Paris, France

“I see, thank you. Good-bye,” Renn said to his distorted purple AI. He and Mona sat on the couch together in the loft of a small but elegant apartment President Bisset had given to him. It was only one of many rewards Renn had received from his government, among others.

“Ungrateful bastards,” Mona said as she leaned back into the couch. She reached into the folds of her cloak that hung on a coatrack nearby and withdrew a long, slender pipe from its inky depths. She snapped her fingers and lit whatever was in the pipe with a wisp of green fire, then puffed on it a few times until thick, reddish smoke emerged from the end of the pipe, and her mouth. It was something called abav leaf, and it smelled like cinnamon and vanilla.

“Quarantine is not an ideal response, I agree,” Renn replied.

“Still, is it odd I’m a bit proud of us for scaring a bunch of aliens with how mean and violent we are? A whole universe of life, of shape-shifting knowledge eaters and god only knows what else, and us dumb little humans have them twisting their knickers,” Mona said and laughed.

“No, not odd. It does mean we’ll have our work cut out for us, though.”

“Your peace plan?”

“What else? It’s more important now than ever. If we can show the Engineers that we can unify in the face of adversity, progress and grow, they may open up to us. If not…”

“I’m not going to let them pull the plug on me like that,” Mona said. “I refuse.”

“Well, my own experiments with exceeding the menu’s limitations has been a success. They all but confirmed it. I’ve gone past what they thought this version of the menu would allow. That means that they’re not perfect, they have blindspots. That and their estimation of our survival.”

“How do you mean?” Mona asked as she lounged back like a lazy cat and puffed away. The whorls of smoke twisted in unnatural ways and formed themselves into abstract shapes. Renn glanced at them. Apparently, according to the menu, the smoke from the abav leaf was supposed to have precognitive abilities and was regarded as a spiritual thing or a tool of seers on its native planet, much like looking for signs in tea leaves or viscera on Earth. If the strange smoky designs held any clue to the future, Renn was incapable of seeing them.

“I mean, they keep saying we’re very violent, that other species would have likely died under similar circumstances, but why? They would’ve had access to the same menu we do. So what set us apart? It’s not the skills. The engineers themselves have access to those. So it has to be how we think. They didn’t anticipate somebody risking their own health to reach the peaks I have. Or risking the safety of others to become a living nova like Anya. I would rather cooperate with them, and become more than what we have been, but if not, then we’ll find some way to survive. We beat the gnosiphages, I’m confident we can beat the engineers, too.”

“And we do that by…?” Mona asked and trailed off. The red smoke encircled her head like a hazy, bloody halo.

“By doing what they can’t predict: being as human as we can,” Renn replied and smiled. Mona laughed and kissed him.

Antarctica, Gary’s Factory

The factory was almost entirely restored, and would be better than new in another few days. Following the defeat of the alien horde outside, everybody had been so busy darting off to Beijing or other target areas and caring for the wounded.

Nobody had thought to inspect or examine the onyx staff with the red orb on top of it that the phaoronic cobra had wielded.

Nobody except Gary.

It had been the only thing he had thought about since he had seen it, identified it as the source of the red light. It had blocked menu communication and location tracking. It had been the only outside force that had been able to have any sort of affect on the menus themselves apart from the Engineers.

And now it floated, secure and contained in a thick scanning tube, monitored at all hours by Gary’s strongest Exterminators and a host of weapons and other failsafes. Devices within the tube scanned it from every angle and under every conceivable condition: heat, cold, pressure, vacuum, more.

It was a piece of the Beyond. Gary would have also liked to have gotten a chunk of Willis itself, especially the rock that had housed that curious, alien color, but it had disintegrated after hitting Chell. This wasn’t a bad consolation prize, however.

Immonen had asked about the staff during one of his visits to check on Gary. The place where the cobra had stabbed him was still bruised, still ached like a gut punch and gave him cramps in his sides. The doctor’s healing touch didn’t help any, but Immonen said that his scans showed no serious problems. Gary’s own medical machines gave the same report. No damage, just discomfort.

The injury didn’t trouble him. He was an old man, he’d lived long enough and if this was what did him in ,then so be it. But until the injury got worse, he’d carry on as he had.

And after talking to the rat bastards on the other end of his AI, Gizmo, he knew he had to carry on more than ever. Those Engineers were just like the out-of-touch pricks during Vietnam. They sat somewhere, comfortable, secure, the way they commanded so far away, and then judged the soldiers who fought and died in the dirt and the shit. They sent the kids in camo to die for them, then wagged their fingers that they weren’t doing it right or shamed them for doing what needed to be done. Spit on them when they got home.

War was ugly, and often it was stupid.

But not this one.

Fighting for the survival of the human race was a war worth dying for.

Their most obvious enemy was gone. The gnosiphages had been destroyed, and now mankind was left with super weapons aplenty, but nobody to point them at.

Except each other.

He knew it was only a matter of time before somebody started stirring up trouble. Renn, Huang, MacDougal, Hanover, somebody. There was also the matter of those oddly well-organized independent hosts that had shown up come from space during the last days of the invasion, the retreated back to the void. Not Earth, not the moon. Maybe Mars, or a moon on Saturn. There was no shortage of potential problems, now that the shadow of complete, planet-wide annihilation had passed over them.

Mankind had always found reasons to fight, but he had seen a light at the end of the tunnel when the gnosiphages had invaded. He’d seen a reason for mankind to come together.

Gary looked at the staff again.

The aliens said they could shut the hosts down, trap them, cage them on Earth.

But the staff had overridden the menus. Somehow. Some way. It had blocked communication, hidden their signals from each other.

Gary touched the side of the scanning tube with one hand, then winced and clutched at his own side with the other.

“We’ll show you bastards what humans can do,” Gary said and patted the tube with something like affection.

He turned from the tube and the alien weapon within, and left the scanning room for his own quarters. He wasn’t sure, but his side seemed to be hurting less. Good news. Matbe it would be better tomorrow.

Maybe a lot of things would be better tomorrow.

When Gary left the scanning room, the lights flicked off on their own and plunged the room into darkness, save for the dull ruby light of the staff from beyond the stars.

ARC 01.Invasion//END