It wasn’t over once the phaoronic cobra was defeated. It wasn’t like the movies where you kill the boss and everything else just falls over in one fell swoop. There were still thousands of lesser aliens outside the factory, and more in China and in major cities. Anya had just enough time to make sure Gary, Immonen, Bernard, Samaira, Pan, and Chell were alive, and then she went right back intro the fray. Between her own small army of clones and Reggies, plus Renn’s massive force, plus the other hosts and remaining factory defenses, it was a decisive victory. In less than an hour, the factory was clear of alien life.

“I can’t stay,” Anya said to Immonen as she and the other hosts gathered in the medical ward. Gary was unconscious, despite Immonen’s healing. The place he had been stabbed still looked wounded, even though the skin had healed in place without a scar and all of the organs were fully repaired. Samaira had almost died moments before Anya’s arrival, and was quite weak from keeping herself alive, and Pan was passed out, beyond exhausted from summoning hundreds upon hundreds of golems.

“I know. There’s not much more you can do here anyway. The factory is already rebuilding itself and new Exterminators are coming off the line. A few of the turrets outside have finished repairing themselves, and the rest will be back online by tonight. Until then, we should be able to handle ourselves if we get any more visitors,” Immonen said. “I’ll heal everyone as much as I can, at least enough to fight, if need be.”

“And the General…?” Anya asked.

“Johnson is dead. He was dead the second that thing got him. I’m sorry,” Immonen said and Anya nodded. She had started to grow fond of the old Marine, and now he was just another casualty. Still, it could have been so much worse. So, so much worse.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Anya said, then gave Immonen a hug, a quick peck on the lips, and then she hurried out and away toward the nearest exit. She saw a few figures ahead of her: Renn, Mona, Kan, and Jiro.

The first three looked as they always had, but Jiro looked a bit different. He’d always been tall and imposing, a wall of muscle and hi-tech black body armor. However, a few of the pieces of armor had fallen off. The skin beneath the armor was like black stone, but cracked with a network of hairline fractures that allowed ferocious red light to seep through.

Jiro turned his helmeted head to face her, the opaque black visor giving no hint as to the features beneath. He looked down at Anya, then back to Renn and the others.

“Mona tells me you were quite eager to back out of our arrangement,” Renn said to Kan. The man in the red hood shrugged. Mona glared at him while she held Renn’s arm with both of hers.

“I thought you were dead. That was the arrangement. Can you blame me?” Kan asked.

“A little, yes,” Renn replied. “Only because you put yourself above others in the face of the invasion. That seems like something one of your targets would do, no?”

“Don’t you dare compare me to them,” Kan said.

“Then don’t give me cause to.”

“Fine. You’re back. Now what?” Kan asked.

“Now,” Renn said and glanced up at Anya, “we finish the rest. I think China is our next immediate destination, yes?”

“I was on my way,” Anya said and Renn nodded.

“Then we’ll be off.”

“We will,” Mona added and Renn shook his head.

“Can you even summon a single ghoul right now?” he asked.

“I can summon several.”

“And I’m sure you’d likely pass out from the strain or have only moderate control over them. Stay here, recover, guard. When the doctor has seen to you, join us. I saw the dinosaur bones outside. Very impressive. I’m surprised you’re able to stand after that.”

“I’ll be fine,” Mona said and frowned.

“As will I. The worst of them are dead. The rest will be easy,” he said. “Kan, how are you on blood?”

“My supply is low, but recovering quickly enough. Don’t worry about me,” he said.

“Jiro?” Renn asked the towering Japanese man. He pointed at his exposed arm of midnight stone with the crimson cracks of light, and flexed it. The rocky musculature bulged and swelled and he gave Renn a thumbs up.

“You can come with us then. The faster we get this done, the better,” Renn said, then gave Mona a kiss on the cheek before they separated.

“There’s a jet that will take us to Beijing in about twenty minutes,” Renn said.

“Good enough,” Anya replied and glanced at Jiro. “Did an alien do something to your arm?”

“No. Always this way, now,” Jiro said. “Am fine.”

Anya shrugged as they entered the hangar and climbed into the jet. It was all automated, and all Renn had to do was hit a button for Beijing, and then they were gone.

Mopping up the rest of the aliens over the next week was almost comically easy for a few reasons.

First, without the phaoronic cobra and that red light, all the hosts could communicate with each other again and have their maps function normally. This made it a trivial matter to alert other hosts to alien locations or where back-up was needed. The other aliens all seemed far less focused and more disorganized once the cobra was dead, sometimes even attacking each other.

The second was the sudden appearance of several independent hosts at major invasion sites. Anya was fighting a particularly nasty wave of aliens in Barcelona when Felix alerted her to more incoming hosts. The fighting was so hectic that she didn’t get a good look at any of them and was mostly just thankful for the back-up. She had hoped to go offer them her thanks in person, but when the fighting was over, they all left as one, rocketing into the sky and out of sight.

“Felix, can you show me the data from one of the aliens we just killed?” Anya asked. “Specifically around the time those other hosts showed up and then left.”

“You bet! I’m decoding the smallest data cache now!” Felix said. Samaira landed beside them, looking exhausted and strangely out of place on the battlefield without Chandrali beside her.

“What’s going on? Did you know those other hosts?” Samaira asked as she looked up into the sky.

