? Practice,” Renn said. “An attempt to probe and understand the human psyche, then dispose of the experimental group. This happened late last night, prior to the attack on Dr. Immonen.”

“But Chell was saying total control was extremely difficult, and required some kind of physical contact or link. How could it do that to all those people? It hasn’t been on Earth based on the data stream we got from the captive alien once it died,” Anya said.

“It might not have been attempting total control on the various villages, maybe just…poking around. See what its limits were with long-range. I can’t say for certain. But I think it’s clear it was always intending to use the doctor and knew Gary’s factory was a problem. You asked me if I knew something. I might. Do you know how long it will take Gary to build a new factory?”

“The first time when he was starting from nothing, it took him weeks. Almost a month,” Anya said. “Now, he still has most of his construction bots, and probably more resources to draw on, a higher skill level in everything. I’d be surprised if it took him more than a week.”

“Then what I know is that Omega will conduct its attack, whatever it is, before then. It isn’t just some beast. It isn’t even like the others. It will strike in a week or less.”