“No. I’m pretty sure they were independent. The one’s who’ve been hiding,” Anya replied.

“All done!” Felix said and displayed Anya’s map. She and Samaira studied it with growing confusion. The alien data streams tracked the hosts far more successfully than Anya’s menu could, and provided approximate locations for all hosts across the entire planet, even if she didn’t have their contact information. During the battle, dozens of signals appeared on Earth, then left just as quickly. While accurate, the alien tracking systems couldn’t successfully follow a host once they went off-world. Anya had seen it before: a host’s signal expanded until it encompassed to much of a possible area and then vanished. It had happened before when several hosts had abandoned Earth entirely and ran for space.

“They came back?” Anya muttered.

“More than that, they came back together? All within minutes of each other, all at major invasion sites,” Samaira pointed out.

“That’s some serious coordination,” Anya said and Samaira nodded.

“Speaking of, we need to get in contact with Pan and Gary. They’re heading the defense of Santiago. Still a hundred or so aliens in the area. We’ll put a pin in this and bring it up to the others later,” Samaira said, then flew away. Anya closed her menu, then soared after her.

Thankfully, Gary’s factory had had enough time to recover that it provided the third reason the mop-up operations were going so well: it was pumping out mechanized back-up troops for the rest of the planet, and from there it just snowballed. The extra troops allowed hosts to gain a foothold in certain areas and make alien hunting easier, which allowed Gary to focus more on troop production rather than defense, which allowed the hosts to hunt more, and so on.

It took just a little over a week to rout every last alien, but that was because they had been driven back into hiding, just as they had months ago when they’d first appeared.

And then it was done.

Repeated scans of the planet showed no signs of alien life or extraterrestrial interference.

The aliens were dead, and for the first time since February, Earth belonged solely to those that called it home.

They had won.

What followed after that was a bit of a blur for Anya. There were reports of several hosts and other fighters who had been injured or killed in the last battles, but the numbers were, thankfully, low. The only ones who had died that Anya was familiar with were Cooper, Li Qiu, General Johnson, and Chandrali. There were more dead, about a dozen hosts in total and thousands of ordinary military. The number of severely injured was much higher. Samaira, Bernard, Gary, Chell, Galterro, Brody, and pretty much all the hosts who had been in Beijing.

Chell’s injury, while not physical, was still very troubling. Her menu showed that her skills had all vanished, dropped down to zero save for the ones that had come to her naturally prior to the menus. And even those had taken a dip. Her English skill was the most obvious one, with her often slurring words or forgetting what other words meant. Even her walking skill had lost a few points, and she frequently tripped or stumbled or banged her shins on things.

Gary’s injury was more troubling still. The spot in his abdomen where he had been stabbed continued to show as a huge bruise. Neither Immonen nor Yai detected anything wrong with him, but the discoloration remained, and Gary complained of cramps. Nothing too bad, he said, just the occasional pinch in his side.

The sudden appearance of dozens of independent hosts arriving from and then retreating back to space raised some eyebrows when Anya and Samaira brought it up. But the other hosts hadn’t done anything except kill aliens and leave, and it was assumed they just wanted to help while maintaining their privacy. MacDougal seemed concerned with the organization the roughly 50 hosts had showed in their attacks. It spoke to some other common thread beyond just wanting to stay under the radar. There was no sign of any activity in the space around Earth, or the Moon, and with all the necessary clean-ups and restoration projects needed across the planet, the brief intervention of the independent hosts was put on a back-burner.

Li Qiu was given a hero’s send-off in China that lasted a full day, and the rest of the planet celebrated her as one of its greatest heroes. Cooper had a holiday named after him in Australia, and Brody celebrated the event by drinking several bars out of their alcohol for the day. General Johnson was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, and his funeral was attended by President Hanover, Director MacDougal, all the American hosts, and a number of other world leaders.

Anya and Renn were hailed as the heroes of Earth, responsible for shattering most of Willis, millions of aliens, and their leader. Both of them were showered with accolades from every nation and given honorary citizenships, titles, and more. There were parades, parties, interviews, photoshoots, and more.

It was inevitable, but Anya’s real name came out during the whole thing. She was no longer “Warden,” she was Anya Nowicki, Savior of Earth. Pretty much all of the hosts had their real identities revealed, either through their own wishes or a leak in the government chain of command due to the hectic nature and reduced security now that the invasion was done. For the most part, nobody seemed to mind too much.

Renn was one of the few who kept his identity hidden. Yai was another, and Kan. Gary stayed hidden, even though his identity wasn’t any sort of secret to anybody that already knew him. When Immonen was exposed as the man who had been healing the sick and injured across Europe, he was promptly nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and his old hospital in Finland was flooded with donations and letters of thanks.

Better than that were the personal parties. She drank with Tori, as she had promised. She had an all-too-brief reunion with Immonen with the promise for more when things calmed down. Pan had embraced her leg and refused to let go for hours until she pinky-promised she wouldn’t be leaving again anytime soon. She, Pan, Gary, and Samaira had all gone back to the little diner in Chicago they’d visited after their fight with the fridge alien. Gary hadn’t eaten much, but aside from that it was a pleasant capstone on the more hectic events that had preceded.

All told, the major celebrations lasted a week, and even with her regeneration and high fortitude, Anya could have slept for a year after it was done.

Which was, of course, when the Engineers called again.